Review: The Twelve

Price: £ 14.99

Publisher: Orion

First off a MASSIVE THANK YOU to the young lady who gave me this book! You know who you are and I bloody love you!!!!

Now, I read The Passage last year. I picked it up at Foyles in St. Pancreas. The reason for this was: Whilst on the train from Farnham to London to a conference someone threw themselves in front of the train I was on. Bizarrely aptly I had Double Indemnity with me for the journey. We were waiting for 3 hours for things to be sorted so I obviously finished this short book. I then needed a new book so bought The Passage after the conference as I'd heard it was about vampires and the picture of the girl on the cover creeped me out. If you didn't know I BLOODY LOVED THE PASSAGE!!!! IT WAS AMAZING!

Now on to THE TWELVE!! I BLOODY LOVED IT TOO! Justin Cronin, I salute you and want you to write books forever and ever and ever and ever and ever. You produce the right type of novels for me! SPOT ON!

If you think you will not remember what happened last time, like me, don't! There is a bit of a Genesis (Bible not band) recap at the beginning and then the first section runs in parallel to the beginning of Amy's journey with Wolgast and beyond in TP. The feeling of having to go going back in order to go forward was cool. It also answered some of the questions I had at the end/during TP. You quickly remember all that happened in the last one and there is no need to panic. If you are thinking of reading TT without having read TP, I wouldn't recommend that. You'll miss out on a lot of back story and integral information. You may also miss out on some of the depth of understanding in the story. 

In this brilliant first section I fell in love with two characters and I am not ashamed to admit it. Mrs Bellamy ruled! If I am ever old and in an apocalypse I want to be like her! Damn it, I want to be like her if I experience one at my current age! I also fell in love with Kittridge. It took me a little longer but it did happen. He rules! OOO, another bit that made me feel ok about living in a post apocalypse world was the stuff related to oil refining, I now feel confident that I could help and have a function as I work on a oil and gas mag and whilst I've never put my knowledge to the test, I do know some things which will hopefully be deemed helpful! WOOO! Actually I'll keep for a second with falling in love with characters....some of the characters from TP return however, my love allegiances have altered hugely!

The whole novel still kept posing the question I had in TP, where the hell is the rest of the world and why are they not trying to help or making any communication whatsoever with any of the survivors?! I hope at some point this all comes to light.

The narrative jumps about a fair bit between characters and even time periods. This wasn't at all confusing and kept the entire thing neck breakingly gripping! The whole thing was incredibly fast paced because you were never in the same place for long. There were a lot of twists and turns and SHOCKS but at the same time suspicions were confirmed and questions were answered. What more could you want??? The majority of the action happens in the last 3rd of the book and there is a lot of set up preamble in the first 2/3rds however, they are by no means less fantastic to read! 

There is one warning I will make. There is a hell of a lot of violence and quite shocking violence compared to TP. It was pretty upsetting and shocking in some instances, however, it doesn't seem unnecessary to the story of TT.

OOOO...The Texas stuff really creeped me out as I know Texas pretty well. I'm sure Texans who read this book...and well people from other places in the US will be creeped out! *shudder*

The ending left many many questions in my mind. It is obvious that there will be another part...WOOO!!! It had better answer some questions though...I now have lots of questions...even more questions.

READ THIS BOOK NOW!! BUT READ TP FIRST!!!!!

Happy reading

Book Geek

:-)