Written pre-COVID, the Passage Trilogy is Justin Cronin’s imagining of a post-apocalyptic America decimated by a virus leaked from a government research project. The survivors navigate an America where they are hunted by carriers of the virus which has transformed them into vampire-like beings. But threats also emerge from other humans who have turned to monstrous methods in their fight for survival. Among the set of young disparate characters we follow, some believe that an end to the plague and a new beginning for humanity is possible if they dare risk everything in the attempt. With shades of Steven King’s The Stand, the Passage Trilogy came out at a time when post-apocalyptic fiction, vampires and young protagonists were in fashion and marked the series as one to turn to next.
Amy Harper Bellafonte is six years old and her mother thinks she’s the most important person in the world. She is. Anthony Carter doesn’t think he could ever be in a worse place than Death Row. He’s wrong. FBI agent Brad Wolgast thinks something beyond his imagination is coming. It is.
The Twelve. Death Row prisoners with nightmare pasts and no future. Until they were selected for a secret experiment. To create something more than human. Now they are the future – unless a handful of survivors can destroy them.
The plague that almost ended humanity is finally over. For a new generation of children, the once feared virals have begun to seem almost like imaginary monsters, creatures from a fairy tale they no longer believe in. For Alicia, however, the bad dreams can never be forgotten. And the voices in those dreams is leading her towards one of the great cities of The Time Before. The ruined city of New York. Ruined but not empty. For this is the final refuge of Zero, the first and most terrible product of the viral experiment. And Alicia knows that the nightmare can never truly be over until he is destroyed. But what she find is not what she’s expecting.
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