The Twelve -- Justin Cronin ----------------- 3 Stars

You may remember a few months ago when I raved about Justin Cronin's The Passage.  It was one of the few books that I have reviewed to ever garner 5 stars.  Well, lo and behold, I found it is a trilogy (which really makes me feel better about the ending of the first book :)).  The second book in the trilogy is The Twelve.  As I had finished the previous book less than 4 months ago, I was very excited about reading the follow-up...as you can guess from my rating, it did not impress like the first.

One of the things that made me so excited about reading this book was to find out what happened to some of the characters of the other book.  Well, I did found out what happened to them, unfortunately, it took about 250 pages to get to that point.  To say this book started 'slow' is a massive understatement.  In fact, I'm not sure if I would have kept going if this was a book I just picked up for the first time and had no history with the author or story.  But, I kept going and the book slowly got better.

The good -- The book does keep you up about the favorite characters from the last story.
The book is still well written, and if you can keep with the story after the slow start, is quite good
The book had an ending, of sorts, while still making you excited about the final book in the trilogy
The book is still a great story about good vs. evil

The bad -- Like I said earlier, really slow start
The book is all over the place and jumps around far more often than the previous book
The book seems to not connect some events until much, much later
The books focus is on many of the smaller characters from the last book or on new characters.  While this is nice in some ways, it is a shame to get away from some of the characters that were so well established and love from the previous book.

Overall, it is a must read if you read The Passage and were a fan of it.  Although not a great book, it is still quite good if you liked the first book and is a book you have to read if you are going to continue the trilogy.  I am really excited about finishing the trilogy with Justin Cronin's next book that comes out next year.