Rate: 4/5

Medium: Audiobook

Overview (No Spoilers):

Cronin has taken his readers on quite the adventure throughout his delightfully detailed trilogy.  In The Passage and The Twelve, we are exposed to several different views points from various time periods ranging from the events leading up to the plague, the actual event crisis, and several generations after. As the final installment of The Passage trilogy, The City of Mirrors was a brought back our favorite characters for a conclusion that was fast paced action throughout. This series as a whole drew many inspirations from the biblical stories and questioned a greater power’s hand in some of the inexplicably convenient events that occurred. As a whole, it is remarkable the various topics that Cronin dabbled in and seamlessly packed into this series without overextending himself.  From a rampant virus, to unregulated secret government programs, as well as vampires and religion, this sprawling series managed to tie everything up neatly in a bow as the epilogue reaches far into the distant future. During the course of the series there had been many references to humankind’s fate, which when paired with the biblical parallels, took some of the suspense and unpredictability out of the ending. However, The City of Mirrors does delve into the psyche of Zero, ultimately adding depth to two characters, i.e., Fanning and Lear, who had previously maintained an enigmatic veil as to their backstory. On an aside, despite the protagonists being grownup in the last book of this trilogy, I had a terrible time not viewing them still as children. Overall, despite being a series I picked up without knowing anything about the premise, this has turned out to be a wonderful read that contained so many of my favorite elements, from the audiobook narrator (Scott Brick), to a highly detailed blending of science fiction and fantasy.

Additional Insight (Spoilers Abound):

• Why did Amy have to survive till humans came back to North America?
• Was anyone immune to the virus in Europe? What happened to the reported Virals in Europe?
• Were there any other pockets of survival in the world?
• What happened to Michael after he set off for Europe?
• What was the significance of what Prim saw in the cave? It was a old lifeboat with the name of their boat the BERGENSFJORD along with two skeletons.  Were they two people that set out with the hope of survival instead of killing themselves with the rest of the crew. What killed them? Why didn’t Pim show anyone?
• President Peter Jaxon was infuriating as he forgot the dangers of the Virals and forgot about Zero, resulting in significant death for his people.
• What was going on with the dream state that Amy and Peter ‘lived’ in? Amy said that it was how Theo and Maus would be inexplicably saved however we never say any evidence of this? How did Fanning find them? How did actual Amy not be cognizant of these dreams?
• I had a dawning moment when I realized Michael’s boat was essentially the Noah’s arc.
•  If Peter was one of Fanning’s because he was bitten by him, shouldn’t he have died with Fanning? Also, wasn’t Peter immune to Amy making his sleep in earlier books because she did that to him in this book.