The Passage, by Justin Cronin

I picked this up from the new book shelf - remembered it was a hit last summer. Cronin has entered the speculative fiction/dystopia genre with this very long tome. I generally like speculative fiction, but have avoided all the vampire novels. This one features multitudes of very nasty vampires, the subject of the 'army experiment gone awry' described on the jacket. The characters in the first third of the book are better developed than the later characters, when the author jumps forward 90 years. The second half of the book wanders around for far too long, with many plot detours. I was hoping the vampires would be vanquished in the conclusion, but this is just a setup for a trilogy. 766 pages, hardback