The Passage

Not your typical vampire story at all. This is a hefty book, with lots of different characters and narratives. It unfolds puzzle piece by puzzle piece, which made putting it down each night fairly difficult. With so many characters in a book, it'd be easy to gloss over some of them, but Cronin gives each one depth and even evokes sympathy for some of the criminals and monsters.

In the end, the book is about so much more than monsters or government conspiracies. It's about survival, humanity, hope beyond all odds, and other typical post-apocalyptic themes. Yet Cronin made these themes feel new.

Since it's the first book in a trilogy, it of course ends with a cliffhanger, and a pretty big open question about who Peter really is (or should I know this and I missed something?). I hope we get to read more about the colonists in the next book, before their apparent demise comes about.