The Passage, by Justin Cronin (Ballantine Books; $27)

What must it feel like to receive a contract for $3.75 million for three books, only one of which you’ve written, plus an additional $1.75 million for the film rights? According to Publisher’s Weekly, that’s the enviable position of Justin Cronin, English professor at Rice University, whose The Passage, its publisher hopes, may be the blockbuster novel of the summer. 

I must confess that knowing that the publisher paid an advance this huge biased me against the book from the get-go. Particularly since the book is about vampires. After all, I have vowed to never read, much less review, another vampire book.

But the vampires in this book are different. No urbane, sexy, dreamy-eyed undead here: instead, these vampires—called “virals”—are killing machines, soulless beings that resulted from a science experiment gone horribly wrong.

The start of the book was confusing, but the set up is this: four terminal cancer patients on an ecotour in the jungle contract a mystery virus that cures them. The scientists studying them learned that something in the virus had reset their thymus glands. Physically, they were as fit as teenagers. Although the patients eventually died, the main scientist figures this virus promises to be the ultimate prize: a way to cure everything. But before it can be put into general use, he needs to test it on human subjects. So of course he turns to killers on death row. (Okay, is there ANY doubt that this will end badly?!) Just to mix things up, he also selects a 6-year-old abandoned girl named Amy. The subjects are kept in a Colorado lab. Where, naturally, something goes horribly, terribly wrong—and the infected subjects escape, wreaking havoc throughout the land.

Flash forward umpteen years. The original subjects infected people, who infected others, and now some 42 million virals roam the earth. (In the good news, however, apparently that "staying young" part of the virus actually worked, since they only die if they’re shot or skewered in a specific spot on their chests.) The few remaining humans live in a highly organized colony. They keep out the virals by burning floodlights all night, since the virals can’t take the light. But in a really neat twist, the batteries are starting to run out and they need to find more. The members of the colony, located in the country that used to be known as California, don’t know if there are other human colonies elsewhere, or if they can reach an outpost to find what they need without being slaughtered when the sun goes down. 

But remember Amy? She shows up at the colony and there’s something. . .not quite right about her. For instance, there’s a radio transmitter embedded in her neck that broadcasts a signal that indicates that she needs to go to Colorado. So a band of survivors decide to walk there. They pass through Las Vegas, hit the casinos (actually, they do, in a very visual scene quite obviously written for its cinematic appeal) and hunker down wherever they find a safe spot.  And some 770 pages later, the book ends with a bang.

But now, the true test. Was it worth the incredible sum that  the publisher paid? Yes and no. The core story is pretty imaginative. The post-apocalyptic society thing was very creative, chilling, and believable. However, Cronin takes far too long to set up each stage of the story—sometimes over a hundred pages or so. Far too many sections are written without a word of dialogue or action, and it just gets boring. The voyage to Colorado and back to California, in particular, drag on about as long as it would have taken to bike the route. Had the book been 350 pages long? It would have been terrific.