Tag Archives: Passage

Julie Kagawa: The Eternity Cure

Book review, World of Books February 28, 2013 1 Comment

This is the second book in the Blood of Eden series, I’m not sure how many will there be in the end, one more for sure. I was lucky to receive my copy through NetGalley as it’s not yet out.

So, where to start?
I was everything while reading this book – annoyed with Allie (and Ms Kagawa consequently), thrilled, upset, at the edge of my seat, crying, my heart broke for the characters, basically everything. 🙂

Which makes me think the book is rather great even though I had my doubts in the beginning when Allie rather openly displayed what I consider to be a completely wrong view people have of teenagers. But that’s just my opinion.

Here is the blurb:

“How do you face the end of eternity?  

In Allison Sekemoto’s world, there is one rule left: Blood calls to blood  

She has done the unthinkable: died so that she might continue to live. Cast out of Eden and separated eternity curefrom the boy she dared to love, Allie will follow the call of blood to save her creator, Kanin, from the psychotic vampire Sarren. But when the trail leads to Allie’s birthplace in New Covington, what Allie finds there will change the world forever-and possibly end human and vampire existence. 

There’s a new plague on the rise, a strain of the Red Lung virus that wiped out most of humanity generations ago-and this strain is deadly to humans and vampires alike. The only hope for a cure lies in the secrets Kanin carries, if Allie can get to him in time. 

Allison thought that immortality was forever. But now, with eternity itself hanging in the balance, the lines between human and monster will blur even further, and Allie must face another choice she could never have imagined having to make. “

Even if you read the first book, this doesn’t tell you that much. After my initial displeasure of Allie’s behaviour, I got immersed in the story and wanted to see what will happen. There were some unexpected turns which I didn’t see coming. (yaay, finally! I love that!)

And then we approached the end and I thought I knew what was going to happen, then I read on and thought, “Oh Ms Kagawa was brave with this ending”, only to have my initial opinion confirmed.
Besides, it’s the one I prefered to the brave one. But I can already see so the problems arising in the next book because of it.
And not to confuse you, I enjoyed the book a lot but it’s dark, gruesome and reminds me a bit of the Passage (you know, post-apocalyptic dark world inhabited by monsters with very little people left and declining).

Justin Cronin: The Passage

Book review, World of Books January 10, 2013 Comments: 8

Honestly, I don’t remember the last time I read such an engrossingly haunting and incredible book.
And before you go thinking it’s something lovely, it isn’t. Not even close.

It’s basically a horror story of what we as people can do to ourselves. Well, in my opinion not a true horror story, most post-apocalyptic stories feature some kind of deformed human predator which in this case are the virals (which is possibly why some people call it horror).
I’ve seen reviewers calling this a vampire story but I would never refer to it as that just on the account of virals who have some similarities with vampires but in my mind only barely. passage
The scariest part of the story for me was the fact that people keep tinkering with things they don’t really know anything about because they feel they can gain something out of it. And thinking that they have it under control. But that is only an illusion.

Which is pretty much what happens here and how world descends into apocalypse. It’s also very scary reading about the atrocities people can do to each other. And I’m not discussing virals now but people.

The beginning reminded me a lot of Terry Brooks Shannara world building – the World/Void books. Here we follow a slow decline of the world through all the bad choices we, as the people, make.
In the beginning I got very upset that I had to wait for understanding of different story lines. I mean, the different story lines make perfect sense in the way they build up to a full story but it takes a while for that to happen. Until then, you are hooked trying to figure out what will happen. And that lasts until the end (which is long time coming). 🙂

It also took me some time to figure out the story is not happening in present day but in close future.
The really scary part of this book is the fact that it’s possible. Probably not as imagined in this book but the virus tinkering is a quite real possibility.
Can I just add that the collective of the twelve reminds me a lot of the Borg? 🙂 Couldn’t help it, the association just appeared. I don’t want to spoil the book so I won’t be explaining this further, if you read it, you’ll know what I meant.

If you enjoy post-apocalyptic worlds, I would highly recommend this. While reading it, it might feel like you’re in the Twilight zone but it will be worth it.