The Passage (Spoilers)

So I saw in the Current Reading thread that there is some interest in discussing this book in detail. I would recommend this as a must-read for just about everybody. It will please genre fans as well as the highbrow literature types. And I guess it's planned as a trilogy with the movie rights already sold. SO, people should just go ahead and get to reading it if they already haven't, and here there be spoilers.

I think the first two chapters alone will hook just about anybody. The first chapter surprised me as I teared up at the end of it (reminding me of the prologue to UP in its ability to almost instantaneously grip you emotionally in the lives of the characters). The second chapter switches gears completely and might remind a few of CONGO. But it was a great tease for what was to come.

Like others I had a hard time adjusting to the major shift that happens at about the 300 page mark. I had grown heavily invested in the characters and the sudden break in the action and chronology was a shock. It took me probably another 200 pages to get hooked into the world of A.V. 91 or whatever it was. But eventually the lives of Peter, Alicia, et al. came alive for me. The book really took off again for me when the expedition began. It reminded me of the Council of Elrond scene in Fellowship, a point when that book gained steam and laid out its plan for what was to come.

There were some questions I had and kept in mind, as they seemed like the type of thing that wasn't going to get answered as the ending drew near. And as it turned out, that was the case. But a quick jump to the Amazon review section clued me into the fact that a trilogy was planned. So I'm sure these will get answered in the follow-up books, but here they are anyway.

1) Amy seemingly had powers before she was injected with the virus. She had the ability to communicate with animals. Surely this was why she was chosen by Richards and Sykes. How did she acquire these powers and how did the government know about them? And why did they make her the ONE for the experiment?

2) Why did the colonel run off without weapons to his certain demise? Seemed especially out of character for him, and this was before everybody in the colony started having dreams of Babcock and going off the reservation. And about that...

3) Did Amy somehow unintentionally give Babcock access to the minds and dreams of the colonists with her arrival? It was only when she got there that people started losing it. Then again, Sanjay had been having dreams of Babcock since he was a kid. Clearly some people were more susceptible to it all then others.

4) Who was camping out in Theo and Maus's barn and saved their lives? That dude from the Haven, Olson? Demo Jaxon? Wolgast? This will almost certainly be answered in the next book.

5) What was that "secret" about Peter that Amy shared with Alicia in the last chapter? About how he was special like Wolgast was. One part of me thinks this just meant that Amy knew Alicia loved Peter in the same way that she loved Wolgast, but something about it seems different. Is there something special about Peter? Is there a particular reason his thumbprint opened up the case of virus vials?

Some of the action scenes were captivating, and I can already visualize how awesome the "Babcock Ring" set piece at the Haven will be on film. As I was reading it I also wondered how you could adapt this thing considering the 100 year break after 250 pages. Perhaps the best way would be to splice in the Wolgast stuff (along with the South America, Richards/Sykes/Lear stuff) throughout the course of the film.

Here's why I think the military had to have known about Amy. One, there had to have been a thousand kids to choose from - orphans, runaways, etc. It would just be lazy of Cronin and too much of a coincidence to have the one they picked also have one-in-a-billion special powers. Two, Amy's ability to communicate with animals has to have been a huge part of Lear's plan for her. Maybe all along he knew that he had gone too far and he needed to create some sort of antidote. And notice that Alicia didn't have the same ability to communicate with the virals that Amy did.

But that just made me remember something. Did Lacey have the same power? Not only was she able to communicate with Babcock at the end, but she somehow communicated with Amy in the beginning of the book. Enough so that she was able to find her way all the way to Telluride without any help. Something going on there...

Onto your questions:

I didn't expect Wolgast to come back either, even in a world where people are immortal it didn't occur to me as a possibility. And I am a sap and loved the reunion scene. But I just went back to the scene before Amy shows up at the Colony. There are hints of what has happened with Wolgast:

"For some months or years she could hear the Man in the howl of the wind and the scrape of the stars if she listened just so, and it gave her a longing in her heart for his care. But over time's passage his voice became all mixed in her mind with the voices of the others, the dreaming ones" (350).

When you first read this you think she's just haunted by the memory of Wolgast. But now it makes sense that she literally could hear his voice just like all the other virals.

It seemed to me people were living to pretty old ages in the colony. Was 40 listed as a typical mortality age somewhere? They did keep mentioning the cancer, but without any sophisticated diagnostic tools, I bet they lumped a lot of diseases into one: "cancer." But if it literally is cancer, you are probably right about the residual radiation.

I think Galen's team was pretty small at the end. Just him and two, maybe three others. So having them disappear to the virals in an instant would not be that unusual.

I think whatever happened to the Colony is what happened to those people in Homer, Oklahoma. Remember that? Or after the mutiny everyone still rationale packed up and left for someplace safer.

I too loved the always go home device. It kept occurring in new ways and was always surprising and cool.

Another question: What the hell happened to FANNING? The zero? Amy said there were only 12 virals left. She meant 1 (Babcock) through 12 (Carter). But clearly 0 is still out there and very powerful in his own way (he was the one who told all the other virals including Babcock that they were dying). Remember in the lab scenes, you really got the sense that Fanning was the real baddie, sitting there perfectly still and quiet, observing everybody. He was the one who ultimately orchestrated the escape too. But Babcock was the de facto antagonist of this volume. That was probably due to the fact that Babcock's home was nearby the Colony. I suspect we'll hear more from Fanning in the future.

I don't think there's any reason to fear that Cronin will "jump the ark" (chuckle chuckle) and turn this into some religious allegory on us.