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Survivors of a government-induced apocalypse endure their violent and disease-stricken world while protecting their loved ones; while a century into the future, members of a transformed society determinedly search for the original twelve virals.

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183 reviews
Cut my finger cooking so typing is a pain and then a vampire came and sucked all the blood out of me and transformed me into a primal, bloodthirsty beast haunting a post-apocalyptic nightmare landscape, in the thrall of one of twelve death-row inmates, telepathic monsters-in-chief of the twelve tribes of nosferati, so not only was dinner a bit late, but I'm not up to writing a long review because my finger hurts and savage bloodlust is crowding out my critical faculties. It's a big, meaty, dripping, throbbing, nyum nyum sequel to The Passage, notable for being written with a rare literary focus on style and character though not without neglecting the horror and the action. A bit too long maybe but I enjoyed it all. Now excuse me. Nom show more nom nom. show less
Justin Cronin’s [The Twelve] picks up the apocalyptic and dystopian story he began with [The Passage]. Some 100 years after the destruction of most of civilization at the hands of a race of beastly vampires, several bands of humans try to rebuild. At the center of the story is one particular group from an outpost in California and a young girl who has been infected with the same virus that created the vampire plague.

It’s difficult to distill the story Cronin tells with [The Twelve], just as it was with the first book in the series. The sheer depth and breadth of the story is measure. Cronin adroitly shifts back and forth in time, picking up loose threads from the original story and weaving them into the story as it has grown with show more time. We find the backstory of a new band of survivors from Kerrville, TX, and how they fit into the new events surrounding Amy and Peter. We learn more about the history of the original twelve vampires. And we learn how the twelve have found a way to begin to organize and harvest the blood they need to survive without extinction. But the thrust of the story is the coming war between the vampires and the survivors.

The fact that the story is hard to distill reflect the principal strengths of Cronin’s storytelling. First, the story is humungous – epic is such a trite word, and humungous is really more fitting. Second, with such a large story, in time and space and character, it would be easy to lose track of some of the threads. But Cronin’s narrative never loses focus and his characters are never empty or inconsistent. Finally, the space such a big novel creates leaves a lot of room for Cronin to show off his prose. Such a big space might prove too big to fill, but Cronin takes his time and each line, each paragraph, each chapter hits just the right note. I never got tired or impatient with the story or with Cronin. The book is a great object lesson for writers in taking your time and letting your voice find its own pace.

Bottom Line: Humungous story but one that never gets lost, hitting just the right note.

4 ½ bones!!!!!
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½
Taking place five years after the final scene in The Passage, The Twelve continues Justin Cronin’s saga in true genre-busting fashion. Amy and her friends have scattered across the Texas territory, finding their niche in the rugged community that continues to thrive. After five years of fighting the Virals, everyone is just a little more exhausted and less optimistic as to their long-term survival. This sense of dogged determination sets the tone for the rest of the novel as the good guys and the bad ones learn that they are just pawns in the grand design of The Twelve.

Like every sequel ever written, there is a manipulative feel to the story, as Mr. Cronin has to get his plot and his characters to where it and they need to be before show more the opening act of the final novel. In working to achieve this goal, he makes the world of The Twelve more identifiable and therefore more familiar. We get better glimpses of cities long destroyed, of entire infrastructures that were allowed to sink back to their natural state. We also see how creatively the survivors used this infrastructure to not just live but to thrive. Plus, thanks to the introduction of new characters, we get a better feel for those final days in the U.S., before the Virals had free reign of the country. In this way, The Twelve provides useful information for placing you inside this lost world.

I personally feel The Twelve is better than The Passage. I appreciate the characters and the world-building more than I did in the first novel. The action is more cerebral, as is the enemy. With the first novel, I felt like I was hanging on to a roller coaster without a seat restraint. The sequel makes me feel like I do when I sit down each month to close the books and publish financial reports – everything is familiar which allows me to concentrate on the details, and the details are where the heartbeat of the story reside. Plus, because it is a slower-paced story, Mr. Cronin’s writing ability truly shines. His post-apocalyptic world is fully imagined, and you can miss these gems if you are rushing from one catastrophe to another, as we did in the first novel.

The Twelve may not be as exciting as the first book in the series, but do not count out its importance. There is no doubt that Cronin places a plethora of key information within its self-contained story line that will prove vital for the finale. Everything about The Twelve is getting readers and characters alike ready for the finale. Thankfully, we do not have to wait much longer to find out what happens.
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“The Twelve” is the second book of The Passage trilogy by Justin Cronin. When a military experiment involving the creation of vampire-like creatures goes horribly wrong, the world as we know it disintegrates into a catastrophe of epic proportions. Cronin blends excellent character development with a plot that has plenty of twists and turns to keep you wondering whether the trilogy is about the role of government and its military, religion or the courage of humans who find themselves in crazy situations. I really have no idea except that I’m fascinated with the characters and I just can’t stop reading.

It’s certainly a vampire story and some readers may be disappointed when there isn’t a character like Edward Cullen from the show more Twilight Saga to swoon over. I recommended the first book, “The Passage,” to my brother because I thought he would like it. But when he heard that it was partly about vampires, he said, “No, I don’t read vampire stories.” True, I don’t see him debating whether he’s on Team Edward or Team Jacob, but the point he’s missing is that not all vampire stories are romance novels. show less
This was a terrific read, if you like scary-as-hell, on-the-edge-of-your-seat, big-ass vampire books. And I do. Dare I say that it was even better than its predecessor, The Passage? At the very least, they were comparable, and I find that rare in a series.

I enjoyed going back to the beginning and revisiting the collapse from some different points of view, before jumping forward 100 years in time to rejoin some of the characters from the previous book. But before that was a harrowing scene in a section called “The Field” that has been giving me the willies ever since. Yes, this is the right book to read at Halloween.

Justin Cronin was a writer of small, award-winning literary novels before he started on this blockbuster, and he show more really has a way with character, which is what makes these books so engrossing. I think it’s terrific when gifted writers turn their talents to big, sprawling, fantastic (in the sense of not being reality-based) stories. Certainly, Cronin owes a lot to Stephen King (and The Stand is still showing its influence), so King lovers will probably also dig this series. show less
THE TWELVE is the second book in Justin Cronin’s vampire apocalypse trilogy that started with THE PASSAGE. I am a sucker for a good end of civilization epic; one of my favorite books of all time is Stephen King’s THE STAND, which Cronin’s books are compared to in nearly every review. I would also add Robert Kirkman’s zombie apocalypse comic, THE WALKING DEAD, for another work similar to what Cronin has achieved, though in the latter work, the zombies serve no higher authority, unlike Cronin’s malevolent Virals – infected people transformed into undying blood drinking killing machines. If you like big sprawling narratives, and I do, then both THE PASSAGE and THE TWELVE are most definitely your cup of tea, if like your show more vampires to wear capes and seduce unwary maidens, or sparkle in the sun (God forbid), then you should give these books a pass.

The first novel told the story of a government experiment in Colorado gone wrong, where a dozen death row inmates were injected with a newly discovered tropical virus, which had the potential to be “the cure for everything.” What it created were a crew of super vampires; all of whom escaped into the outside world and began infecting the general population. Within the span of a summer, all of North America is overrun with only a few scattered pockets of human survivors left. There is a time jump of about ninety years, and we meet a new generation of survivors who have grown up in a secluded colony in California, who now venture out into the wider world, into a country ruled by The Twelve, and their mindless Viral minions. They find and confront one these monsters, killing him, and proving that humanity still has a chance. The character of Amy, a young girl infected with the virus by Project Noah, appears in both narratives. Amy did not become a Viral (perhaps because of her youth), nor does she age or die.

Cronin’s second book does not have a straight linear story, there is another time jump, this one back to the midst of the vampire apocalypse, and tells the story of some secondary characters from the first book, then jumps forward again about seventy years, and introduces us to a community of survivors in Texas, before jumping ahead again to five years after the events at the end of THE PASSAGE. All of these story lines come together, in a fashion, by the final act, but it can feel like something of a meander getting there. Cronin’s prose is thick and deep, filled with much description, although he is not particularly detailed when it come to the appearance of his Virals, wisely dropping a few hints and adjectives, and leaving the rest to the reader’s imagination. For me and for most readers, if the reviews are any guide, the section set in Year Zero is our favorite. There is a palpable sense of menace, and there are characters, such as Kittridge (“Last Stand in Denver”), teenage April, and school bus driver, Danny Chayes, whom we like and become invested in their fates. We also meet Lila Kyle, the ex-wife of Brad Wolgast, who is pregnant and suffering from PTSD; Horace Guilder, the head of the Special Weapons unit that oversaw Project Noah, and pick up with Lawrence Grey, a janitor at Project Noah from the first book, who played a pivotal role in what went down there. This part of the book is a true page turner, as these characters and others, must grapple with a civilization that has vanished, and a world filled with night monsters that have taken its place. Seeds of plot are planted that will flower later in the book. The mid section, set in a farming community in Texas, feels like a real shift in gears, some new characters come into the story, and tensions are revealed before the Virals make their appearance. In the last half of the book, the action is split between Texas, where we met up with some more characters from the first book: Peter, Michael, Alicia, Hollis, and Amy; and the Homeland in Iowa, a dystopia ruled over by “red eyes,” humans who regularly drink blood from the deliberately infected Lawrence Grey, and have prolonged their lives for nearly a century. All of these characters come together in the climatic chapters, when THE TWELVE, now fearsome creatures of the night, arrive in Iowa, and where the human survivors attempt to kill them all.

I will be the first to say that this book, along with the earlier one, is overwritten, that the story so far could easily be pared down to a single volume, but I am one of those, and there are many of us, who enjoy big, overstuffed epic fantasy/scifi/horror narratives. What others see as flaws, we see as virtues. I don’t even mind some of the tropes Cronin resorts to, the biggest of which is Amy – the “child savior,” though to be fair, he does something with this character in THE TWELVE. Lila, in many ways, comes to resemble Drusilla from BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, though I admire the way Cronin ultimately makes us feel compassion for her and Grey. Sometimes Alicia too much resembles the typical bad ass female warrior that is a requirement for any apocalypse story, while a loathsome character like Guilder is given a moment of poignancy. The parts of the story concerning the Homeland in Iowa seem to have something to say about the lengths to which humans will go to survive, although some will see it as a political allegory about a literal blood drinking ruling class living off workers reduced to slavery. All of this stuff we have seen before, but it is done well here. My main complaint is that we see so little of THE TWELVE themselves; we never get a true picture of who they are, and what their ultimate goal might be. The same goes for the Big Bad himself, Zero, the first infected, who stands behind them all, and only makes his appearances through telepathy.

There was a TV adaptation of THE PASSAGE on FOX, but it only covered the first book (with some changes to the story and characters), but it did not garner enough ratings to get a second season. Too bad, the show had promise; I would like to have seen what they would have done with the events of THE TWELVE. Anyway, I will definitely continue on to final book in Justin Cronin’s trilogy, CITY OF MIRRORS. It has a couple of tough acts to follow.
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Read from October 21 to 26, 2012

Read with caution, there are spoilers for both The Passage and The Twelve...

One thing I hate about sequels: they tend to rehash the previous book's events a little too often. Cronin doesn't do that. In fact, he does little of it, instead he manages to connect references to events happening off-screen in The Passage to new characters introduced in The Twelve . He also filled in a lot of gaps from The Passage...a few I didn't even realize were there.

When I finished The Passage I was shocked to learn that it would be a trilogy. I thought it told a complete story, what else did we need to learn? The world as we knew it had ended and everyone seemed to be dead or moving on. But I was still intrigued by The show more Twelve and enjoyed it A LOT despite what some critics say.

In The Twelve, Cronin takes us back to the beginning and we learn about events in the US (we still don't really know about the rest of the world) while Wolgast and Amy were in their secluded cabin. And while it was annoying while reading The Passage that suddenly it jumps 100 years, it makes sense now. He was telling Amy's story in the first book and here he's telling a different story: that of Lila, Grey, etc. Sure Amy's still here. She has to be, but at the same time, Cronin is continuing to build his world and it takes a lot of words to do it justice.

I appreciate that Cronin manages to tell a complete story in this book. He doesn't leave us with an annoying cliffhanger -- seems to be a trend in many trilogies these days -- the story that we begin in this one is also the story that is completed at the end. But the problem is that Cronin is a great storyteller at the beginning, but the ending always seems to happen a little too quick. It isn't quite as satisfying as one would like. I mean, ALL the action happens and then the story just kind of fades away.

Nevertheless, I really liked this book and can't wait to read the final installment. I wonder what unknown gaps in the story Cronin will manage to fill next time.
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½

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Author Information

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20 Works 18,954 Members
Justin Cronin is a graduate of the Iowa Writer's Workshop, and a professor of creative writing at La Salle University in Philadelphia. His work has appeared in many literary journals. (Publisher Provided) Justin Cronin was born and raised in New England. He is a graduate of Harvard University and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He has written several show more books including The Summer Guest, The Passage Trilogy, and Mary and O'Neil, which won the PEN/Hemingway Award and the Stephen Crane Prize. He taught creative writing and was the author in-residence at La Salle University from 1992 to 2005. He is currently a professor of English at Rice University. (Bowker Author Biography) show less

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Common Knowledge

Canonical title
The Twelve
Original title
The Twelve
Original publication date
2012-10-16
People/Characters
Tim Fanning aka "The Zero"; Giles Babcock; Joseph Morrison; Victor Chávez; John Baffes; Thaddeus Turrell (show all 71); David Winston; Rupert Sosa; Martin Echols; Horace Lambright; Julio Martinez; William Reinhardt; Anthony Carter; Bernard Kittridge; April; Timothy; Danny Chayes; Lila Kyle; Lawrence Grey; Horace Guilder; Major Frances Porcheki; Vera; Ignacio; Nelson; Shawna; Rita Chernow; Pastor Don; Wood; Delores; Jamal; Mrs. Bellamy; Joe Robinson; Linda Robinson; Boy Jr.; Curtis Vorhees; Delia "Dee" Vorhees; Boz Vorhees; Nitia "Nina" Vorhees; Siri Vorhees; Nathan Crukshank; Tifty Lamont; Amy Harper Bellafonte; Peter Jaxon; Alicia Donadio; Colonel Gunnar Apgar; Major Alexander Henneman; Lieutenant Satch Dodd; Lucius Greer; Hollis Wilson; Dunk Withers; Abram Fleet; Victoria Sanchez; Sister Peg; Sister Catherine; Caleb Jaxon; Michael Fisher; Lore DeVeer; Juan "Ceps" Sweeting; Ed Pope; Dan Karlovic; Jackie; Eustace; Vale; Whistler; Sod; Dr. Verlyn; Virkram Suresh; Jenny Apgar; Fred Wilkes; Aidan Hoppel; Sara Fisher
Important places
Denver, Colorado, USA; Kerrville, Texas, USA; Roswell, New Mexico, USA; Fort Powell, Iowa, USA; Freeport, Texas, USA; The Field (show all 7); The Homeland
Epigraph
She stood beside me for years, or was it a moment? I cannot remember. Maybe I loved her, maybe I didn’t. There was a house, and then no house. There were trees, but none remain. When no one remembers, what is there? You, wh... (show all)ose moments are gone, who drift like smoke in the afterlife, tell me something, tell me anything. - Mark Strand, "In the Afterlife"
Dedication
For Leslie, foot-to-foot
First words
For it came to pass that the world had grown wicked, and men had taken war into their hearts, and committed great defilements upon every living thing, so that the world was a dream of death;
Quotations
Watch the clock. Know the location of the nearest hardbox.  When in doubt, run.
Hence the major problem with immortality, apart from the peculiar diet: everything began to bore you.
Give people hope, and you could make them do just about anything. And not just your average, everyday kind of hope--for food or clothes or the absence of pain or good suburban schools or low down payments with easy financing.... (show all) What people needed was a hope beyond the visible world, the world of the body and its trials, of life's endless dull parade of things. A hope that all was not as it appeared.
They became their enemy, as all must do; they ceased to be slaves, and so became alive.
"Because that's what heaven is," said Amy. "It's opening the door of a house in twilight and everyone you love is there."
Last words
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)You bastard. Here I come.
Blurbers
King, Stephen
Canonical DDC/MDS
813.54
Canonical LCC
PS3553.R542
Disambiguation notice
This "Work" contains copies without enough information. The title might refer to a book by Justin Cronin, by William Gladstone, by Stuart Neville, or by Nick McDowell. This "Work" should not be combined with any of these. ... (show all)If you are an owner of one of these copies, please add information such as author name or ISBN that can help identify its rightful home. After editing your copy, it might still need further separation and recombination work. Feel free to ask in the Combiners! group if you have questions or need help. Thanks.

Classifications

Genres
Fiction and Literature, Horror, Science Fiction
DDC/MDS
813.54Literature & rhetoricAmerican literature in EnglishAmerican fiction in English1900-19991945-1999
LCC
PS3553 .R542Language and LiteratureAmerican literatureAmerican literatureIndividual authors1961-
BISAC

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Media
Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
ISBNs
52
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20