City of Mirrors

The thrilling conclusion to Justin Cronin's Passage trilogy is certainly epic. And meandering. Once again, he jumps back into the past to flesh out the backstory of characters in the present. This time with a lengthy look into what Zero was like as a human that could almost be its own book.

This sounds like a complaint, but it's not really. Cronin takes the same care with his characters and settings that Robert Jordan did in The Wheel of Time. He manages to be more concise, but only because his scope is (amazingly) smaller than Jordan's was. And because his baddies don't keep resurrecting themselves. Dead is actually dead in this world.

Looking back on the trilogy as a whole, I'm glad I read it. I enjoyed it a lot. But I'm not sure I'd ever recommend it. It hit so many of my specific buttons that I'd have trouble believing someone else would like it as much as me. It's immense and slow. It's about vampires. It's a little bit mystic beyond that, though with room for interpretation. The epilogue is nearly 50 pages long, and again the only comparison I can really draw is Jordan. At least Cronin was more disciplined and able to finish before he died.

I'll be on the lookout for what he writes next. But without the vampire hook, I'm not sure I'd be as absorbed by it.

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