The Twelve

The Twelve by Justin Cronin
Read:  2013

This is the second in a trilogy. The first book, The Passage took the literary community by storm. It was the anti-vampire, vampire book.   I enjoyed The Passage and looked forward to seeing where Cronin would go with the next part of the tale.  The Passage was a huge undertaking and a story that spanned many generations. If you haven't read it, I don't know how to bring you up to speed for The Twelve, and I hope you aren't too lost here.

We left off with our group of young people being lead by Amy,   a seemingly eternal child, heading off from the site of the original experiment in Colorado in search of the original twelve test subjects to kill them and release all of their minion-y kind of people from their current state.  They split up and go their separate ways.  Some wind up in settlements and others in the military, but they are all doing their part in this harsh new world.  

The Twelve have been in hiding for years without anyone hearing much from or about them.  But strange things begin happening.  Virals are coming out in the daylight and taking groups of primarily women and children from the settlements. They catch on to the supply of fuel being moved and attack the shipment, causing all of the fuel to be lost. And, strangest of all, some of the original twelve seem to be missing.  

This book is nearly impossible for me to review. We're talking about  a bleak, bleak world these people live in. I have a million questions about what all of this means and why it is all happening.  I guess the way the books are set up, with the characters all having so little information about what happened and where they come from, a reader shouldn't expect more enlightenment. I will definitely be reading the last book in the trilogy. Maybe I'll be gracious enough to avoid trying to describe it for you.