Some Thoughts on The Twelve, by Justin Cronin
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The Twelve (Book Two of The Passage Trilogy): A Novel by Justin Cronin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Oh, Lord.
In many ways, this book was painful to read. Remove the constraints of a civil society, checks, balances, morality, and substitute power and madness. Power without limits, power that feeds on the weak, and the weak are expendable. Indeed, "the rules have changed. The enemy has evolved into a dark new order with a vision of the future far more horrifying than humanity's extinction" (back cover).
We've seen this before: the Nazis are a ready example and the Holocaust. The Holocaust here is the virus that ravaged North American in The Passage, producing the Twelve, the virals, and brutality and pain and loss. The apocalypse, a man-made one in secret government labs, has come. Chaos comes after.
But, as Cronin does so well, when we are at our worst, we are often at our best. 100 years have passed. Ordinary people have to confront and survive extraordinary times, and endure, and indeed prevail against seemingly unrelenting evil. Peter Jaxon, Michael, Sarah, Hollis, Alicia, and Amy. Lila and Grey and ...
Yes, there are a lot of characters here, several, the survivors of the Colony and others from the government lab, we met in The Passage. Back story and what seems to a lot of threads, but Cronin does bring them all together, the connections.
Amy, a viral and yet not one, larger than life, 98 years old, and an adolescent girl becoming a woman in her body.... who, I think, will ultimately save humankind.
I am not telling this well, nor am I doing a good job of an overview of what is a complex plot. The promise of The Passage is kept here.
View all my reviews
The Twelve (Book Two of The Passage Trilogy): A Novel by Justin CroninMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Oh, Lord.
In many ways, this book was painful to read. Remove the constraints of a civil society, checks, balances, morality, and substitute power and madness. Power without limits, power that feeds on the weak, and the weak are expendable. Indeed, "the rules have changed. The enemy has evolved into a dark new order with a vision of the future far more horrifying than humanity's extinction" (back cover).
We've seen this before: the Nazis are a ready example and the Holocaust. The Holocaust here is the virus that ravaged North American in The Passage, producing the Twelve, the virals, and brutality and pain and loss. The apocalypse, a man-made one in secret government labs, has come. Chaos comes after.
But, as Cronin does so well, when we are at our worst, we are often at our best. 100 years have passed. Ordinary people have to confront and survive extraordinary times, and endure, and indeed prevail against seemingly unrelenting evil. Peter Jaxon, Michael, Sarah, Hollis, Alicia, and Amy. Lila and Grey and ...
Yes, there are a lot of characters here, several, the survivors of the Colony and others from the government lab, we met in The Passage. Back story and what seems to a lot of threads, but Cronin does bring them all together, the connections.
Amy, a viral and yet not one, larger than life, 98 years old, and an adolescent girl becoming a woman in her body.... who, I think, will ultimately save humankind.
I am not telling this well, nor am I doing a good job of an overview of what is a complex plot. The promise of The Passage is kept here.
View all my reviews
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