Before she became the Girl from Nowhere--the One Who Walked In, the First and Last and Only, who lived a thousand years--she was just a little girl in Iowa, named Amy.Amy, you see, was one of the subjects of the experiment. She's a strange and vulnerable little girl who for some reason wasn't destroyed or disfigured like the others. The first half of the novel is destruction. The second half is the realization that the status quo is unsustainable. There is continuous juxtaposition between journeys and imprisonment. What is safe? Where is safe? Can safety be counted on when the barbarians are always at the gate?
The Passage was heavily promoted this past summer, and I bought into the hype (I'm so weak) and ran out and bought a copy. Am I glad I did? Ye-es. I missed the whole dragon tattoo craze (and I have no intention of catching up), so I thought I'd get ahead of the game with The Passage before the movie comes out (the rights have been sold already). It's a long book, and I read it over a long weekend. I was sick at the time so perhaps I didn't appreciate it as much as I might have if I were feeling more like myself. That being said, it was a good story and Cronin is a good storyteller. There was only one point - during an "is he dead or not" section - that I thought a good editor should have suggested that Cronin make some changes because he and the story are better than what's on the page. It's a quibble only. I do have a heads up, though. This book is reported to be the first of a trilogy, which I didn't know until the last page, and then I wanted to throw the book across the room. It's not exactly a cliffhanger, but the end is a shocker. Chances are pretty good I'll be back for part two.
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