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The Twelve (The Passage #2)

3.93 of 5 stars 3.93 · rating details · 19,413 ratings · 3,429 reviews

THE EPIC STORY OF THE PASSAGE CONTINUES...

At the end of The Passage, the great viral plague had left a small group of survivors clinging to life amidst a world transformed into a nightmare. In the second volume of this epic trilogy, this same group of survivors, led by the mysterious, charismatic Amy, go on the attack, leading an insurrection against the virals: the first...more

Hardcover, 568 pages

Published October 16th 2012 by The Random House Publishing Group

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Nov 06, 2012 Bonnie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: pn-vampires, dystopian-post-apocalyptic, adult

I felt like I waited half a lifetime for this to be released and I'll admit, I'm pretty damn disappointed. The Passage blew me away and is one of my all-time favorites/ The Passage really took some patience and focus because Justin Cronin's writing is so intricately detailed that it's incredibly easy to miss something important but it was SO worth it. It all began with several individual story lines that had no apparent relation with one another but as time progressed they started to intersect w...more I felt like I waited half a lifetime for this to be released and I'll admit, I'm pretty damn disappointed. The Passage blew me away and is one of my all-time favorites/ The Passage really took some patience and focus because Justin Cronin's writing is so intricately detailed that it's incredibly easy to miss something important but it was SO worth it. It all began with several individual story lines that had no apparent relation with one another but as time progressed they started to intersect with one another to form one hugely multi-faceted story. The Twelve brings that writing style back into the spotlight with a new array of characters and new storylines.

There were such an immense amount of characters and intersecting storylines from The Passage that I was more than a bit worried that I wouldn't be able to understand what was going on in The Twelve. Fortunately, we're given a refresher in the form of biblical writings from "The Book of Twelves". I thought that the way it was done in the prologue was sheer genius. (Admittedly, I was a bit skeptical at first by the biblical approach he took and continued to take throughout the extent of the book. It threw me a bit but Justin Cronin is a genius and it managed to work out.)

It's strange though, because if you really think about it the original story line from The Passage was solely focused on government conspiracies and the creation of a virus that went completely wrong and was unleashed on the world after the virus was given to death-row-inmates. In The Twelve, the story is centered around a city where individuals are utilizing vampire blood in order to achieve immortality. A far cry from the original story, which was a bit of a disappointment because I would have loved to find out more about the original Twelve.

The main difference for me between The Passage and The Twelve is how the multiple storylines inevitably intersected. With The Passage it was seamless and once everything came together there was the big 'Ahhh' moment where everything was clear and the light bulb went on. For me, I think when the 'Ahhh' moment was intended to happen my reaction was more along the lines of 'Uh... I still don't get it.' Completely riveting story lines, complex and detailed to the max, but ultimately lacked in coming full circle and left me with far too many questions than answers.

The City of Mirrors, the final installment, isn't due out for 2 years but I will of course be reading it. I'm hoping that questions are finally answered and aren't left as they have been: a bunch of hypothetical possibilities.

________________________________________

Update 3/8/2012: Checkout the new EW Magazine tomorrow for a brand new excerpt from The Twelve!

Preview of 'The Twelve' available here:

http://www.hachette.com.au/downloads/...(less)

102 likes · like · see review

Nov 23, 2012 Kemper rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012, apocalypse-now, horror, vampires, meh

Looking back at it, I’m not even sure why I read this book. The Passage left so little impression on me that I remembered almost nothing about it and could barely muster the energy to look on-line for a summary of it. So why read another 500 pages of that story? Maybe it was the hype? Or because I’m such a sucker for post-apocalyptic stories?

Actually, I now think that these books are like one of those B-level restaurants that you end up eating at all the time, but you don’t really know why. The...more Looking back at it, I’m not even sure why I read this book. The Passage left so little impression on me that I remembered almost nothing about it and could barely muster the energy to look on-line for a summary of it. So why read another 500 pages of that story? Maybe it was the hype? Or because I’m such a sucker for post-apocalyptic stories?

Actually, I now think that these books are like one of those B-level restaurants that you end up eating at all the time, but you don’t really know why. The food is just OK and the price is right and it’s close to your house and you never got a nasty case of the screaming greasies after eating there, but it’s not a place you’d recommend to any of your friends or pass up a decent frozen pizza for a meal there. Much like one of these middle-of-the-road restaurants provides gut pack for your belly, these books are gut pack for the mind. It’s not terrible, but you can think of a lot better options.

Which is weird because it’s a horror novel going for epic scale with no shortage of blood and monsters so you’d think it’d elicit some kind of response. Instead it just kept reminding me of other things I liked more. A post-apocalyptic world with a huge battle between good and evil is more satisfying in The Stand. Playing with the idea of different strains of vampires is done much better in Scott Snyder’s American Vampire comics. The crazy vampire lady concept was a lot more fun when Drusilla did it in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Blade wielding Alicia certainly resembles Alice in the Resident Evil films. (You know a book isn’t entertaining you much when you start daydreaming about watching Resident Evil movies instead of reading it.)

I don’t know if it’s because of his background writing the Serious Lit-A-Chur (I haven’t read any of his other books.), but it felt like Cronin glumly slogged through this and that his pulse rate never jumped once. If you’re going to write a post-apocalyptic novel, there needs to be a certain amount of inappropriate excitement involved. I read something by Stephen King once where he talked about taking grim satisfaction in destroying the world in The Stand and when you read that, you can feel the dark glee he took in just smashing the whole thing. Cronin just doesn't seem like he’s that into it. Why bother writing the end of civilization if you’re not gonna have some fun with it?

Part of the problem may be that Cronin skips over that phase for the most part. He showed us the beginnings of the vampire plague but then jumped forward by decades so we never really got to see things come undone. I think it’s telling that the part I enjoyed the most in both books was the glimpse we got of the world going belly up during the outbreak with Kittridge, Danny the autistic bus driver and all the others. That’s the one part of the book where the characters seemed distinctly different from one another and where there’s some real passion flowing. Even though I found the character of Lila extremely annoying because a pregnant surgeon who avoids dealing the with the on-going apocalypse by going crazy town banana pants and acting like nothing is wrong should be the first one to get her blood drained, at least she evoked some kind of reaction from me. Whereas the other characters in the book were essentially a big shrug.

This book is such a yawn that I had a hard time deciding on whether to give it 2 or 3 stars. I finally decided that giving it 2 stars would actually mean that I cared enough to downgrade it. But I don’t. This thing is the epitome of average so 3 stars it is.(less)

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Oct 31, 2012 Kelly Holmes rated it 4 of 5 stars

Before I owned a Nook I carried The Passage #1 as a carryon all the way from New Orleans to California, a hefty load. I literally could not put down the book; I raced to finish it before we landed. At several points I had to tell my boyfriend to stop talking to me-I was reading and I meant business. I had no idea the book was going to be left open to a sequel and as I finished the last page I thought NO I have to know what is going to happen next. I cannot wait to read the second book-for severa...more

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Jan 06, 2013 mark monday rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: after-the-fall

Cronin's second book in his Passage trilogy eschews much of the poetry and melancholy of the first book; this novel is rather more conventional in style and tone. it is basically a mosaic of events (set in various time periods) that gradually builds to a showdown between a demented fascist and a crowded gallery of bruised & battered heroines & heroes. much like the first book, it includes a novella-sized chunk in its first section that is entirely devoted to events taking place in Year Z...more

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Dec 11, 2012 Regina marked it as to-read

Shelves: post-apocalyptic, audio-also-listened-to, disease-pandemic, listened-to-audio-only, only-listeneed-to

Justin Cronin talks about the 2012 sequel:

http://io9.com/5605835/justin-cronin-...

We caught up with bestselling author Justin Cronin, whose novel The Passage depicts a post-apocalyptic world of psychic vampires. He told us what makes his vamps tick, and also what's in store for the Ridley Scott-produced Passage movie.

In the video above, Cronin does a great job breaking down what makes his vampires fascinating: He's taken all the myths about vampires and tried to make them as scientifically plaus...more

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Dec 06, 2010 Bryn ((B2/B.P)) Ryeosomniac~~ marked it as to-read

Shelves: vampires, dystopia-and-apocoliptic

2012???? NOOOOO!!!! I can't wait that long! I loved the first one, and now I really want to know what happens next!

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Dec 06, 2012 V. Briceland rated it 3 of 5 stars

One of the literary techniques that most irritated me about Justin Cronin's tale of bioengineered vampires, The Passage, had to do with his seeming defensiveness of tone; every page reeked with his desperation to let readers know that yes, while he might've sold out for a big horror genre paycheck, he still had an MFA in creative writing and was determined to show it off, dang it. Thus we had endless multi-page scenes of internal narrative about scarlet ribbons undulating across the billows and...more One of the literary techniques that most irritated me about Justin Cronin's tale of bioengineered vampires, The Passage, had to do with his seeming defensiveness of tone; every page reeked with his desperation to let readers know that yes, while he might've sold out for a big horror genre paycheck, he still had an MFA in creative writing and was determined to show it off, dang it. Thus we had endless multi-page scenes of internal narrative about scarlet ribbons undulating across the billows and curves of a carmine ocean speckled with craters of inky night that reflected a galaxy of cold and unfeeling stars. I think they were supposed to represent blood-sucking sequences, but since Cronin often shunned genre norms like using names or pronouns to let you figure out which of his several hundred characters was actually involved in a scene, it was sometimes awfully difficult to tell.

The good news in The Twelve is that the first book in the series was enough of a bestseller that Cronin could apparently pay off his grad school debts and write a fat check to his old program to assuage any guilt he might be feeling for slumming in the mass market paperback section. Those high-falutin' scenes are long-gone from his new book—and gone too are the pages and pages of internal monologue, replaced by snappy dialogue-driven chapters that were totally absent from the first novel. The pacing in The Twelve is brisk and relentless, which makes it a page-turner.

Mind you, exciting writing isn't necessarily the same thing as great writing. For his sequel to The Passage, Justin Cronin has managed to cut down his literary crib sheet to two primary sources—Stephen King's The Stand being the first and most obvious. I'm not really a King fan, but it's plain that Cronin feels piling narrative upon narrative across dozens of characters is the best way to create a Stand-like blockbuster. Yet I found his characterizations lifeless and paper-thin, and his style a mere aping of King. The protagonists from the first book are ciphers here—the central couple of Peter and Amy especially. New characters get an even shorter shrift. Giving gruff military men a sudden appreciation of poetry before their deaths in the book (not just once, but twice!) isn't a convincing way of showing the humanity behind a martial mind, for example; it's a cheap shortcut that's akin to literary semaphore.

Cronin's approach to foreshadowing disaster is as equally ham-handed as the first installment. When a character smiles winsomely into the sweet summer sun and says, "Hey, I've got a great idea! Let's take all the innocent kiddies of the colony out into the countryside for a picnic! What could possibly go wrong?!", or looks off into the horizon, spits, and sighs, "Driving this tanker truck full of highly flammable fuel sure is boring work. At least nothing bad can possibly happen," it's painfully obvious that disaster is in the works. The payoffs aren't enough to justify the ham-handed foreshadowing, either.

Still, the book gets intriguing when it delves into Margaret Atwood territory, taking a spin on the totalitarian regimes similar to The Handmaid's Tale and its examination of the culture of rebellion. The scenes with Sara and the queen of the virals are both disturbing and ultimately touching; it's a pity they're buried beneath and burdened by a an abundance of opaque dream sequences, repetitious replayings of discoveries that Cronin wants to hammer home, and too many characters it's difficult to care much about.

While Cronin might be more true to his genre's form by ditching the hip-lit pretensions of The Passage, it hasn't really improved the sequel any. On the other hand, it hasn't made it any the less compulsively readable, either. (less)

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Oct 21, 2012 Jenny rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: audiobook, read2012, sci-fi-fantasy

I wasn't going to read this book. I wasn't! I felt like The Passage was a well-contained story and I didn't understand where else it could go. I will let the author explain what he focuses on in The Twelve, because I find it too difficult to summarize. (This is from an older post from 2010 on io9.com.)

The next two books each go back to Year Zero at the outset, to reset the story, and to deal with something you didn't see and didn't know was as important as it was. It's not a linear quest story,

...more I wasn't going to read this book. I wasn't! I felt like The Passage was a well-contained story and I didn't understand where else it could go. I will let the author explain what he focuses on in The Twelve, because I find it too difficult to summarize. (This is from an older post from 2010 on io9.com.)

The next two books each go back to Year Zero at the outset, to reset the story, and to deal with something you didn't see and didn't know was as important as it was. It's not a linear quest story, which I would find dull and plodding. With each book, you need to have the narrative terms reestablished with fresh elements. Also, if you didn't see [a character] die, they're not necessarily dead. There's a big cast in the first book, and plenty of unresolved stuff. I will resolve it by the end. [Early vampire character] Anthony Carter? No, not abandoning him.

In [The Twelve], you go back to what happened in Denver after the outbreak took place. The story will resume in that location a few days after breakout. So you can see another angle on what occurred and certain elements will affect our band of heroes 100 years in the future. It will be called The Twelve - and it's not who you think.

This means that the story starts with where Amy is, and follows up with an assortment of other characters. Just like in The Passage, storylines are dropped completely as others are followed. Since I was listening to the audio, it was a bit more difficult to keep track of, just because it was harder to flip back and get a refresher on names, etc.

The author provides a lot more information about what happened to various people at the very beginning, explaining how some of the communities were formed, the horrific actions of the USA government (including events like "The Field"), and other parts of the novel jump around up to 97 years from when the virus originally took hold. This kind of information is usually my favorite part of post-apocalyptic stories - the rebuilding. What kind of societies form? How do they work? Who has control? I think Justin Cronin shows a lot of creativity and variety in these situations, since it isn't just one story, but multiple. Many of the characters, locations, and situations overlap throughout the story, and I had this sense of the author as a puppeteer, drawing strings of stories around each other. Kudos to him that they never seem to tangle in disaster.

Scott Brick is the narrator for the audiobook of The Twelve, and does a fantastic job. He doesn't bother doing a lot of voices, but his inflection is perfect. He has this ability to get out of the way of the story that I really appreciate when I'm listening. It just comes to life and I'm not constantly thinking of HIM, but of the story.

And The Twelve requires a lot of thinking and paying attention. The multiple story lines, the jumping around in time and history, and the sprinkling of quotations that Cronin throws in kept my attention. He started with a Mark Strand poem, almost as if I needed something to clinch whether or not I'd read this book.

I won't have that dilemma for the final book. While this story has a satisfying climax, I was left with far more questions this time around. I'm not sure I know which side everyone is on. I'm not sure I even know what sides there are, anymore. That's about all I can say about it without spoiling!

(less)

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Nov 12, 2012 Katy rated it 4 of 5 stars

I was really hoping this would publish by summer 2011 as one of my summer reads, but I guess I'll just have to wait until next year *sigh*

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Dec 17, 2012 Jason rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-2012

Oh well. To be honest, I am rating this as high as I am only because the plot is neat. That's it. The writing has taken a sharp turn downhill. Cronin is a brilliant man who occasionally turns a sentence is stuff into a divine inspiration, but this feels like it has the huffing breath of a publisher who has shelled out $3.5 million on its neck. Unlike The Passage, which was longer, this feels sloppy and hurried. Character development here is hurried and hamfisted (remember this guy? well, apparen...more

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Dec 29, 2012 Lisa (Harmonybites) rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Die Hard Completists

Shelves: fantasy, fiction, novels, popular-fiction, suspense

I loved, well most, of The Passage, the first book of this trilogy. Enough I almost rated it five stars, although I pulled back from that because although I thought the author did some amazing things, I couldn't call it a true favorite. Especially given the first 300 pages of that book seemed to me so cliched Stephen King/Michael Crichton thriller. I felt I'd been there, done that, over and over and over. Two things redeemed The Passage for me though. I liked how Cronin took the vampire mythos a...more I loved, well most, of The Passage, the first book of this trilogy. Enough I almost rated it five stars, although I pulled back from that because although I thought the author did some amazing things, I couldn't call it a true favorite. Especially given the first 300 pages of that book seemed to me so cliched Stephen King/Michael Crichton thriller. I felt I'd been there, done that, over and over and over. Two things redeemed The Passage for me though. I liked how Cronin took the vampire mythos and from it crafted something (almost) scientifically plausible, putting a non-supernatural spin on such bits of vampire lore as the cross, garlic, familiars, reflection, etc. But for me what made that first book was The Colony. That's where Cronin's world-building impressed me and made the book more than the usual paranormal/post-apocalyptic bestseller. And those are the characters I cared about: Lish, Michael, Peter, Sara.

So imagine how I felt when at the opening of this book I found myself plunged back into the territory covered in the first few hundred pages of The Passage and wondering when if ever I'd see the characters I cared about again. Moreover very little if any of the information picked up in the first third or so of The Twelve was necessary--filler, if not fat. And this bunch were exactly the kind of characters I really didn't want to hang around--a mixture of repellant, creepy and/or too-stupid-to-live. There are a whole bunch of things I can nitpick (Horace Guilder's Gone with the Wind moment was one WTF) and Cronin really needs to learn a lesson from Joss Whedon. You have to be willing to kill your darlings--if the reader feels too comfy your heroes are going to come out of everything unscathed, not only is there no suspense, there's no feeling there was anything to really overcome. A price has to be paid. I did like a few things. (Saving this from a one-star rating). I particularly liked how Cronin depicted the Homeland--very reminiscent of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale.

But the bottom line was, after reading this do I want to read the conclusion of the trilogy? Do I still give a damn? And that would be a no.(less)

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Jan 23, 2013 Woowott rated it 1 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Y'know, the longer time goes by, the more I hate this book. So, now it is down to one star. Sometimes it takes a while to realize how much you don't like something. Or hate it. I apparently hated this. I think the thing that threw me over the edge was Alicia's rape.

Spoilers, because I'm too bored not to. *edit* ACTUALLY, not only are there spoilers, but I realized as I typed how HOSTILE I was to a particular plot twist that was wholly unnecessary, pointless, and aggravatingly trite. And utterly...more

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Oct 18, 2012 Michael rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: arc, 2012, paranormal, post-apocalyptic, horror, dystopia

I recently read The Passage this year so I was lucky I didn’t have to wait as long as everyone else for book two; The Twelve. I was privileged to win an advanced review copy so I need to be careful in reviewing this book without any spoilers. As many people would already know The Twelve continues on with the epic tale that The Passage built. This time we have a whole lot of new characters to read about as they struggle to survive in this nightmarish world of virals.

One of my biggest issues with...more I recently read The Passage this year so I was lucky I didn’t have to wait as long as everyone else for book two; The Twelve. I was privileged to win an advanced review copy so I need to be careful in reviewing this book without any spoilers. As many people would already know The Twelve continues on with the epic tale that The Passage built. This time we have a whole lot of new characters to read about as they struggle to survive in this nightmarish world of virals.

One of my biggest issues with The Passage is the same issue I’ve had with this book; which is the fact that I really struggled to keep the characters in order. Granted all the characters had a wonderful amount of depth to them but because there are so many characters, it sometimes becomes a struggle keeping up with them. I had to write a list of each character and a bit of information about them just to refer back to and remember key aspects of their story arcs. While in The Twelve the characters seem to travel more as a big group so I didn’t feel like I needed a map and little figures to move around like a war map just to keep track of everyone.

I love the post apocalyptic world the Justin Cronin has created and I found so much joy in returning to the world. He has created this wonderful world full of great characters, tension and action. But he has written these books in such literary way, which sets it apart from most Post-Apocalyptic survival novels. Although these books are bricks and too heavy to hold; they are still well worth reading.

I’m a little worried that I now have to wait till 2014 for the final book in the trilogy, The City of Mirrors. Fans of The Passage, you are in for a treat with The Twelve; just for the joy of going back to the world and continuing the story but also because there are new characters to meet. While I think this book will stand out as a standalone read, I highly recommend you start this book from the beginning. But maybe wait till 2014 so you don’t have to suffer with waiting two years for the next instalment. I hope I haven’t given anything away about the plot away, but if you have read this book already I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

This review was originally found on my blog; http://literary-exploration.com/2012/...(less)

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Oct 26, 2012 Linda rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012-end-of-the-world-challenge, read-fiction

Thank you, Justin Cronin, for providing a summary of The Passage in the prologue! Wish I had known about the list of characters at the end though. Would have come in handy :) My full review is here.

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Aug 27, 2012 switterbug (Betsey) rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

THE TWELVE, which is the second book of Cronin's towering trilogy, can be read as a complete book, whereas the first book stopped abruptly, like a gasp. However, I urge you to read THE PASSAGE first, because the epic as a whole is a finely calibrated accretion of history, plot and character. The Twelve refers to the twelve "parent" or original virals, the death-row-inmate subjects-turned-virals from "Project Noah," who must be liquidated in order to save the world. The thrust of this book is the...more THE TWELVE, which is the second book of Cronin's towering trilogy, can be read as a complete book, whereas the first book stopped abruptly, like a gasp. However, I urge you to read THE PASSAGE first, because the epic as a whole is a finely calibrated accretion of history, plot and character. The Twelve refers to the twelve "parent" or original virals, the death-row-inmate subjects-turned-virals from "Project Noah," who must be liquidated in order to save the world. The thrust of this book is the hunt of the twelve by Amy, Alicia, Peter, and company.

"All eyes." Two words commonly spoken by the First Colony Watchers, starting in Book one--survivors of the end of the world as we know it. I shiver when I read it now, this sober siren call of fellowship to signal strength and vision, to defeat the virals. It carries an additional, deep and tacit message now--that I honor you, comrade (lover, brother, father, mother, friend, sister, soldier)--go bravely and stay safe. And keep your eyes forward, against the last remaining light of the day.

Cronin's weighty trilogy, a hybrid of mainstream and literary fiction, isn't just a story about these photophobic vampire virals, identified variously as dracs, smokes, flyers, jumps, and glowsticks. Rather, it is a portrait of humanity in extremis. Virals, caused by a military experiment gone awry, are a malignant, violent force of annihilation. But what reserves of strength keep us fighting? How do people live in a post-apocalyptic world? Is another end coming? Or a beginning? Is the world even worth saving? THE TWELVE, like THE PASSAGE, has as much anthropology, eschatology, psychology, and philosophy, as it does gore, battle and horror.

Cronin's tilted, unconventional structure has an elegant, understated, and circular pull and propulsion, muted at times, roaring at others. He periodically pauses in the progress of the plot for his intense and luminous miniatures--mystical, sensory flights of prose and backstory elaboration, (although briefer in THE TWELVE), which deepen the intricate plot strands as well as create a vivid landscape, emotionally and physically. Gradually, he braids it all together.

THE TWELVE isn't linear, but it is, ultimately, progressive. It starts back at year zero (the viral outbreak), providing new characters and expanding on previous ones, as it steadily brings us back to the present, approximately 97 A.V. (After Virus), five years after the end of THE PASSAGE. Peppered here and there are the terse, abstract texts dated 1003 A.V. And, yes, the cliffhanger ending of the first book, as well as all strands, are eventually returned to and understood. The author is in control of his sublime, colossal narrative.

Cronin traveled every mile in the book for his research, and it shows. His sense of place is so atmospheric and sensuous, alive and turbulent, that geography is a character in itself. From the benevolent but arch company of assembled defense forces in Kerrville, Texas; to a terrifying, totalitarian-ruled, labor camp in Iowa; and to a handful of scrappy iconoclasts that roam from place to place, the author's conception of a fractured world flashes and flickers with billion-kilowatt energy in every setting.

Cronin's complex character development equals any realistic literary novel. Amy, Alicia and Peter (and others) continue to evolve, although Peter, admittedly, was more of a placeholder in THE TWELVE, notwithstanding a few valorous confrontations with virals. There's no doubt in my mind that he will figure largely in the final book, now that Amy's character has expanded in surprising, startling, and inevitable ways. He and Amy are bound, as was determined in THE PASSAGE. However, as Amy is more revealed, Alicia becomes more eerie and enigmatic, and discovers an unpredictable and, well, animate love. You also unexpectedly learn more about her descendants.

But wait until you meet Guilder, and reconnect with Lila (Wolgast's ex-wife); the pages nearly howl with the portrayal of these two characters. From their skin and viscera to their organs and bowels, I have rarely encountered anyone comparable to Lila and Guilder in a horror or dystopian novel. And there are numerous and brilliant secondary characters, such as Carter, the twelfth original viral, that are graphic and memorable. Greer, from the first book, is now a military prisoner and seer. Grey, a sweeper from the first book, finds an opportunity to amend for his past sins, but it doesn't quite work out the way he planned. Also three-dimensional are the virals, a ripe and sentient life force of consummate destruction. And, there are some new developments in store regarding viral species transformation.

The final book, THE CITY OF MIRRORS, is due for release in 2014. The title is a terrific tease, but I believe I possess the prescience to interpret its significance. It gives me a soulful, excited feeling. I know what it means, where this is headed, and that makes it triply electrifying.

Addendum: Cronin is my homeboy, if you’ll pardon my colloquialism. He hails from my hometown (Boston), and lives where I have lived (Bellaire, Texas). He based the First Colony (THE PASSAGE) geography on Idyllwild, California, a place I once knew intimately. It was a superb sequestered setting for an isolated survivor community. Flyers, Justin!(less)

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Dec 29, 2012 Charlene rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

4.5 stars for this sequel! I didn't enjoy The Passage that much (I gave it 3 stars), but it interested me enough to continue reading. I think The Twelve was much better than The Passage and I will definitely be looking forward to the final entry in the trilogy.

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Feb 03, 2013 Leah rated it 2 of 5 stars

Update: 85%.

I have Thoughts.

THE TWELVE is a user's manual to how NOT to write genre fiction, or attempt to blend literary and genre. What so compelled me about THE PASSAGE was its first third, a successful mashup of literary and genre fiction: long, slow-burning character arcs weaving together in satisfying ways, all of it driven by an unfolding apocalypse. The initial characters were compelling and often tragic. I knew I was reading a feel-bad story about a bunch of broken souls, and I wanted d...more

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Jun 10, 2011 Nonomer marked it as to-read

I hope this sequel is as long or longer than the first. I loved every page of the first book, though my copy is misprinted, I am missing a page and it seems a chunk of info was cut out....

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Nov 21, 2012 Tom rated it 2 of 5 stars

There are sustained moments of brilliance to be found in "The Twelve." Almost everything in Year Zero and The Field are as good or better as the best portions of "The Passage." Had the book focused solely on those two timeframes, this would be a 5-star review. But once Cronin returns to the "present day" (aka 97 A.V.), little works. The character development is rote, the descriptive passages rely on cliche, and for much of the book Cronin writes in a simplistic, almost condescending, manner, as...more

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Mar 08, 2011 Tracy Hughson marked it as to-read

I can't wait for this book to come out I just loved the passage!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Dec 28, 2012 Jennifer | Book Den rated it 2 of 5 stars

This is my most anticipated book of 2012. :D

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Jun 18, 2012 Dan Radovich rated it 4 of 5 stars

His storytelling is tighter. Everything that Cronin delivers in THE TWELVE brings you deeper into this fantastic story. I love it.

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Nov 28, 2012 Ken rated it 1 of 5 stars

One long yawn punctuated by all too rare moments of action (which should not be taken to mean "drama"). Readers should always be suspicious of any genre novel which takes the name of one of its characters from a John Cheever story (Tifty). Cronin has a penchant for spending 200 pages slowly building characters and scenarios and then, as soon as things show a hint of getting interesting, cutting away to another completely different set of new characters and scenarios which he will then build over...more One long yawn punctuated by all too rare moments of action (which should not be taken to mean "drama"). Readers should always be suspicious of any genre novel which takes the name of one of its characters from a John Cheever story (Tifty). Cronin has a penchant for spending 200 pages slowly building characters and scenarios and then, as soon as things show a hint of getting interesting, cutting away to another completely different set of new characters and scenarios which he will then build over another hundred or more pages. Done properly--when you actually care about the characters--this works well. It keeps readers turning pages to find out what happens next. But Cronin got the ratio all wrong. It feels like momentarily coming up for air before being plunged back into the boredom.

Which leaves one ample time to notice just how bad the writing can be at times. Sentences along the lines of "He would have none of it. With the last of his energy, he thrust himself away." Okay, first of all, I hate the phrase "He would have none of it." In any context, it's always redundant. It has little practical meaning without the sentence that follows it and the sentence that follows it always tells us everything we need to know and will stand on its own. "He would have none of it" communicates nothing and is shopworn to boot. Next, the phrase "With the last of his energy" always makes me expect the character to fall to the ground immediately following whatever action they've just performed. The fact that he doesn't makes the writing seem melodramatic. Additionally the dead are described at one point as being "inertly limbed." Not only is "intertly limbed" one of the worst adjectives I have ever come across, it's entirely unnecessary given that, you know, they're freaking DEAD!

Starting this book, I'd wanted to see the vampire hunt continue. Where is the vampire hunt in this book? It's non-existent. The whole thing is like a book length tangent.

Still, I read the first one (and liked it, somehow, though I now question my own judgement in retrospect), so I kept pushing through this one until I realized that I was spending more time watching the page count creep up oh-so-slowly and thinking about how many books I am really looking forward to reading than I was actually enjoying anything in this book. And I found myself thinking, "If I read nothing more than this book this weekend, I am going to be really disappointed." So I am abandoning it at more than 50% finished. I will not be finishing this trilogy.

(less)

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Nov 27, 2012 P.G. Holyfield rated it 5 of 5 stars

The Twelve was an excellent read. A good character list from The Passage would have been helpful, maybe in an appendix, as minor characters from the first book become major characters in The Twelve. I love Cronin's plot devices and character development. I love how he connects his plots and brings them together at the end. Granted, there are moments where you have to not only turn off your sense of disbelief, you have to forget you ever had it, but if you have come this far and accepted the conc...more

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Nov 08, 2012 Kim rated it 3 of 5 stars

The second book in The Passage series. I wanted to like this book more than I actually did. I really liked the first book even though I found it sort of confusing, but this book I found VERY confusing. The author did too good a job weaving characters from the first book into the second. I had to do a lot of googling to remind myself who people were and what exactly was going on. The story didn't flow great and it was unnecessarily darker and more disturbing than the first book. There were times...more

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Nov 01, 2012 Leilani rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: horror

I can easily summarize this entire book with one simple word: WOW. Yep. That's about it. WOW. There are very few books that I would call "nail-biters" or "edge of your seat" stories, but "The Twelve" easily falls into this category; there were instances where I actually found myself yelling, gasping, and cursing aloud, and during one pivotal revelation I actually woke my husband up at 4 in the morning with an outraged, "Ooohh, that son of a b****!" that rang out across the house. I read this ent...more I can easily summarize this entire book with one simple word: WOW. Yep. That's about it. WOW. There are very few books that I would call "nail-biters" or "edge of your seat" stories, but "The Twelve" easily falls into this category; there were instances where I actually found myself yelling, gasping, and cursing aloud, and during one pivotal revelation I actually woke my husband up at 4 in the morning with an outraged, "Ooohh, that son of a b****!" that rang out across the house. I read this entire book in two days simply due to the fact that I had to know what happened; even when I put the Kindle down, I spent that time wondering what was going to happen next, whether certain characters were going to be okay or not... And there were a couple of instances where I just HAD to put it down and walk away for a while - Cronin had hurt my heart that much.

The Good: I really don't even know where to begin here, because it was ALL great - Cronin really earns the title of master storyteller with this novel. It has been two years since I read "The Passage," and many of the story arcs for that novel were so complex that I thought for sure I would have to go back and read the first book before I could start the second; I'm pleased to say this was not the case, and Cronin did a fantastic job of back-tracking, tying in, and explaining relationships and occurrences from the previous novel in such a way that, while there were still things I'd forgotten, they were proven to be inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. Characters who appeared mysteriously in the last book are explained in detail in this one, and incidents that were briefly mentioned in "The Passage" are covered here, as well. The story is, as I've said, absolutely fantastic, but what really captured me with "The Twelve" is Cronin's writing style. Action scenes are condensed to blurs and snippets, frantic snapshots of each moment, like bursts of pure adrenaline splattered across the page. At no point did I feel as if I was "just" reading a book; from the moment I began each session until the moment I set the Kindle down, I was THERE: I ran for the buses, I felt the heat from the explosions, I mourned the lost, I celebrated the victories, and I feared the sunset.

I really have to give him credit for his understanding of the human psyche, as well. So many books seem to cling to the idea that humans will retain their humanity at all costs, that we all have some secret hero nestled deep within us that is just waiting for the chance to prove itself, despite the wreckage we can see in our own history and on the news every day. In "The Twelve," we are given a realistic vision of what happens when panic sets in: in the end, we are all animals, driven down to our basic need to survive, no matter what the cost, no matter who we must sell out or sacrifice, and there are only those blessed few who really have the courage and heart to be truly selfless - and we see why, what drives them, and that even these heroic few are not without fault: often it is a moment of cowardice in their own pasts that has haunted them, their own guilt or feeling of failure or regret that forces them to push ahead when the rest of us collapse to our knees and beg for mercy. And Cronin essentially says here, "That's okay. It's okay to be so terrified that you silently watch another stand up and repeatedly be beaten down. We all do it. Just recognize your own weakness and remember to say 'thank you' when it's over; never forget this moment, and you will be the one who stands up next time."

The idea of evil is also touched upon quite extensively, and it's another reason I really loved this novel. In "The Passage," the vampires are distant creatures, evil things that we easily forget were ever human and can categorize as Something Other Than Us. In "The Twelve," we meet people who, at first glance, are amusing and, at times, even noble and merciful; but when it all goes to hell, they begin a self-serving descent into what we, the outsider, can easily say is pure madness; Cronin could, as is often done, simply leave it at that: the wicked were weak, and they gave way to their own greed or purposes. Instead, however, he delves a little further, giving even the most monstrous some sense of duty and honor, no matter how twisted it may seem in the end: the wicked never set out to be so, they often, in fact, believe they are serving the greater good, and that, in the end, future generations will realize this. It is only when absolute power becomes the goal that corruption truly sets in, but even then, they realize that they have gone too far to successfully turn back.

The Bad: I think I have to wait another two years for the final book in this trilogy. This fact stresses me out almost as much as every single moment in this novel. (less)

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Oct 23, 2012 Dann rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

There are few books that I have awaited as eagerly as The Twelve. I was blown away by The Passage (see my review here to find out exactly what I thought out of) and I had really, really high hopes for the follow-up. I was not disappointed.

Justin Cronin has managed to put almost as much of everything that I loved about The Passage into The Twelve as was the first novel in the trilogy, which is something that surprised me, as this is a shorter book by a couple hundred pages. What really struck me...more

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Jan 16, 2013 Rachel rated it 4 of 5 stars

I absolutely loved the first book and was so excited to start reading this one. Like the first, it is really well-written and a super engaging story. This one took me a little longer to get into, however. The first one ends very dramatically, but this one starts so slowly. The favorite main characters of the first story (Peter, Amy, Alicia) don't even appear until at least a third of the way through the book! Additional characters from the first book that you might be worrying about are not ment...more

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Oct 17, 2012 Step rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

After waiting so, so long for this book, I know I'm going to have to come back to it. Perhaps the nature of the first appealed to me more, the solitude of the Colony, the placing of the pieces, but I felt The Twelve lost some of the rush of emotion that made me love the first book so much. It's The Empire Strikes back, our heroes separated for their own journeys, only to come together again in Cloud City, or you know, whatever. But when your favorite characters spend maybe five percent of the bo...more

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Dec 27, 2012 Marvin rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: horror

In my five-star review of The Passage, I commented that Cronin was one-thirds into writing a 21th century literary epic. Now it's two-thirds finished as The Twelve, the second installment of the author's Passage Trilogy, is as stellar a work as his first volume.

The Twelve goes back to the beginning of the apocalypse where we are introduced to new characters including a delusional female scientist and a janitor who is linked to the original viral carriers that make up what is known as The Twelve....more

3 likes · like · see review

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About Justin Cronin

Justin Cronin is an American novelist. Awards he's won for his fiction include the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Stephen Crane Prize, and the Whiting Writer's Award.

Born and raised in New England, Cronin is a graduate of Harvard University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He currently lives with his wife and children in Houston, Texas where he is Professor of English at Rice University.

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“Because that's what heaven is...it's opening the door of a house in twilight and everyone you love is there.” — 13 people liked it

“As long as we remember a person, they're not really gone. Their thoughts, their feelings, their memories, they become a part of us.” — 11 people liked it

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The Twelve (The Passage #2)

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