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Cronin, Justin

Entry updated 15 May 2023. Tagged: Author.

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(1962-    ) US author whose first two novels have no fantastic content, but whose ongoing series, Passage sequence comprising The Passage (2010), The Twelve (2012) and The City of Mirrors (2016), presents a complexly plotted set of interweaving stories, beginning in the Near Future, mainly in an America savagely afflicted by Pollution and Ecological degradation; a sudden Pandemic, whose source is a South American bat, creates Vampire-like creatures who transform this already mutilated world (see Horror in SF), savagely reducing the human population to small, beleaguered cohorts of survivors. Various characters are variously exposed to the virus, some developing Superpowers, others evincing signs of potential Immortality, others dying. The main action, about a century later in a Ruined Earth America, follows various individuals, some of whom falteringly join their talents in order to survive and fight back against at least one Mad Scientist, and the military [for Seven Samurai see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below]. Keeps are inhabited, serve as prisons, are escaped from. The complexity of personal interactions among "samurai" and others make the series difficult to read in Young Adult terms, though some of the conventions fitting to that market are fleetingly adhered to. Given its huge cast and the ensuring complications, the success of The Passage depends to an unusual degree on the final volume, much of it set in an icon-choked New York, and during the course of which a chastened Homo sapiens gradually re-occupies the North American continent. The last section of the tale presents a quasi-archaeological lecture, couched as a Ruins and Futurity examination of the bewildering past; illustratory documents include previous volumes of The Passage. [JC]

Justin Cronin

born Massachusetts: 1962

works

series

The Passage

  • The Passage (New York: Ballantine Books, 2010) [The Passage: hb/Tom Hallman]
  • The Twelve (New York: Ballantine Books, 2012) [The Passage: hb/Tom Hallman]
  • The City of Mirrors (New York: Ballantine Books, 2016) [The Passage: hb/Tom Hallman]

individual titles

links

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