Genre Character of the Week: Peter Jaxan

This month I decided that rather than read a classic of Horror, I would check out something new, so I picked up Justin Cronin's vampire apocalypse novel, The Passage. Spanning the events before an outbreak of vampirism and the events of the next century, the novel had a very interesting take on the state of a world under attack, as well as an intriguing mystical side plot as well. For myself however, a book (and especially a genre book), is only as good as it's characters, and the main one in this book, Peter Jaxan, is pretty darn awesome.

Without going into too many spoilers, Peter lives in a small colony of people who are constantly on guard against a possible vampire attack. The vampire in the novel are pretty terrifying, and loss of colonists to attack has become a regular part of life. Peter is the younger brother of Theo, the leader of a household in the colony and generally considered the strong brother of the pair.

What I love about Peter is his ability to dream (and I don't mean Inception-type dreaming here), to think beyond life in the colony and wonder at the world beyond what is just in front of him. When the opportunity presents itself, and Peter begins to be challenged in ways he never thought imaginable, he begins to change into quite a powerful character.

The novel was a lot of fun, my only complaint is that as it is the possible first in a trilogy (and yes the movie rights have already been sold), I now have to wait a year to see what will happen next.