The Passage by Justin Cronin

After reading this short profile of Dan Fogelman (the screenwriter for, among other things you'd know, "Cars"), this book caught my attention.  I have enjoyed post-apocalyptic novels for a long time, insofar as you can "enjoy" them, and this one sounded great.

It starts out with several seemingly unrelated storylines - a prisoner on death row, a young girl, and mysterious medical excursion in South America.  Slowly, these stories combine into a story of a medical experiment gone bad - so bad, in fact, that it brings on the end of the recognizable world.  The book continues many years on, where some survivors are living in a fortress and follows their life for a while.  After that, it follows a few survivors who leave the fortress in search of some necessary supplies - and after that, it would be a shame to tell you what happens rather than suggest you read the book yourself.

The thing about this book is that it is an epic.  It's 1,000 pages of pretty small print, and I just got lost in it.  In a good way.  The characters were compelling, the story engaged me, and the author created decades or even centuries of history.  (It was not until I finished that I found out that this is the first of a planned series of three.)  I also liked the varied devices the author used - narrative mixed with some episolatory and diary entries.

Reviews of this book compare it to Stephen King's The Stand. It certainly felt like a similarly monumental read.  And, in fact, King was quoted on the back of the edition I read.  If you like this kind of book, this is an excellent execution.