Author Justin Cronin’s highly-anticipated (and already well-received) The Passage just hit shelves, but the film rights were sold before the manuscript was even complete. And Cronin is already at work on a sequel. So what’s all the fuss about? Cronin’s 766-page book centers on bloodthirsty creatures — sort of vampire-like, but also a bit zombie-ish — that are killing people off in modern-day United States. But what critics hail is his engrossing style and sense of story, which he told the New York Times is devoted to “the basic human question … What part of being human is defined by the fact that we’re mortal?” Cronin explains, “The vampire story gets at the heart of that. It reassures us that we’d rather be human.”