When I picked up this book last year I knew it had to do with vampires and a US military experiment gone haywire.  But that hardly even scratches the surface of what this book and this series is about.  Once I started reading it I couldn’t put it down.  The characters, even the vampires in all their heinousness were real and had dimension.  The Passage begins with six year old Amy Harper Bellafonte, who we are told becomes the  Girl From Nowhere, the One who Walked In, the First and Last and Only, but at the beginning was abandoned by her mother at a convent.  As the story continues with the use of flash backs, news reports and other materials we find out what has created this world.  The experiment gone awry and the spread of the vampiric contagion that caused the collapse of government and society and the release of the “twelve” as they multiply and destroy everything in their path.  Until we reach the book’s present-a post apocalyptic world where small outposts of humanity live scattered across the country trying to stave off attacks from vampires; their only weapon being the lights that they can shine around their walls.  As time passes of course, the generators that make that light are slowly dying from lack of parts and fuel and the precariousness of their existence is only to real for the people in these outposts. Peter Alicia and Theo who are part of the guards of this small colony are struggling to find ways to preserve their lives, all the while knowing that it is unlikely once the lights go out.  In order to save their small outpost it soon becomes clear that they will need to leave its safe confines and find ways to survive beyond the walls.

In the second book in this series, The Twelve, just released last month, we are again pulled into our story by flash backs, news reports and even radio transmissions which tell more of the story of how this came to be.  We also meet up again with some of the characters from the first book like Amy and Alicia, Lila and Peter but also some new ones like Danny the autistic bus driver, and siblings April and Tim.  We begin to see more deeply in to some of the characters we knew, such as Lila who lives in a never never land of denial.  As for Amy, we begin to see the relationships that molded her, and the gift that she carries that binds her to the vampires even as she tries to save humanity from them.  In flash forwards, we see that Amy is honored and ‘scripture” is created to retell the story of her actions to save humanity.  It is eerie to see how truth and the miraculous merge in the this scriptural retelling of the story.

In interviews Cronin has stated that the idea of this book began with a conversation with his then 9 year old daughter who wanted him to write a book with a female heroine. In that he as definitely succeeded, but this is more than a vehicle for a female heroine, it is a richly cast multi character world with many wonderful male, female and even vampire characters, who help us think about what is the essence of a society? What makes us brave or weak and what makes us human?

Brenda’s Rating *****(Five out of Five Stars for both books.)

Recommend this book to: Sharon, Ken, Keith, Marian and Lauren

Book Study Worthy: No

Read in ebook format.