The Passage [thoughts]

The Passage by Justin Cronin
Goodreads
Release Date: June 8th 2010
Publisher: Ballantine Book
Series: The Passage #1

Goodreads description: An epic and gripping tale of catastrophe and survival, The Passage is the story of Amy—abandoned by her mother at the age of six, pursued and then imprisoned by the shadowy figures behind a government experiment of apocalyptic proportions. But Special Agent Brad Wolgast, the lawman sent to track her down, is disarmed by the curiously quiet girl and risks everything to save her. As the experiment goes nightmarishly wrong, Wolgast secures her escape—but he can’t stop society’s collapse. And as Amy walks alone, across miles and decades, into a future dark with violence and despair, she is filled with the mysterious and terrifying knowledge that only she has the power to save the ruined world.

Why I read this: I chose The Passage at complete random. I had been reading a lot of YA and I was just in a place where I needed something different. I’ve heard random good things about The Passage in the past and knew it was popular, saw it on Overdrive and took the plunge. It is a long book and a challenging journey, but one I’m glad I took. And shoutout again to Andi from Estella’s Revenge for encouraging me on the journey!

The Passage is sort of about vampires. It revolves around vampires and an apocalyptic end to society. But it’s about a lot more than that, too.  It’s about humanity, love, loyalty, loss, survival, etc etc. It’s a human story, at heart. I don’t think people that are off vampires or usually against them would have many issues with this book, because the vampire aspect is handled a bit differently. They aren’t your typical vampires and it’s very psychological and mental, it makes you think. The way the book is written put me in the mind of World War Z and the first Dark Tower book, The Gunslinger, and made me want to jump into the rest of the series (at the time of writing this, I still haven’t. Oops. Soon though. Soon.)

How I feel about it:

I have all the feelings for The Passage. I don’t even know how to convey them, so this might get a little bit messy. There was so much setup to this world that I was a little bit frustrated by all the details and all the things going on. And some of it felt fragmented to me, but now that I’ve read the whole thing, it makes more sense why certain aspects needed to be that way. I loved the feel of the story from the beginning, but my love of the atmosphere and feel grew as the story progressed. The book begins in modern times and goes through the vampire event, then you read about the time after, where there are survivors and vampires. You don’t get all the details, of why or how, but I suspect more will come in the second book.

This book made me surprisingly emotional and I cried several times for different reasons. Loss, separation, happiness. I was surprised by how much I grew to love the characters and how important they became to me. I was attached. I loved reading about how the problem got started and how humans reacted, but the after and survival aspects were so compelling. It’s interesting reading/watching different types of after-disaster scenarios and seeing how people think the world might react. It looks at human nature and the will to survive. It shows that even in the worst of situations, humans still want to live and love and make things better.

I feel like I could read The Passage again at some point, and it would be really enjoyable on the second/more read. It seems like a book that might be even better when you know what’s going on and can just watch it unfold, knowing which details are important. It’s not one I’m aching to buy, but I hope to pick it up at some point. I want to read The Twelve, I had downloaded it on Overdrive and read a few chapters but I think I might wait a while longer, but I definitely want to see more of these characters and learn more about the world. I recommend it to anyone who likes eerie/gritty, end of society/survival stories with realistic relationships and human experiences but some unrealistic and sort of weird stuff going on too, ha =) 

 

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova [book review]

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
Goodreads | Book Depository | Amazon
Release Date: September 1st 2009
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Series: n/a

Goodreads description: For centuries, the story of Dracula has captured the imagination of readers and storytellers alike. Kostova’s breathtaking first novel, ten years in the writing, is an accomplished retelling of this ancient tale. “The story that follows is one I never intended to commit to paper.. As an historian, I have learned that, in fact, not everyone who reaches back into history can survive it.” With these words, a nameless narrator unfolds a story that began 30 years earlier.

Late one night in 1972, as a 16-year-old girl, she discovers a mysterious book and a sheaf of letters in her father’s library — a discovery that will have dreadful and far-reaching consequences, and will send her on a journey of mind-boggling danger. While seeking clues to the secrets of her father’s past and her mother’s puzzling disappearance, she follows a trail from London to Istanbul to Budapest and beyond, and learns that the letters in her possession provide a link to one of the world’s darkest and most intoxicating figures. Generation after generation, the legend of Dracula has enticed and eluded both historians and opportunists alike. Now a young girl undertakes the same search that ended in the death and defilement of so many others — in an attempt to save her father from an unspeakable fate.

The Historian was on my Top Ten Summer TBR. I found it randomly at Barnes and Noble a few years ago. It was on sale for about $5 and I didn’t even see that it was about vampires and Dracula. I just like history and I think I saw something about a young woman and her family’s secrets. When I looked at it again, I knew it was about Dracula but was really interested because a lot of bloggers seem to like this book!

I read this in July and I’ve had this post sitting in my drafts because I don’t know how to explain how I feel about this book. It’s difficult because there’s just so much to it. It’s long and it felt longer. Obviously, all long books have a lot to them, but this one has a lot of facts and information and stories along with the plot. There was so much to absorb. It took me longer to read than I expected. I enjoyed reading it, but it was a lot more work than I expected. 

The main character of this book isn’t named. Somewhere it’s explained that she’s named after her grandmother, but I don’t think her name is shared either. I tried to Google this to check my facts, but I didn’t have much luck. Expect the word “she” to be used a lot! The story is told in the daughter’s POV. Her father is always gone because he travels for work and her mother is dead. She goes to school and lives with the housekeeper when her father is away. She is very smart and works hard, but she wants to know about her mother and wants to spend time with her father. She discovers a strange book and some notes in her father’s study and when she asks him about it, things begin to change. He starts to tell her a story, a long and complex story that he tells in pieces. He only tells her a piece of the story when they go on trips.

The story is about how he came to the book, a book with a dragon, blank pages, and the word Drakulya. It was given to him randomly. It began an investigation into Dracula and the person the myth was based on, Vlad the Impaler. He mentions it to a mentor and discovers the mentor received the same book and also investigated the origins of Dracula, Vlad, and vampires. He believes that Vlad is still alive today. He used to research to try prove it, but people started dying or getting injured so he stopped.

The story is long and Paul (her father) includes some kind of weird details sometimes considering it was going to his daughter. The way he tells the story is kind of weird because he skirts around details, and it works for the story and how things are revealed, but I’m not completely sure it works for a father telling a daughter a story. Maybe it’s just the type of person he is, but I think if I were the daughter, it would have been extremely frustrating to me. The story is a mystery and he explains their investigation but the book is filled with many stories. There’s Paul’s story which intersects so many stories, Helen’s story, his mentor Rossi’s story, Dracula’s story, the narrator’s own story, and many others. There’s a lot of story going on.

The stories withing stories are all engaging and interesting. I definitely felt emotionally involved with the characters. There are three romances and I liked them all. There were family aspects that were heartbreaking and frustrating. There were tons of side characters that had important roles and a lot of them were really entertaining.

I really enjoyed that the setting, the story takes place all over Europe during the Cold War. There was a lot of traveling in Europe and trouble with governments and talks of effects of WWII. It was all fascinating. There’s a map of Cold War Europe in the front and it was immensely helpful to follow the journeys on the it. I liked reading about all the places they visited and all the different cultures. There’s a lot of actual history and some obviously fake history, too. It was all really interesting to me. Real and fake, Vlad was creepy and it’s easy to be horrified and fascinated by things he did. When it turns into a vampire story, things got a little weird for me. The vampire aspect of this story wasn’t very satisfying for me. Vlad’s motivations as a vampire seemed off.

For there to be so much explanation and setup, I felt like the end was very rushed. I was a bit disappointed. The storytelling is engaging and thick, so I expected more from the action filled ending. For everything that happens in this book, and like I said a LOT happens, it seemed really easy. Really easy. I don’t exactly know how else it could have ended but it just felt weak to me.

I enjoyed so much about this book and was extremely interested and invested in the story. I did think it was a bit bogged down by information, but I loved the relationships, the traveling and descriptions of countries and cultures, and the history both real and fake. I seriously doubt I would ever want to read it again, even though I enjoyed a lot about it. I would recommend The Historian if you’re interested in complex stories with some surprises, heavy information, enjoyable characters, and a vampire story that almost doesn’t feel like a vampire story.

Check out Elizabeth Kostova‘s website!