Title: The City of Mirrors

Author: Justin Cronin

Publisher: Ballantine Books

Pub. Date: 24 May, 2016

Series: Book #3 The Passage Trilogy

First off, anyone thinking of tackling this series should be fair-warned and fore-armed—it is loooonnnnnggg. Many think of it as ‘literary’ in the sense that it meanders and internalizes and thinks a lot about itself and the lives and motivations of each character and event between sporadic bouts of going on and on about the justifiable and justified action parts. It is a story of vampires created by a virus created by a villain, unwilling to be vanquished by the heroes, reluctant and otherwise, with a consistent undertow of mythical, literary, and biblical figures and activities. If you are willing to swim around in that pool then this series is for you. Cronin is a decent writer that will not let you down.

I found myself wishing that the editorial staff would have been quite a bit more ruthless. It would benefit from some reigning in of all that emotional diarrhea. The story is really compelling, though the timeline is wonky and the new characters introduced all seem to be the same as the ones before. I felt on occasion that the story was formulaic or being driven by Cronin running his finger down the spines of his bookshelf and pulling pieces from each as he went—everything from the bible to Spiderman to Little House on the Prairie. Or maybe that all the parts he had started for this novel got included whether they worked or not. Anyway, the pacing of the first half is much better than the second. The pacing of the whole third book is worse than the second, which was very boggy.

I gave it three stars for being tedious. I also gave it three stars for being a well-written tedium.

I received a review copy from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.