The Passage by Justin Cronin

The Passage, by Justin Cronin, is one of “those” novels. What kind? Well, it’s one of those literary page-turners: a sleek, fast-paced, shoot-em-up, chase-em-down bestseller, destined for huge film success, that “sophisticated” readers don’t have to turn their nose up at. It’s one of those mainstream bestseller books that make use of a multitude of plot points and genre tropes lovingly claimed by fans of said genre, who will surely sniff “I was reading about army-spawned vampire-like genetic mutations wiping out the human race ages ago,” akin to those guys who only like a band when their fan base can fit into a camper van but who mock the new fans who flock to concert sites in the tens of thousands. It’s one of those easy-to-pitch mash-up books: “It’s Stephen King’s The Stand meets Michael Crichton Read More

The Twelve by Justin Cronin

Justin Cronin’s 2010 apocalyptic-vampire thriller, The Passage, debuted in the midst of the mass consumer love affair with the weird and supernatural. In the evolution of the vampire in pop culture, Anne Rice turned Bram Stoker’s blood-sucking villain into a romantic lead. Stephenie Meyer morphed Lestat into a high school heart-throb. Justin Cronin pulled the genre up and out of its romanticized and stagnating plateau to give the publishing world something more epic, more poignant, more ... genuine.

The Passage was a runaway success, though it left readers wanting more and hungrier than a 100-year old viral. Two years later, Cro... Read More

The City of Mirrors by Justin Cronin

The lengthy journey from Justin Cronin’s vampire apocalypse The Passage comes to a full conclusion (and maybe a bit more) in the third and final book, The City of Mirrors. If The Passage was absolutely great (and it really, really was), and the sequel The Twelve was good but not quite as, mostly due to it feeling much more its length than the first book did, then The City of Mirrors falls somewhere in between, though my guess is that some will react more negatively to a few of its elements than I did. It’s impossible to discuss this final book without spoilers for books one and two, so fair warning. Also, I’m going to assume you’ve read the first two books and so won’t other re-detailing characters and events.

The story focuses mostly on the hundred thousan... Read More