Book Review: City of Mirrors

Justin Cronin's final entry into his Passage trilogy, City of Mirrors (2016), spans nearly a thousand years, moving backwards and forwards through his viral infestation of North America (wherein Vampire-like creatures effectively wipe out the population of the continent), and brings a number of interesting new elements to his post-apocalyptic world.

Originally conceived as a challenge by his daughter to write a novel about "a girl who saves the world" the novel effectively wraps up the story of Amy Harper Belefonte, also known as Amy NLN and "The Girl from Nowhere" as well as the surviving characters from the previous novels. Without going into spoilers, I will say that I felt each of the characters where handled fairly and with the exception of one major plot hole, the story does a great job of showing the terror and beauty of a world devoid of us.

For me, the novel was surprisingly hopeful, leaving the series pretty high up in my list of favourite post-apocalyptic works, and although I complained of the pre-apocalypse flashbacks in the second book (The Twelve), I was expecting them here, and felt they worked for the overall story.

A great, if lengthy, read.

Book Review: The Twelve

Last month I re-read Justin Cronin's novel The Passage, which is both an apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic novel featuring an outbreak of vampire-like creatures which overrun North (and probably South) America killing virtually everyone who lives there and the girl who ends up saving the world.

I loved The Passage - it was great, the pacing was wonderful and I loved how the first third of the book happens before the end of the world as we know it.

The Twelve was an obvious read for me - loved the first book, excited for the next, and after reading it I can say it was a lot of fun, but it didn't really impress me as much as the first.  For starters rather than move the story forward from the end of the first book a massive amount of time is spent returning to the vampire apocalypse and re-telling it from the point of view of other survivors whose lives will (mild spoiler) have an affect on those of our main characters almost a century later.

Now, I don't mind backstory, but honestly, the thing I loved most about the original book was it's pacing and this just felt backwards to me.

In the end I enjoyed it, but wished the story has moved forward rather than back and forward as it did.

Genre Character of the Week: Brad Wolgast

Two years ago I read the Justin Cronin novel The Passage and loved it – the story of a world overrun by vampires was amazing and on a massive scale – the vampire world doesn’t even appear until page 260.  I loved how the story spent a lot of time developing all of its characters and eventually, I chose one of them, Peter Jaxan, as a genre character of the week.

Last week I picked The Passage back up and started re-reading it, as next month it’s sequel The Twelve is coming out and I wanted to brush up on the first story before I dug into the sequel – and along the way I found a character I liked even more than Peter (and I think he is a pretty great guy already).  Brad Wolgast, one of the men who is behind the end of the world, and perhaps one of the men behind it’s rebirth.

It’s tricky to describe what I like best about a character without going into spoilers, but I’ll try my best. Wolgast is a federal agent charged to collect volunteers for a secret government project.  He is recently divorced and carries a sadness with him wherever he goes – what I loved about this character (who largely exists well before page 240 in the book) is just how real he came across to me, a guy doing a job well, but not a job he particularly likes, just biding his time until retirement, and hoping each day will help him get over his failed marriage.

I know I’ve said this before, but honestly, my favourite part of any genre fiction is well-crafted characters, who come across as real people with hopes, dreams and fears.

If you haven’t read the book yet, it is definitely worth the time, although I’ll warn you it’s pretty big, and if you’re anything like me you’ll want to follow it up with the sequel as soon as possible.

Things I've noticed: I'm getting behind on my reading

As I’ve said elsewhere, I’m pretty regular in terms of what I read; I like to visit my favourite genres, current author, my two book club selections as well as whatever other book tickles my fancy in any given month.

Right now (20 days into the month) my list looks like this (let's focus on September):

Which shows I’ve still got a book dating back in July (and it’s not even mine, I’ve borrowed it from a friend), two from August (Luckily I own both of these) and six remaining from this Month.

Lets break it down shall we?

Science Fiction: This month I’m planning the read Agent to the Stars, by John Scalzi – I loved Old Man’s War a few months back and this was the next one published.

Horror: I had originally written The Flesh Eaters, as it is the 2011 winner of the Bram Stoker Award for best novel, but it is actually the third in a series, starting with Dead City, by Joe McKinney, so there you go.

Fantasy: The Long Earth, by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter.  Completed, blogged about it here.

Book Club 1: Ubik, by Phillip K. Dick.  Completed, actually it was a re-read from an earlier Phillip K. Dick read through I did in the mid-90’s.

Book Club 2: The Passage, by Justin Cronin.  Currently Reading – actually re-reading, but am quite excited as it’s sequel The Twelve is coming out next month.

Matheson: …Now You See It.  Won’t be touching this one until I finish his previous book, Shadow on the Sun, which was my Matheson book from August.

Me: Die Trying, by Lee Child.  Completed – after reading Killing Floor for one of my book clubs last month I just had to continue on with the series.

Classics: The Plays of Aeschylus, which I’m not going to be starting for at least a few more months as I’m still working on the previous book in my Classics list, The Old Testament (I’m currently up to Proverbs), but haven’t touched it since I started my new job.

So there you go, I attempt to read eight books a month and if I have time left over I hit my backlog of comics and magazines (which I haven’t looked at since May).

Thank goodness there haven’t been any Saw novelizations as I think October is going to be crazy busy as it is (8 movies, including the original short, a comic book, and two PS3 games).