I have a rule about audiobooks. If I am going to spend the money to purchase them, I need to get the most hours for my money. Most of my audiobook purchases are epic fantasy novels like Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time series, or long historical fiction, a la Ken Follett's Kingsbridge series. This also allows me to get looooong books read on otherwise "dead" time-when I am driving. This frees up my actual reading time for shorter novels that help me make my Goodreads goal (I know, I know...I might have a problem).

I recently read Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel (review to come, I promise), and one of the things she shares in the afterword is the title of a novel that she made passing reference to within the context of her story. To be honest, I don't even remember the reference from Station Eleven, but I was so in love with that book that I figured if she liked it, surely I would too.

The book she mentioned was The Passage by Justin Cronin. Now, I had heard of the book before. Anyone who reads as much horror and supernatural fiction as I do can't help but run into the title, and I figured the fact that I even read the afterword of Mandel's book (I'm not so good about reading the forewords and endnotes of the novels I read. Mea culpa), was the universe's way of telling me it was time.

I'm always up for a new take on vampires (and werewolves and zombies and other creatures of the night), and Cronin's vision is at once completely new and utterly familiar. In the world of The Passage, a virus created by the US government (because who else) in an effort to create a super-soldier has been given to twelve convicted murderers living on death row (because expendable). When a mysterious event destroys the compound where the once-human-now-something-else creatures were kept, the "virals", as they came to be known, are unleashed upon an unsuspecting world (because of course), and quickly decimate the population, turning millions of people into blood-sucking monsters who prey on anything with a pulse.

The first book jumps back and forth between the time when the virals were being created, and a time about 100 years later, when what is left of humanity is dealing with the aftermath. Because the virus gives its hosts immortality, some of the characters overlap. There is a mysterious girl who was given a version of the virus that somehow did not turn her into a monster, the man who tries to save her, a nun who's life is unnaturally extended through some mystical force that never really becomes clear, a group of brave souls who strike out across the empty landscape to find help for their dying community, and lots and lots and lots of vampires.

Cronin has woven an intricate story of human connection and intense action. There are themes of love and family and faith and oppression, with sympathetic figures on both sides of the fight. Cronin's writing is full of beautiful, terrifying imagery, to the point that occasionally I want him to stop using so many words already and get on with it. But it's not because the words are unnecessary, like I feel with some authors <cough> Anne Rice <cough>, but because he's created such a compeling story that I can't wait to find out what comes next. I suppose if I was reading rather than listening to the books, I'd probably be skipping those long descriptions in favor of getting to the action, and I would surely be missing out.

Revival, Stephen King

Stephen King's latest novel continues his long tradition of using events from his own life to inform the lives of his extremely well-crafted and believable characters.  Revival is the story of fanaticism and addiction and magic (or science?  Magical science?  Scientific magic?).  The main character is Jamie, who first meets Rev. Jacobs when he is a young boy living in a small town with his parents and siblings.  Rev. Jacobs and his young wife take over the struggling church in town, and turn it into a thriving congregation, complete with an active youth ministry.  All of the young people in town love Rev. Jacobs and his beautiful, talented wife, and they are taken in by his adorable little boy.  When tragedy strikes the Jacobs family, Rev. Jacobs preaches a sermon that gets him driven out of town.

Years later, Jamie is a strung-out rock guitarist who is one high away from being incarcerated or dead. When he stumbles upon the Rev. Jacobs at a carnival, he can barely believe what he's seeing. The former minister has taken his lifelong fascination with electricity and devised some truly amazing optical illusions.  But that's not all Charles Jacobs has discovered.  The man formerly known as Rev. Jacobs thinks he can help Jamie with his little addiction problem, but the help will come at a price that Jamie isn't sure he's willing to pay.

King himself famously dealt with an addiction to pain killers after a near-fatal car accident left him in near constant pain for years as he recovered.  Jamie's drug addiction certainly mirrors his experience to a certain extent, but it is Rev. Jacob's addiction that is the truly frightening part of this story.  While this story is not horror in the traditional sense, there is that element of the supernatural that infuses almost all of King's works in some way.  This time the "magic" is presented in the guise of science that we don't yet understand, and highlights the dangers of playing around with natural forces without really understanding the possible consequences.

The story also explores the nature of faith, both in the opening section when Jamie is a child, and later in the book when the Rev. Jacobs becomes a faith healer.  The power that Jacobs had was terrifying, but couched in the language and ritual of religion people were more than willing to be taken in.  People who are desperately searching for an end to their fear, pain, and despair become easy marks for a con man.  But was it a con?  If people really were healed, did it matter where the power came from? When Jamie discovered that the people who were healed didn't always stay that way, he became determined to stop Jacobs.  Determined, that is, until it was his own high school sweetheart who needed help.  As usual, King shines a light on human nature in all of its flawed beauty.