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Justin Cronin
(1962- ) Justin Cronin has the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Stephen Crane Prize, and the Whiting Writer’s Award for his fiction. Born and raised in New England, Cronin attended Harvard University. He currently lives with his wife and children in Houston, Texas and is Professor of English at Rice University. Here’s Justin Cronin’s website.
The Passage
The Passage — (2010-2012) Publisher: “It happened fast. Thirty-two minutes for one world to die, another to be born.” First, the unthinkable: a security breach at a secret U.S. government facility unleashes the monstrous product of a chilling military experiment. Then, the unspeakable: a night of chaos and carnage gives way to sunrise on a nation, and ultimately a world, forever altered. All that remains for the stunned survivors is the long fight ahead and a future ruled by fear — of darkness, of death, of a fate far worse. As civilization swiftly crumbles into a primal landscape of predators and prey, two people flee in search of sanctuary. FBI agent Brad Wolgast is a good man haunted by what he’s done in the line of duty. Six-year-old orphan Amy Harper Bellafonte is a refugee from the doomed scientific project that has triggered apocalypse. He is determined to protect her from the horror set loose by her captors. But for Amy, escaping the bloody fallout is only the beginning of a much longer odyssey — spanning miles and decades — towards the time and place where she must finish what should never have begun. With The Passage, award-winning author Justin Cronin has written both a relentlessly suspenseful adventure and an epic chronicle of human endurance in the face of unprecedented catastrophe and unimaginable danger. Its inventive storytelling, masterful prose, and depth of human insight mark it as a crucial and transcendent work of modern fiction.
The Passage, by Justin Cronin, is one of “those” novels. What kind? Well, it’s one of those literary page-turners: a sleek, fast-paced, shoot-em-up, chase-em-down bestseller, destined for huge film success, that “sophisticated” readers don’t have to turn their nose up at. It’s one of those mainstream bestseller books that make use of a multitude of plot points and genre tropes lovingly claimed by fans of said genre, who will surely sniff “I was reading about army-spawned vampire-like genetic mutations wiping out the human race ages ago,” akin to those guys who only like a band when their fan base can fit into a camper van but who mock the new fans who flock to concert sites in the tens of thousands. It’s one of those easy-to-pitch mash-up books: “It’s Stephen King’s The Stand meets Michael CrichtonRead More
Michael Rosenberg, if you live in the USA, you win a book of your choice from our stacks. Please contact me (Marion) with your choice and a US address. Happy reading! […]
The name of the book and plot sounded familiar to me but the cover didn't ring any bells. I looked it out and my paperback has a picture of a mammoth's skull and snow capped mountains on the cover, much better. […]
I'd love to hear what kind of responses you get from your students ([email protected]). DEMO is another comic that my students have liked. It's a series of separate coming of age stories. It's one I teach often. I also often have students new to comics read parts 1-4 of my HOW TO READ COMICS essay so I don't have to give the same l […]
Based on your interests, you're gonna LOVE this one! If I sound overly excited about every comic I review, that's because I am. I only review 4-5 star comics. On the rest of the site, the reviews need to cover as many SFF books as possible--the good and the bad--to save our readers the pain of reading bad books in the SFF genres. I don't try t […]
Okay, I can't buy EVERY book you praise in a review that I love, but -- wow! -- I love your reviews. I studied just a tiny bit about postmodern architecture in one course in my interdisciplinary humanities Ph.D. Program. The things that you care about in your reviews are things I care about. Learning about how architecture can be a control mechanism was […]
David Miller
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