<\/p>\n
SPOILER ALERT: The City of Mirrors<\/em> is the final installment of a trilogy; if you haven\u2019t read the first two books in the series then proceed at your own risk.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201c\u2026a beginning and an ending joined\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n It is eight months after the liberation of the Homeland: Amy, the Girl from Nowhere, is presumed dead; Alicia has gone missing to parts, and for reasons, unknown; Michael is a recluse in his boat on the Gulf of Mexico; and Peter has gone to Kerrville, Texas, with Caleb. Billions are dead; global civilization is destroyed. No one has spotted an Easter Virus\u2013spawned viral for three years\u2014the war is over.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The few survivors turn to rebuilding and dare to hope, but all is not as it seems. Lucius the mystic lives in a shack alone, outside of Kerrville, seeing his visions, drawing what he sees, and collecting blood\u2014he is preparing. Not long after Michael unexpectedly arrives at Lucius\u2019s shack with a plan to save what\u2019s left of humanity, animals\u2014and then people\u2014begin to go missing. Zero (think \u201cPatient Zero\u201d), the father of The Twelve, lives still and commands his Many, and his hatred will not rest.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The City of Mirrors<\/em> is the final installment in Justin Cronin\u2019s The Passage Trilogy. Fans have waited for more than three years to discover the fate of these beloved characters, and Cronin does not disappoint. Apocalypse threatens a dystopia sparsely populated by prophets and false prophets, seers and lunatics, sages and fools; and the messiah is called upon once again to save the survivors.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Cronin\u2019s story is biblical, mythical, legend; heavily messianic, full of portents and resurrections, both bodily and societal. The plot is intricate, the vision full. The pace is steady until approximately halfway through and then picks up, tension building as the players take their places for the final showdown. The narrative moves back and forth through time and space, employing parallel realities and multiple points of view, shifting from third person to first and back. It is a challenge and too long, but the conclusion is thrilling.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Much is explained as all of the loose threads are braided. Zero\u2019s motivation for global destruction is a disappointment, but then he is supposed to be a monster of selfishness, the Joker as dystopian vampire with shades of Ann Rice\u2019s Lestat. \u201cBehind every great hatred is a love story,\u201d claims Zero.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Cronin\u2019s imagery is resonant (\u201cstars thick as powder\u201d in the night sky), his similes vivid (\u201cAlicia was like a comet, given to long, unannounced absences and blazing, unanticipated returns\u201d). The virals\u2019 movements were \u201cso fine that they barely parted air.\u201d Cronin\u2019s rendering of a ruined civilization is haunting.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The City of Mirrors<\/em> is also a warning. From Zero\u2019s story, poetic in despair: \u201cConsider the species known as man. We lie, we cheat, we want what others have and take it; we make war upon each other and the earth; we harvest lives in multitudes,\u201d Cronin writes. \u201cWe have mortgaged the planet and spent the cash on trifles.\u201d But The City of Mirrors<\/em> also tells us that it ain\u2019t over till it\u2019s over.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Review of The City of Mirrors, <\/em>final installment in Justin Cronin’s trilogy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":561,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[12,8,172,15],"class_list":["post-562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-lonestarreview","tag-lonestarliterarycom","tag-sciencefiction","tag-texasauthor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}