All good things must come to an end, even the vampire apocalypse.

All good things must come to an end, even vampire apocalypses. And in the final book of his horror trilogy, titled THE CITY OF MIRRORS, Justin Cronin wraps up the epic story he began with THE PASSAGE, and then continued with in THE TWELVE. Clocking in at just under 600 pages, this volume is just as stuffed with character and action, time jumps and narrative skips, as the other two books. As I stated in my review of THE TWELVE, I am a big fan of end of the civilization stories, and scifi/horror/fantasy epics that come in big thick narratives, and take the reader on a long and convoluted journey, ending in what is hopefully, a satisfying payoff for all that time commitment. Cronin writes excellent prose, has a good eye for detail, and knows how to build tension, deliver a scare, and write an explosive action scene. The man is a consummate storyteller.

As in the other books, THE CITY OF MIRRORS doesn’t follow a linier narrative. It picks up with some characters right after the climatic events of THE TWELVE, which was set a century after the viral plague that destroyed civilization, then does a long flashback to before the plague to tell the story of Zero, the first infected from whom all the death and destruction flowed forth. The book begins and ends with sections set a thousand years in future, where we learn the final fate of a pertinent character. The last section is told in the present tense, which might be jarring to some, but I think that is because a character is talking directly to the reader, though it is never so stated. The main part of THE CITY OF MIRRORS tells what happens after the destruction of The Twelve has freed humanity from the Virals, infected humans who were transformed into relentless blood drinking killing machines. Years pass and the surviving humans in North America get on with their lives. These survivors let their guard down, begin building communities again out in the open, and embrace what they think is a hopeful future. But Zero is biding his time in the ruins of New York City, playing the long game, and determined to wipe the remaining humans from the face of the earth. When he springs his final trap, it is a free for all for survival, with the only hope being the last working ship afloat in the harbor in Houston. Texas. But Amy, a young girl, who like Zero, was also deliberately infected with the virus, and who has not become a monster like the others, heads for NYC with a few other humans for a final showdown. Characters we come to be invested in, like Peter Jaxon, Michael Fisher, Lucius Greer, Sara and Hollis Wilson, Anthony Carter, Alicia Donadio, Caleb Jaxon and Pim, his wife, along with many others, meet their fates; some of which are not happy ones, but most of which feel earned.

Cronin switches narrative gears more than once in this story, never more so than when he tells the story of Zero, who starts out as a young man named Tim Fanning from Ohio, who goes to college in New York, leads a self centered life, but does fall deeply in love with a woman married to his best friend. It’s a love story which does not end well, and the scars and bad judgments in its wake lead to disaster. As some have noted, this section reads almost like a John Updike story, but what Cronin is doing is humanizing his Big Bad, telling us that civilization was destroyed and the human species driven to near extinction because of one man’s fallible nature. It is what Cronin does with most of his characters, even ones like Amy and Alicia, who might have come off as tropes, instead portraying them as deeply human. I think it is what puts his novels far above the usual horror fare. Cronin does a very good job of telling an epic story by always focusing on his group of characters, while the devastation of the wider world is glimpsed enough so that we know what happens elsewhere. The escape from Texas is as terrifying and suspenseful as anything found in a great horror novel, and it is only topped by the final apocalypse in New York when Zero is at last confronted.

In the end, I must say that THE CITY OF MIRRORS is a horror story that stays with you. The compassion Cronin has for his creations, even the Virals, monsters with their human souls trapped within, raises his work to another level. In this third book, he sticks the landing, and brings it all home with a satisfying conclusion that will have more than one reader wiping away a tear at the end of the final page.

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