Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy discussion

This is our discussion of the contemporary novel

The Passage by Justin Cronin
(2010)

Anyone else think it could have been shorter...... by several hundred pages?

Rachel wrote: "Anyone else think it could have been shorter...... by several hundred pages?"

Yes. And I hardly remember anything from it despite I remember enjoying the book. My reading updates back in September were: "When you skip the fluff this book is rather enjoyable" and ""Yeah it sure feels like reading The Stand. Let's hope this one gets less boring.""

What I do remember is the detective character - he seems great.
And I also remember the love soap opera with the teens.

Maybe that's why I have not get the will to directly continue reading the sequels. Will be good if this group decides to read the sequel for buddy read :)

I skimmed the sequel but haven't gotten the nerve for the third - especially since I have so many left overs from 2016 (deaths end) to get through!

I wonder if it's a common thing for post-apocalyptic novels to be long. I just finished reading The Stand (original, not even the extended version) so now I can compare the two and yeah, both could do with a lot less pages. I get that maybe they want to show more about the day-to-day struggles of the people and how their societies function, and even how different individuals adapt, but it can really drag on, especially when there are a lot of characters.

It really didn't help that my copy had a huge printing error in that for at least 100 pages, every second page was a duplicate of the previous page (anyone else have that? It was the hardcover when it first came out). Though in the end, I didn't feel I missed much, which just goes to show that 50 pages could be removed and everything is still fine.

I'm actually reading the sequel now, since I read The Passage a while back. There is quite a bit of slogging through this one too. In fact, I'm having trouble reading more than 20 pages or so at a time when most other books I can devour 100 so it's causing me to fall behind in my Goodreads reading challenge ;)

I'm not a fan of books filled with fluff just to make them bigger but I really liked this series and never felt like it was too long. But...I read this one when it first came out which was long before I had an e-reader or was a Goodreads member so my thoughts aren't written down somewhere. I may be only remembering the good stuff.

I can tell you I never think of this series as a vampire series, even though it is clearly vampires we're dealing with.

Rose wrote: "I can tell you I never think of this series as a vampire series, even though it is clearly vampires we're dealing with. "

I originally decided to read it because it was advertised as a vampire trilogy but also felt the same as you. I felt it was more of a twist on the zombie apocalypse than a twist on the vampire mythology.

Reading through it for the first time. It really frustrated me that just when the plot was building some steam around the p. 240 mark, Cronin goes and hits the reset button as if to say "Yeah, those first 2 parts? That was the prologue."

I found the jumping between places/times jarring enough that several times I skipped ahead to read the one plot (which I almost never do with books) and the go back to the other!

I didn't mind the time jumps, but for me what was lacking in the first book was more details on the virals. In the second book, in the last third of it, I learned a lot more about them, and actually found myself very interested in how things work and what will happen next. In the original book you could swap out vampires with zombies and have the exact same story.

If Silvana means Wolgast when saying "detective" I agree, he's one of my favorite characters too.

I actually got my copy of the Passage as a birthday present. If it were to my picking, I would probably leave it on a bookstore shelf. But since I got it, I might as well read it, right.
Boy, that book is long... It took me ages to finish.. and I was content with the ending. Yes, few loose ends, but who cares, right? And then I read the last words- 'Roswell massacre'
All the blood in my body came rushing to my head..What. The. Hell.
THERE'S A SEQUEL?!?
The next morning, I ran into a bookstore demanding The Twelve. Demanding answers! Everything was fine. They were doing fine! What freaking massacre?!?
I've read the sequel in half time it took me for the first book to finish, and I am happy to say I bought City of Mirrors few months back (along with 25 more books) and it is currently waiting in line to be read as a part of this years reading challenge.

I also didn't know when I read the first book that there was going to be a sequel, though it seems I was fortunate enough to be able to find out that there was one by the time I finished it but it hadn't been published yet.

I actually found the old review I'd written about the first book and it's pretty much what I remembered and posted here, except that yes, I was in fact annoyed by the jumping around in the timeline :) I guess by the time I read the second book timeline jumping didn't phase me anymore, having read other books with that format.

Apparently I also complained about the weight of the book since I was having carpal tunnel-like issues at the time and it was killing my wrist to hold the book up!

I'll be reading the third book, probably this month, I want to know how things turn out.