I had read that The Passage by Justin Cronin was the must read beach book of the summer. After one too many raving review, I downloaded it in the Kindle store to read on my iPad during my crazy business trip.

I expected the book to be a dark, gritty and personal version of World War Z, a book I thoroughly enjoyed. In other words, I expected the book to be in the same style, but written from the perspective of a few individuals with all the lack of information and fear of the unknown that that entails.

The Passage definitely had the potential to be that book and displays flashes of it. Unfortunately, it is so full of pace killing religious and spiritual mumbo jumbo that I could not even get through it. It’s even worse than Stephen King’s The Stand from that perspective, another book I could not finish and that would have been infinitely better and shorter if you removed all the religious allegory.

I hope the next end of the world virus/vampire/zombie outbreak book just focuses on the action, character development and storytelling!