It wasn't what I expected.
Don't get me wrong. This novel was really good and it got me hooked right away. When I first started reading it, I felt I was lost. It had been too long since I had read the previous installment, so I couldn't make head or tail of the story.
But with a quick detour to the first novel which I enjoyed more the second time around I was plunged deeply into the world as they knew it.
But it wasn't what I had expected.
The Passage was a kind of coming-of-age. A group of survivors banding together to fight the big bad evil. The end of the novel suggested that they had to do that a couple of times before the world was safe again and I thought it might be a bit like Tolkien's The Two Towers, a kind of passage in its own way, travelling the distance to these enemies.
But it wasn't. Not even close. Its unexpectedness made it great on its own.
At first you're brought back to the heyday of the outbreak and you get some sense of the lineage of the main characters.
Then we're back in Texas and it seems that the Babcock colony isn't the only one farming humans. But the strategy of the 12 initial virals has changed with the death of Babcock. They are flocking together.
I admit that the story isn't flawless. Some things were dramatized, others left hanging, but the overall story did carry these mistakes and made them in their own way necessary. It felt like it all served a purpose which is why I love to read novels. Questions at the end might be necessary sometimes, but I do like a wrapped story with no loose ends.
The only thing that bothered me and I didn't even realize it did until I finished it and was thinking what to write about it. What I'm talking about is that because of the novel being written by a man (I guess that's the main reason) is that there's not a female protagonist without super powers. Amy and Alicia carry part of the story, but they are special in their own way. Other than them, there's no strong female voice.
Sara might be an obvious choice but she's more carried by the story than altering the events herself.
Nina, part of the guerrilla in Iowa, plays her part mostly off scene.
Not that they don't add a little panache to the story, but I'd like to have seen more of it.
But I do want to end this review by saying that this has to be a fantastic take on the vampire notion. Its scientific approach in the beginning, with the supernatural part blooming when science has failed, makes this one interesting read. After the dark comes light, but it also implies that after enlightenment comes darkness again.
Read it.. you won't regret it!!
