The first of a proposed trilogy, it’s already under development by director Ripley Scott and the subject of much publicity buzz (Retail Nation, Mar. from the trilogy that is also called The Passage, continues in the second one, The Twelve. Told through the eyes of primary character Langdon Towne, much of the novel follows the exploits and character of Robert Rogers, the leader of Rogers' Rangers, who were a colonial force fighting with the British during the French and Indian War. ) uses a number of tropes that may be overly familiar to genre fans, but he manages to engage the reader with a sweeping epic style. Is The Passage book series by Justin Cronin worth a read. Northwest Passage is an historical novel by Kenneth Roberts, published in 1937. PEN/Hemingway Award–winner Cronin ( The Summer Guest

When members of the Colony find a young girl, Amy, living outside their enclave, they realize that Amy shares the virals’ agelessness, but not the virals’ mindless hunger, and they embark on a search to find answers to her condition. One of the few bands of survivors is the Colony, a FEMA-established island of safety bunkered behind massive banks of lights that repel the “virals,” or “dracs”-but a small group realizes that the aging technological defenses will soon fail. When a secret project to create a super-soldier backfires, a virus leads to a plague of vampiric revenants that wipes out most of the population.

Fans of vampire fiction who are bored by the endless hordes of sensitive, misunderstood Byronesque bloodsuckers will revel in Cronin’s engrossingly horrific account of a post-apocalyptic America overrun by the gruesome reality behind the wish-fulfillment fantasies.

The passage novel