The Passage

Flyers, Justin, your book sucks!

Don't read this if you liked this book. Because I did NOT.

So, this was popular. And I wanted to know why everyone had a hard-on for it.

I have no clue.

I...debated last night what I would give it.

I think I actually despised it.

It really should be two books, first of all. You spend over 200 pages with the first batch of characters only to have them mostly dumped in the second half, which has almost an entirely NEW batch of characters. That was a bit jarring. In a better book, I could probably have handled it. This is not a better book.

It's actually quite deceptive, really. His writing doesn't totally suck, although I do believe his word choices now and then leave something to be desired. Sometimes, they make no sense. Sometimes, they repeat in the same paragraph. Fine.

But the plot, you say? The characters?

Really, if you've read one apocalyptic novel, you've read most of them. And this one has all the tropes, as far as I'm concerned. The group of adventurers, the bad group they meet in league with the bad guys or as BAD as the bad guys, the romances, the dialogue–all of it I've read before, and by better authors. There are little details that could have been interesting, if only the plot weren't so bloody TRITE.

And the characters. They start OUT interesting. Until they all die, and you get the new ones. The apocalyptic characters are completely bland, trite, and rather dull. The hero, Peter, who should be cool, is, frankly, rather milquetoast. His lady love is your typical B.A. gal who almost dies, but magically DOESN'T. The other characters are mostly without personality. The magical girl, Amy–kill me now. Ugh. I'm sick of magical chosen children.

And frankly–I'm sorry. A good work of literature like this is SUPPOSED to be doesn't randomly have a boss fight in which the boss is killed right away–ONLY to come back for five seconds to kill another character, who, as far as I'm concerned, the author apparently doesn't understand. Caleb the Cut-Up? There isn't any INSTANCE of that character being a cut-up at all. He's actually one of the smarter characters. AND THEN he randomly dies, just so Alicia can have her emotional mourning scene. The author just throws death out there to yank the characters–and the reader–around.

Except his characters aren't good enough to mourn. And to resort to the bad action movie trope of THE VILLAIN ISN'T DEAD YET BECAUSE HE HAS TO KILL SOMEONE, EVEN THOUGH HE GOT SHOT IN THE FACE is just mindbogglingly bad writing.

And all the poignant moments between characters? SO trite. I've read all these discussions a million times.

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Let us not neglect the completely, pointlessly arbitrary FATE in the book, that is merely a pathetic attempt to make the plot work. Some characters just get crapped on period. Others die after having this psychic thought that something ‘bad' is coming. And some characters SHOULD be dead, only to come back and make the plot work. I'm looking at YOU, Lacey. AND Jude. Some characters magically realize they have something to do, only to die pointlessly after a few pages of managing some contrived action. The fate in this book is just that–contrived. Sometimes, it's foreshadowed, such as the obsession that Richards feels for Babcock. But then Richards apparently dies, and not at the hands of Babcock? So Babcock was just Richards' red herring? Seriously? UGH.

There will surely be a sequel. It has room the size of Texas for a sequel. Yay. Another 766 pages. What the devil was the editor doing? There was so much needless BLOAT in this book. And there seemed to be rather a few loose ends, besides the obvious need to continue against the other vampire leaders.

And WTF? The ending in Roswell? Are the vampires suffering from an alien virus? Because the Latin America connection was lost in the book. And then ROSWELL? They're ALIENS? Spare me. This book sucked. It only gets two stars because he managed to deceive everyone into thinking he wrote something amazing, when it was merely meh.

I hope this doesn't determine how my reading goes this year.

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And WHHHYYYY am I not surprised Hollywood snatched it up. It was written expressly for that purpose, surely. I thought the entire time he was basically writing a ready-made crap movie. And I was right. That is the purpose of these books. And now I find also it's a sequel. Help me.

A real page-turner. Sanj nagged me to read this and I was somewhat reluctant because of the “vampire-ish” apocalypse theme, not usually my cup of tea. But this book is quite unique and very engaging. It is well written (by an English prof!) and the characters are welll-developed so I became interested in their outcome and relationships. Now I'm starting the sequel, The Twelve...