Let me start this by saying that I am partial to novels about vampires. Despite the bad name the Twilight series has given them, vampires are cool as hell and no amount of sparkly teenage “vegetarian” vampires can convince me otherwise. Unfortunately, since Twilight hit mainstream popularity, the vampire genre has been pretty bleak, with most horror writers understandably wary of trying to re-convince people that vampires are frightening monsters, not dreamy crushes for highschoolers. Fortunately Justin Cronin did not shy away from the challenge when he wrote The Passage. The book was recently adapted into a TV series on Fox but it was cancelled after one season. Although the show wasn’t terrible, we’re all honestly better off if we just pretend that never happened.
The Passage is primarily about a super-virus discovered deep in the jungles of South America by a team of scientists. When one of the scientists contracts the virus from a bat, he is brought back to the United States with hopes that his blood can be used to create an immunity-boosting drug but it is soon realized that the effects of the virus have the potential to be weaponized. Needing more subjects to run tests on, the government agency running the program begins sourcing death-row inmates, sending Brad Wolgast to various prisons to recruit them. As the test subjects all fall into catatonic states, it is theorized that that the virus needs to be tested on a child because it might have different effects on a non-fully developed immune system. When Wolgast is sent to pick up a six-year-old orphan named Amy, he has a moral dilemma and ends up going into hiding instead of returning her to the test facility.
I could honestly go on for pages just summarizing the first half of this book because it is quite long and is only the first of the trilogy. It’s very hard to really talk about the series without giving away major spoilers, but I will say that about halfway through the first book it takes a MAJOR unexpected turn. I recommend The Passage for fans of vampires but more specifically monstrous vampires. These aren’t your average suave vampires, they are mindless, hairless, glow-in-the-dark beasts that can jump huge distances and tear people limb from limb.