Book: The Twelve

 Book: The Twelve

Author: Justin Cronin

Pages: 608

This is my 40th read for the year

This is the second book in the Passage Trilogy.  The story opens in the past when the infection was just starting to spread.  Lila, a doctor, has seen something horrible at the hospital and now has locked herself in her house, refusing to believe what is happening outside her walls and going about her life as nothing has changed.  As other survivors find each other and start to trek to safety, they all hope that whatever is happening is over quick.

Years in the future (and 5 years after the timeline of book one), we meet our crew from the first group struggling to hold things together.  Amy is on her own mission.  The crew are mourning the loss of some of their own. Amy is changing, even though at 103 years old and one of the original 12, she shouldn't be.  She has powers that come in handy.  The other virals are discovering that they can die if they cannot feed, an so the original 12 make a plan for world domination and control their numbers.  Meanwhile the insurgents have infiltrated a prison that has been built by the 12 and have plans to pic them off one by one.

This was a great book. I think I liked it even better than the first.  I really liked that Cronin backtracked in the beginning of this book to the beginning of the infection and told the story from other points of view.  I like how he used that as kind of a "recap" but also a prelude of what was to come with some of those characters in the "here and now" of the characters we became aquainted with in book one.  He is a superb writer.  This is a slow burning story, but like The Stand it has the perfect pace.  He doesn't have a ton of characters so we get in be heavily involved in their lives in these books which makes it wonderful.

Great series.  Cannot wait to read the third and see how he finishes the story.

Stars: 5