My Goodreads review: The Twelve

[ankh_hpl]

The Twelve by Justin Cronin

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


As with The Passage, I'm not sure what to call this novel. Thriller horror? Post-apocalypse SF with a side order of mysticism? Literary/genre hybrid? Whatever it is, the series is still working for me. The weaponized vampire virus idea has something to do with it -- as does the discovery that, for once, the Savior of Civilization is a girl person. Cronin's prose style is also a couple of cuts above what I've found in most thrillers, though that's strictly personal taste.

Anyone who lives or ever has lived in the Rocky Mountain West -- particularly Colorado -- is in for some morbid fun with this one. There's nothing quite like seeing the city you're living in (or at least near) made into Ground Zero for the vampire apocalypse, and my college town didn't fare too well either.

This is, as several other reviewers have mentioned, a very long book. At times, I wasn't sure every bit of it was necessary, but Cronin still does an excellent job of keeping the reader interested in each & every character. There are a lot of characters, though, & I found the X-Ray feature on the Kindle edition very useful for keeping them straight.

I'm reluctant to say much about the plot of this one, to avoid spoiling it for others. There's a more satisfying conclusion this time around than there was for The Passage, which was a big relief. I found the narrative to be well-constructed despite its length, with very few really slow spots. Violence toward women was more of a plot point than it might have needed to be, though the violence made sense in context.











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