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Gripping Conclusion of the Passage Trilogy

The City of Mirrors by Justin Cronin

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Most of The City of Mirrors is set about 20 years after events of The Twelve. Virals haven’t been seen in decades, and citizens from Kerrville, TX, are moving out into settlements in other parts of Texas. They think the threat is gone because they don’t know about Fanning (AKA Zero). We learn a lot about Fanning. A large segment of the novel, about 100 pages’ worth, is dedicated to his first person account of his life prior to being infected. He was roommates with […]

Not As Many People Die as You Would Expect

The Twelve by Justin Cronin

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“Present day” in The Twelve is set about 5 years after events in The Passage. Some of the former cast of characters are tracking down virals, or trying to, at any rate. Others are slaves in Iowa in a settlement of sorts run by “redeyes” – people who are essentially “familiars” to the virals. Their nefarious plan is to have the 11 remaining virals move into something like a bunker in the town so they have a steady supply of food (i.e., people and livestock) […]

Quite an Epic

The Passage by Justin Cronin

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Where to start? There so much that happens in this 800-page novel, which almost defies genre. Is it science fiction? Dystopian? Horror? Probably all of those, and more. The novel starts in the near future, or what was probably the near future at the time it was written over a decade ago. Humans have discovered a naturally-existing virus that, when it doesn’t kill them, essentially turns people into vampires: long-lived, strong, easily heal, don’t do well in sunlight, etc. As mankind is wont to do, […]

I am really happy I stuck with this trilogy.

The City of Mirrors by Justin Cronin

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While my reviews of Cronin’s first two books in this trilogy, The Passage and The Twelve, were not the most favourable (more because of my personal taste than anything else), I am really happy I persisted through to the end of this 1000-year-spanning epic series. To recap, it follows the spread of a virus that jumps from animals to humans with such rapidity that Earth’s population is very nearly wiped out completely. Two ‘viral’ leaders emerge – Amy and Zero – in what ends up […]

Scarier than a really scary thing.

The Twelve by Justin Cronin

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Following on from The Passage, this is the second book in Justin Cronin’s epic trilogy. It starts nearer to Year Zero, when the human population is decimated by the failed-science-experiment-creatures-that-turn-into-vampires-but-I’m-not-sure-if-we-are-really-supposed-to-call-them-that. We are reacquainted with familiar characters, and get very quickly introduced to a whole bunch more. Honestly, it’s a bit hard to keep up at the beginning but there’s no need to stress too much – mostly they just seem to be there to give us some knowledge about the ancestry of those we came […]

Yeh it’s pretty scary.

The Passage by Justin Cronin

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I did it – I read another fiction book! Thanks to Caesar’s Wife for continuing to inspire my reading list. Not long after turning the first few pages of The Passage I felt a bit like I’d started a Stephen King book – that’s the closest genre I can think of that relates to this novel. This book, the first in a trilogy, starts in roughly present day USA when the government is rounding up death row inmates to act as lab rats. The experiment […]



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