The Twelve by Justin Cronin

I wrote about this book for the Isthmus spring break reading guide. Here’s a link.
 
I want to add something to what I said in that article: It’s never a good sign when you have to ask someone to explain a book's plot developments. One such query session with my friend Elana took up an entire hour at a coffee shop and involved the perusal of both volumes of the series, and some quick e-mailing back and forth with Elana’s brother. My advice is to read The Twelve carefully and read a print edition rather than an e-book. The Kindle was a bad choice; the maps are too small and the awkwardness of paging back and forth to look things up is off-putting. I just kept reading, even when I wasn’t sure what happened, thinking it would all sort itself out in the end, but it didn’t. I did find some satisfactory answers when I went back through the print edition, but it was far from an ideal reading situation.

Or, you could just take my word for it that things do hang together, even if you are left with some moments of "huh?" Together the books have a total of 1,376 pages -- who can remember every detail? It doesn't make them any less fun.

(Book 9, 2013)