The Twelve by Justin Cronin

The Twelve is the second book in the planned trilogy of Justin Cronin's apocalyptic series of books. Following up on the huge success of The Passage this book introduces us to more of the backstory of the outbreak of the plague itself, shows us survivors in a Texas Republic in a time prior to the survivors we met in the original book, and most of all of a period of time five years hence from The Twelve.

The survivors of the Colony are featured strongly in this book. Peter Jaxson, Hollis, Sara, Alicia, and of course Amy, the one girl to save them all. This book is not perfect. In this book we learn of " the familiars" who act as guardians to the members of the twelve. Two books in I am still a little foggy on the relationship between the workers recruited to care for the twelve in the lab prior to the outbreak and the twelve themselves.

Another concern could be the incredibly likable characters we meet in the section of the book that introduces us to a few survivors in post breakout Denver. Danny, an autistic school bus driver becomes an out of the box hero. Knowing Cronin's habit of zooming in and out on various characters and places in time we might well see them again in Book three to see how Danny's heroism turned out. This could be another story inside the later story of the final conflict between the Virals and the Survivors that we anticipate seeing in the next book. Much has been written about the similarities of this series and Stephen King's The Stand and in this, the Danny section, the similarity is most easy to see. M-o-o-n spells Tom Cullen, but it could easily spell Danny the Bus Driver as well. No matter I guess in apocalyptic scenarios there are only so many.

The book is well told, once we get to the last 400 page section on the conflict between a tyrannical society in Iowa and the Texas group which has taken in our survivors from Book one. Amy, the girl who was to be part of the twelve, still surivives, well over a one hundred years old but still looking like a teenager but Amy knows her time is coming, a change is coming, one she will not be able to turn away from.

I do not want to give away too much. After reading this book I feel a little silly, like a book snob that has read comic books in secret, but one cannot deny that what Cronin does he does very well.

If you are looking for some escapist reading and a bit of a different take on our vampire, zombie fascination of late this book series is a good place to start.