Review: The Passage

The Passage by Justin Cronin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Justin Cronin’s The Passage has been on my to-read list for a long time. It’s a book I’ve been telling myself to read for years, a series I keep meaning to pick up, and my hopes for it were high.

In the end, I found I had very mixed feelings towards this one.

Part one of this book had me gripped. I was sucked in by all that was going on, desperately turning the pages. Part two of this book didn’t grip me in quite the same way. It was interesting, but it did not hold my attention in the same way as part one. From part three onwards, my feelings were mixed. There were some points when I was really interested, but for the most part it was downhill. Thus, I started with a four-star rating, dropped to a three-star rating, and by the end I was experiencing a two-star rating. Due to the length of the book, I averaged this out to the three-star rating.

I’m not sure what it was about that made it so difficult for me to enjoy things from part two onwards. In theory, I should have enjoyed it. I love a good apocalyptic read, love the kinds of journey the characters went on, but I was never sucked in. For the most part, I felt like too much was shoved into the story but was never given the detail it could have been given. There were countless events, but they came one after the other and I never felt the impact of them that I could have.

Add in the way we often went off on stories that were not directly related to the events happening, and I found there were times when my interest slipped. It was nice to have so much detail, it certainly brought the characters to life, but it also took away from the overall story.

I may give book two a read, but I’m not obsessed to the point where I’m going to be devouring it straight away.

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