With the release of book three, The City
of Mirrors, I figured it was time to go back to the beginning of the story and remind myself what I'd forgotten.
It begins in the world we all recognise.
There are cars and shops and people going about their daily business, there's
Amy, a girl of six, who spends her nights sleeping in motel bathtubs whilst her
mother earns what she can; there's Carter, a death-row prisoner, and there's
agent Wolgast, FBI, who's been collecting death-row prisoners for
experimentation, Carter being his twelfth.
The
beginning of this book is excellent. I like the contrast between the calm
peaceful life of the nuns who look after Amy, against the pain, death and
horror of The Twelve, incarcerated deep underground. I
like the back story of the tourists in the jungle, the spookiness of the day
Amy goes to the Zoo, how Wolgast's actions turn him into a criminal. I love the
pandemonium when The Twelve escape and infect the world, and the isolation that
follows Wolgast and Amy as they flee to the mountains.
Then, nearly a hundred years later, a
small colony, humans living behind high walls, but the batteries that keep the
lights on, the lights that keep the virals (blood thirsty vampire like
creatures) away, are failing. They have a year, two at most. Something has to
be done.
When
some of the inhabitants go mad and let the virals in, a small group make a run
for it; grabbing what weapons they can. They hole up in a fortified garage,
find an underground bunker chock full of weapons, get rescued from an ambush in
Las Vegas (which is a superb scene) and get taken to an ex-prison colony (The Haven) which is super strange because there are no virals there!
The human sacrifices that keep Babcock (one
of The Twelve) and his hordes away, is soon revealed, and is followed by an
epic chase across mile upon mile of open countryside on a fortified train, and it's
the juxtaposition between heart in the mouth all hell is breaking lose, shit we've
just lost another main character and the peaceful backdrop of snow covers
mountains, where Theo and Maus have their baby and Peter and Amy find Sister
Lacey with eleven vials of anti-virus, that makes this book so riveting.
There is so much going on here, that you might think you'd get lost, but with such diverse characters
and such superb writing, you don’t, it just all makes sense. Coupled with a
convincing setting, both in the present, past and possible future (the University of New South Wales are still reading from Sara's diary in the
year 1003 AV [after virus]) I'm betting you’ll jump straight into book two, The Twelve, as soon as you’ve turned the last page.
An easy and highly recommended five star read.
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