Paper Break time!

I've been forced to the realization that I'm not going to make any progress on my paper until I post about something that I read this weekend (also, I just managed to punch myself in the face with my laptop, so I think it might be a good idea to work on something other than a major paper). This weekend, I read The Passage by Justin Cronin. I don't want to spoil anything, so to quickly summarize, the world goes to hell when a virus created by the US government is accidentally released to the general public. What makes this different from other plague stories, however, is that the virus turns its victims (those that it doesn't kill outright, that is) into vampire-like creatures (the initial intention for the virus was to extend the human lifespan, which I suppose, it technically did). The majority of the book dealt with human survivors 100 years after the outbreak and their attempts to discover more about it. The thing that struck me the most about the book, and made me think of this class, was how the virals/vamps/dracs/smokes in the book were not the cuddly creatures of the night most common in modern fiction. They were as close to the original terrifying creatures as it is possible to get, and I think that is part of the reason why I enjoyed it so much. The virals had no desire to go to high school or date teenagers like we saw in "Younger Women". It was a refreshing change from the annoyingly sincere creatures that populate modern pop culture. That alone would have made it a great read, but it also makes you think about how something like this is possible. I've loved books that feature real world scenarios since I first read Stephen King's The Stand in middle school. The Passage is definitely worth the read.