The Passage by Justin Cronin (Book)

The United States government discovers a virus that makes humans invincible and powerful. Obviously, any country would want armies like these. The catch is, people infected by the virus also develop a very strong bloodlust. The military decides to dumb the virus down, eliminating the side effect of mindless killing. So who do they pick as lab rats? Prisoners. Specifically, killers condemned to death by the law. Meaning they killed people (already). Very, very good choice when you're testing out a virus that makes people into insane KILLING MACHINES. Yep.

RATING: 8 sparklies.

The prisoners also develop weird telepathic mind powers and manipulate the guards (to nobody's surprise) into letting them loose. The government goes batshit insane, and California even leaves the USA. Everyone gets either killed dead or infected, and there are only a few survivors left. Nope, no romantic gushy stuff, and the virals (the vampires in this story) don't fall in love with a human or anything. Since they're mindless killing machines.

Fast forward to a century later, there's a colony of survivors in California. They're living perfectly normal lives (for them), defending themselves against the virals with super strong lights...and crossbows and knives. Unfortunately they're batteries are crappy and failing. They can't get replacements because the rest of humanity is DEAD for all intents and purposes concerning themselves. A teenage girl appears out of the nowhere that is outside, people start throwing each other off the wall into the viral-infested zone outside. A group of them escape from the colony with the girl, and set out on a trip to find out where the girl came from. BONUS: The girl is apparently about 100 years old.

Now, I'm sure a lot of you have read some sort of review on this thriller already. It was advertised a lot (BILLBOARDS. WHY BILLBOARDS. And if I didn't know any better, I would have thought it was a movie from the way the ad was laid out.) and it was a good book. Many of us who saw the advertisements might have thought "Oh. Another Twilight ripoff." But there are no sparklies in The Passage. The advertisements use "vampire" only in the vaguest sense of the word, and using the bloodthirsty killer definition, not the romantic Greek god/lover. The term is used only a handful of times in the actual story.

The book was pretty good, and the description of places let me visualize them without trying. It's more of a tale of survival than anything, and has all the elements a good survival story should have. If there was one part I didn't like, it was that the ending couldn't have screamed "SEQUEL SEQUEL" more effectively, aside from having flashing neon lights complete with a siren on the last page.