I know that I'm supposed to be reading The Twelve, the second installment in this series by Justin Cronin, but while I was reading that novel I couldn't make sense of everything that happened. It's not entirely a sequel to The Passage because it has some flashbacks which were hard to follow since it had been a while since I read the first installment.
Of course with a deadline of October 24th (when The Twelve is required back in the library) I wasn't too thrilled with having to read The Passage first, a novel almost 1000 pages long, but I'm glad I did.
The Passage is a very well written novel which I have reviewed once before. Before the birth of this blog.
This novel has been compared with The Stand before I even knew what it was all about.I read it the first time in August 2010, which seemed like an altogether different time. It was the month where we bought our house (where we still live), it was before having children, but we were already trying. Strange to feel my opinion changed in regard to this novel.
That's the reason I picked it up.
I'm not disappointed, as you can tell by my score, but it didn't stand up to the Stand. (Don't mind the pun).
Why not?
1. The characters stayed rather bland. You get a feeling for them, some sort of hope that they will be alright, but none of the horrific events that happen to them really gets to you. In the Stand I was one with them, they hurt, and I hurt, they were laughing and I was happy.
2. Somewhere right after the outbreak of the virus and before the series of unfortunate events at the colony, the story faltered in its pace. It ran out of gas and continued very slowly, sort of speak.
3. The different story lines that felt like they were tying in together, suddenly were left hanging. I felt this at the end when the colony was reached again. I would've wanted to know what happened there.
Maybe it isn't fair to compare it to another novel, just because it has certain similarities and when you view it on its own, it's a very good novel.
And I'm even doing what I hate.. playing the waiting game until the next installment comes out.
Where I seem to have my doubts about character plot and a lagging story line, I didn't feel the same this time around.
I have read the novel in as little time as 10 days, about the same amount of days it took me the first time, which is quite a feat considering its length.
Why do I feel different though?
I think that I didn't compare it to anything.
It was an entertaining story, sufficiently scientifically founded and filled with characters which I could identify with. Especially Wolgast and Peter.
The story itself, for those who are living under a rock, is about a medical experiment going awry and the world, or North America at least, flooding with the consequences of twelve + the zero changed beings that behave like vampires.
The story starts in a world a few days before the outbreak and stays briefly on track with Wolgast, a FBI agent, taking care of a little girl whose life has been significantly changed by the experiment.
From there we jump about a hundred years in time and we get to know the Colony, a group of survivors in a wasteland of Virals (the ones bitten by the initial twelve).
When things begin to escalate a small group begins a journey towards the mountains of Colorado where everything began.
It's engaging, this story. I can't remember a moment where I thought it could've done with some better editing. With its 980+ pages, it still felt succinctly.
I'm not going to wait any longer, reading the next installment and maybe I was a fool with waiting so long for the second book to beckon me, but on the other hand I got to enjoy the first one again and when I'm done with The Twelve I can quickly go on to The City of Mirrors.
And as I remarked several times to my husband, I couldn't believe this hadn't found its way to the big screen yet, a quick search on google has satisfied that the world hasn't gone completely crazy and an adaptation is coming early 2019, which is not so far away!!
