The Passage

The Passage by Justin Cronin

I did not really like The Passage, but it would be an outright lie to say I disliked it. That statement is not meant to say that I was ambivalent toward the novel. The exact opposite is true: it made me think and it made me emote. It had the potential to be one the best books I’ve ever read. Instead, it’s one of the most frustrating. I cannot fully address all of my frustrations without spoilers, so I will begin this review with the positives and save the spoilers for the end.

The world-building was very good. The structure of First Colony, the politics, science, gender roles, and geography of the place were all well-thought out and very well conveyed. The only thing really missing was the economics of the settlement. But that wasn’t a big deal. The structure of the colony was realistic—stupid, but realistic—and what took place between the reader’s introduction to First Colony and Amy’s arrival there were the strongest parts of the book.

As a stand-alone story, I enjoyed Parts I and II. It was fun and engrossing.

OK, that’s it for the good stuff.

One thing that's always bothered me is writers who write with the assumption that once a reader begins to read, he/she will finish the work. That's a bad assumption to make. I believe that a writer is continuously auditioning for the reader; that is, the writer should be trying to convince the reader that he/she wants to continue reading. The Passage did not make me want to finish. I only did because I had promised my wife that I would. This book lost my interest at least a half dozen times. I had lost interest in learning what happened. I had lost interest in seeing resolution (not that there was much resolution) to conflicts that had arisen.

I am not necessarily bothered by unresolved issues. Going in, I knew this was the opener of a trilogy; I assume everything gets resolved eventually. Some of those issues, though, make me wonder why they were included in this novel. Homer, Oklahoma, for example, was brought up so briefly that it doesn’t register as something I wonder about. It’s more of an annoyance.

Of everything that frustrated me in this novel, the structure is the most bothersome. The author chose to write this book in a manner such that the reader always knows the outcome prior to reading about the actual events. This is not to condemn the use of flashbacks; that’s not what happened here. No, a large number of the scenes within The Passage begin with an assessment of the characters’ situations (who’s alive, who’s dead, etc.) and then follows with how it all came to be. Scene by scene by scene of this. It’s a bit like watching Memento except with forward progression. Even the introductory sentences about the two major characters, Amy Bellafonte and Peter Jaxon, tell the reader that both will survive. The end result is the undermining of most of the tension that should exist in the story.

The one time the author should have used this technique but didn’t is inserting the beginning of the story at the beginning of the book. As is, the beginning, engrossing as it was, seems largely irrelevant when the reader reaches Part III. Getting a third of the way through a 700+ page novel only to discover that you are jumping nearly a century into the future angered me. I think Parts I and II, specifically, and the entire narrative as a whole, would have been much more effective had they been inserted after Amy’s first appearance in the future. Had Justin Cronin made that change, The Passage would have earned another full letter from me.

Some of the narrative choices were mindboggling. Who would test superpowers on death row inmates? Why give big speeches about loyalty and faith right before actions that contradict the words? These weren’t narrative necessities; no, they were narrative choices that make the characters—and the world in which they live—seem unreliable.

In a way, The Passage reminded me of Mockingjay, which is never a good thing. I feel that Cronin copped out during a lot of the action sequences. During many of the attacks, he chose to tell the story through the eyes of someone who wasn’t present. Instead of reading the battles, we read of someone coming across a dead body. This makes for a very disjointed read. I felt detached. I found myself not caring about the characters as much as I think the author wanted me to.

And, of course, we have the African nun whose voice, “was strange, like nothing Jeanette had ever heard, like there were notes of music caught and ringing inside the words.” And there was Anthony Carter, who “was allowed to read, but that wasn’t easy for him, it never had been, and he had long since stopped fussing with it.” This author hasn’t yet earned the benefit of the doubt from me, so I don’t yet give it to him.

SPOILERS BELOW









I have questions. The biggest question of all is the vials of Amy-derived virus. Amy’s destruction of them suggests the immorality of the science behind them. She did not, however, object to Peter’s use of it on Alicia. This selective application of morality undermines the theme behind the tale. Many of the other characters make morally questionable decisions that readers are supposed to view as good and/or heroic. We have a nun who shacks up with a man for decades and then commits suicide, yet we’re supposed to view her as a hero. Special Agent Wolgast married his doctor and then imprints his love for his dead daughter onto Amy. That’s creepy. And crazy. And, in my opinion, makes him a not good guy.

Theo doesn’t really have a character arc; he merely exists to allow the reader to feel Peter’s pain. The Colonel only exists so that Alicia can lead the team to the Army, who, thus far, only exists to take Alicia away from Peter. Without actual development, these characters come across to me as cheap plot devices. As a result, I found most of the pages about them annoying. I didn’t care about them. And then they all died in the end, so now I feel like reading about them was a huge waste of my time.

Peter is one of the main characters, but I find him neither likeable nor entertaining. Peter is in a love triangle because he can’t confess any feelings for Alicia or Sara. Instead, we witness random out-of-the-blue bickering between the two women. Yet, they resolve their issues off-screen. Why have the bickering in the first place? It just makes both women seem petty, but it was clear that the reader is not supposed to view either as such.

This book could have been epic, but it was just a big mess.

C-