M. Sjöholm

Good book, a but anticlimactic

Revisado: 07-17-15

Good pace of the story, but I found it lacking in content and it was shorter than it needed be. I would have liked more intrigue and more complexity. Found the ending abrupt and anticlimactic. Performance good, but women could be read better, less hesitant and withdrawn.

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Still doesn't know what it wants to be

Revisado: 09-17-13

I reviewed the first book in this series and my conclusion was that it didn't know what it wanted to be. It started out as a mystery thriller with suspense, action and well developed characters. It was interesting. Then it turned into a Mad Max with zombie vampires, and shallow characters. This books goes even further. It has flash-backs to the 'present day' of the first book. Here characters start to get interesting again, and it's like Justin Cronin is back on his own turf. But then you are taken forward to the time period of the second half of the first book. However, now it starts to become more of a fantasy setting, with super humans and sorceresses and fairy tale loyal horses and what have you. At the same time it's a 1984 Big Brother setting with a V for Vendetta coating, or perhaps it is a concentration camp story. The characters that seemed interesting have become caricatures of despotic leaders and their actions and motifs are very much a cliché. Again ther rule change. Suddenly humans can assimilate some of the vampire powers, and become dictators. The vampires are not that much of a threat really and they can all be easily wiped out. Humans are the true threat to humanity. Whaaat?

In this book Scott Brick's over-dramatic narration felt more at home, or perhaps the constant change of story line made me oversee the narration.

Why did I listen to the second book of a series I apparently do not like very much. Well, there is still something to it, so I have to give it a pass with three out of five.

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Don't really know what it wants to be

Revisado: 09-17-13

This is a book that does not really know what it wants to be. It starts out as a tight story building characters, suspense, mystery and relationships. Very well written and I wish the book would keep it up. Alas! At the point where you think it will turn to a story about the survivors of an apocalypse, akin to The Road or The Stand perhaps, you are taken eighty years into the future and into a completely different setting, more like a Mad Max with zombie vampires. It's like you started a new and very different book. Characters are suddenly not as deep and interesting, and they develop very little beyond templates. I get very confused, and don't see this as an artistic prowess.

I get the impression that Justin Cronin makes it up as he goes. The vampires seem to change characteristics and behavior during the story. You do not learn more about them, rather you realise that what you learn is not very consistent with what you already knew.

Still there is something to the story. It is often fast-paced and quite a lot of action and suspense without being too focused on shallow clichés. I found myself wanting to know what was going to happen, once I had accepted that I was not reading the same book I started with.

I have trouble with Scott Brick. At times he's good, but there is something over dramatic about his narration. A bit drawn out and theatrical in the not-so-appropriate-for-a-book-reading kind of way. Difficult to describe.

As a conclusion: I want to read the rest of the book I started reading. It was really good and I want more of that quality. Hope that Justin Cronin will return to that kind of writing after the third and final book in the Passage Triology.

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