It's a beautiful thing when worthwhile authors achieve every ambition they tackle; when writers leap every one of the hurdles they set. With the completion of the Passage Trilogy in the vast, intricate and compelling The City of Mirrors, Justin Cronin has done all that.
The City of Mirrors continues the story of a vampiric virus that has ravaged the United States, and probably the rest of civilization, leaving only isolated pockets of survivors, a new society sprouting up delicately, like a daisy under the concrete. The Twelve, a particularly menacing mutation of those infected, have been defeated but a greater threat awaits--Zero, who created them, lurks in a haunted metropolis, ready to battle Amy, "the girl from nowhere," and her intrepid followers. The way the story plays out is both surprising and apt, full of heartbreaking loss and subtle grace notes of joy that will echo in the readers mind.
Cronin has rewarded readers of the Passage Trilogy with an action-packed thriller that stretches the length of the country and beyond, and follows the main characters through decades of shifting alliances and intricate plans as novel moves toward its grand conclusion. The propulsive narrative never flags, and for every intricate action setpiece, Cronin gives astutely wrought moments of well-delivered intimacy. He perfectly balances the addictive rush of a page-turner with the precise prose of a literary magician of the first order. The City of Mirrors and the Passage Trilogy as a whole are an epic entry in the canon of American fantasy literature. --Donald Powell, freelance writer