Book of the week: The Passage by Justin Cronin

One day the author's 9-year-old daughter dared him to write a novel about a girl who saves the world. He ended up launching a new vampire franchise that is as chillingly effective as the hype said it would be.

(Ballantine, 766 pages, $26)

“Justin Cronin was once a man,” said Lev Grossman in Time. Now he’s the author of a blockbuster. Previously Cronin, who taught college literature and had written two highly praised books of literary fiction, in no way seemed temperamentally equipped to launch a new vampire franchise. Then one day his 9-year-old daughter dared him to write a novel about a girl who saves the world, and his own world changed. A multiple-book contract and film deal arrived before the first manuscript was even done. Now his “magnificent beast” of a novel has arrived in a wave of early-summer publicity, and the book proves to be as chillingly effective as the hype had promised. “Like some power-mad scientist, Cronin has taken his literary gifts, and he has weaponized them.”

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