The City of Mirrors, book review. (Justin Cronin)

How do you review the third book in the trilogy of what is one of the greatest stories ever told? With great difficulty!
It is six months since Homeland was liberated and The Twelve destroyed (Carter being the only survivor). Amy - the new Amy - lives with him in the hull of a long forgotten ship and Alicia is pregnant, but her baby won't survive.
Twenty years on and the people have left the old fortress city and repopulated the surrounding areas. Farms have popped up, townships are thriving, life is far from back to before virus but the threat has gone - or so they think.
ZERO. Fanning. The first to be infected in the jungle and brought back to Greer's lab and tested, mutated, angry. For the last hundred years he has waited at Grand Central station for the return of his beloved Liz who, we discover by flashback, died way before the virus hit.
ZERO. Ready to finish what The Twelve could not. The extinction of the human race.
The build-up in this book is excellent, the flashbacks informative, (albeit a tad too long), but then we're back in the year 122 A.V (after virus) and Zero's army is coming, forged from the unfortunate people who moved to the outlining townships. Michael (Circuit) has spent the last twenty years rebuilding a ship he’s hoping to escape on, but will it be ready? The virals are massing, the gates to the Homestead are closed once again, Carter has woken and Amy walks amongst the people once more, but then . . . all hell lets loose.
The ground rumbles, the virals break through and panic ensues, and it is here, as the narrative flicks from one character's peril to another, that the book takes off, and as the pages pass in a blur, the tension builds, characters we have known since the beginning fall, Carter's army clashes with Zero's, Amy tries to save Alicia, and the rest of the human race fight their way to Michael's ship, that you realise that this story really is one of the very best you've ever read.
With only a few hundred souls on board the ship sets sail and Amy, Peter, Michael and Alicia take their leave, going in search of Zero, and compared to the frenzied battle that raged in Texas, New York is spookily quiet, but not for long.
So, a big fat five stars for the conclusion of this epic trilogy then? Er, no, not quite.
The ending, the very ending, was completely unnecessary. I won't give anything away here but having such a climatic conclusion and then continuing was never really going to work, so if you do read these books, and I thoroughly recommend that you do, skip the epilogue on this one and you'll be more than satisfied.
Four and a half stars then for, The City of Mirrors, but The Passage got five and that is all you really need to know to start reading.

The Passage, book review. (Justin Cronin)

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.