“A thrilling finale to a trilogy that will stand as one of the great achievements in American fantasy fiction.”—Stephen King You followed The Passage. You faced The Twelve. Now enter The City of Mirrors for the final reckoning. As the bestselling epic races to its breathtaking finale, Justin Cronin’s band of hardened survivors await the second coming of unspeakable darkness. The world we knew is gone. What world will rise in its place? The Twelve have been destroyed and the terrifying hundred-year reign of darkness that descended upon the world has ended. The survivors are stepping outside their walls, determined to build society anew—and daring to dream of a hopeful future. But far from them, in a dead metropolis, he waits: Zero. The First. Father of the Twelve. The anguish that shattered his human life haunts him, and the hatred spawned by his transformation burns bright. His fury will be quenched only when he destroys Amy—humanity’s only hope, the Girl from Nowhere who grew up to rise against him. One last time light and dark will clash, and at last Amy and her friends will know their fate. Advance praise for *The City of Mirrors * “Justin Cronin’s Passage trilogy is remarkable for the unremitting drive of its narrative, for the breathtaking sweep of its imagined future, and for the clear lucidity of its language.”—Stephen King
“Superb . . . This conclusion to bestseller Cronin’s apocalyptic thriller trilogy ends with all of the heartbreak, joy, and unexpected twists of fate that events in The Passage and The Twelve foreordained.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Readers who have been patiently awaiting the conclusion to Cronin’s sweeping postapocalyptic trilogy are richly rewarded with this epic, heart-wrenching novel. . . . Not only does this title bring the series to a thrilling and satisfying conclusion, but it also exhibits Cronin’s moving exploration of love as both a destructive force and an elemental need, elevating this work among its dystopian peers.”—Library Journal (starred review)
Praise for Justin Cronin “One of those rare authors who work on two different levels, blending elegantly crafted literary fiction with cliff-hanging thrills.”—Fort Worth Star-Telegram The Passage “Magnificent . . . Cronin has taken his literary gifts, and he has weaponized them. . . . The Passage can stand proudly next to Stephen King’s apocalyptic masterpiece The Stand, but a closer match would be Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.”—*Time “Read this book and the ordinary world disappears.”*—Stephen King “[A] big, engrossing read that will have you leaving the lights on late into the night.”—The Dallas Morning News * The Twelve * “[A] literary superthriller, driven at once by character and plot.”—The New York Times Book Review “Gripping . . . Cronin [introduces] eerie new elements to his masterful mythology.”—The San Diego Union-Tribune “An undeniable and compelling epic . . . a complex narrative of flight and forgiveness, of great suffering and staggering loss, of terrible betrayals and incredible hope.”—Milwaukee* Journal Sentinel*
From the Hardcover edition.
**
Advance praise for *The City of Mirrors “Justin Cronin’s Passage trilogy is remarkable for the unremitting drive of its narrative, for the breathtaking sweep of its imagined future, and for the clear lucidity of its language. The City of Mirrors* is a thrilling finale to a trilogy that will stand as one of the great achievements in American fantasy fiction.”—Stephen King**
“Superb . . . This conclusion to bestseller Cronin’s apocalyptic thriller trilogy ends with all of the heartbreak, joy, and unexpected twists of fate that events in The Passage and The Twelve foreordained.”—*Publishers Weekly (starred review)* “Readers who have been patiently awaiting the conclusion to Cronin’s sweeping postapocalyptic trilogy are richly rewarded with this epic, heart-wrenching novel. . . . Not only does this title bring the series to a thrilling and satisfying conclusion, but it also exhibits Cronin’s moving exploration of love as both a destructive force and an elemental need, elevating this work among its dystopian peers.”—*Library Journal (starred review)*
Justin Cronin is the "New York Times" bestselling author of "The Passage, " "The Twelve, Mary and O Neil" (which won the PEN/Hemingway Award and the Stephen Crane Prize), and "The Summer Guest." Other honors for his writing include a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and a Whiting Writers Award. A Distinguished Faculty Fellow at Rice University, he divides his time between Houston, Texas, and Cape Cod, Massachusetts."
SUMMARY: From the authors of the instant New York Times bestseller The Strain comes the next volume in one of the most imaginative and frightening thriller series in many, many years Last week they invaded Manhattan. This week they will destroy the world. The vampiric virus unleashed in The Strain has taken over New York City. It is spreading and soon will envelop the globe. Amid the chaos, Eph Goodweather—head of the Centers for Disease Control's team—leads a band out to stop these bloodthirsty monsters. But it may be too late. Ignited by the Master's horrific plan, a war erupts between Old and New World vampires, each vying for control. At the center of the conflict lies a book, an ancient text that contains the vampires' entire history . . . and their darkest secrets. Whoever finds the book can control the outcome of the war and, ultimately, the fate of us all. And it is between these warring forces that humans—powerless and vulnerable—find themselves no longer the consumers but the consumed. Though Eph understands the vampiric plague better than anyone, even he cannot protect those he loves. His ex-wife, Kelly, has been transformed into a bloodcrazed creature of the night, and now she stalks the city looking for her chance to reclaim her Dear One: Zack, Eph's young son. With the future of humankind in the balance, Eph and his team, guided by the brilliant former professor and Holocaust survivor Abraham Setrakian and exterminator Vasiliy Fet and joined by a crew of ragtag gangsters, must combat a terror whose ultimate plan is more terrible than anyone has imagined—a fate worse than annihilation.
Product Description
The vampiric virus unleashed in
Ignited by the Master’s horrific plan, a war erupts between Old and New World vampires, each vying for total control. Caught between these warring forces, humans—powerless and vulnerable—are no longer the consumers, but the consumed.
Though Eph understands the vampiric plague better than anyone, even he cannot protect those he loves from the invading evil. His ex-wife, Kelly, has been turned by the Master, and now she stalks the city, in the darkness, looking for her chance to reclaim Zack, Eph’s young son.
With the future of the world in the balance, Eph and his courageous team, guided by the brilliant former professor and Holocaust survivor Abraham Setrakian and exterminator Vasiliy Fet, must combat a terror whose ultimate plan is more terrible than anyone first imagined—a fate worse than annihilation.
A Q&A with Academy Award®-winner Guillermo Del Toro
Q: You’ve written screenplays and directed numerous movies, to name a few of your many accomplishments. What motivated you to write a novel?
Del Toro: Well, it’s a different challenge, but I've always written short stories and then, in my film work, storylines for movies (the storyline is a slightly "freer" form than screenplay writing) I have published some of my short stories in the past and it is my secret dream to write shivery tales for young readers. My favorite author in that sense is
Q: You are one of the most extraordinarily imaginative and creative thinkers working in the arts today. What were some of the influences that have contributed to your success? Do you have any kind of a muse?
Del Toro: Curiously enough I regularly draw more inspiration from painters and books than I do from other films. Painters like Carlos Schwabe, Odilon Redon, Fliecien Rops, Bocklin, Freud, Bacon, Thomas Cole and many others, never fail to excite me and in the book front there are just as many authors...
Q: Many of your movies have centered on fantastical characters. Why did you choose to write your first novel about vampires?
Del Toro: All of my life I’ve been fascinated by them but always from a Naturalist's point of view.
Q: There are many stories, movies, and even a television show involving vampires. The Strain Trilogy uses the idea that vampires are a plague, and that the lead hunter is a scientist from the Centers for Disease Control. What was your inspiration for this twist?
Del Toro: When I was a kid I loved
Q: How did you and Chuck Hogan come together to write The Strain Trilogy? How does your collaboration work?
Del Toro: It was a true collaboration. I had created a "bible" for the book. It contained most of the structural ideas and characters and Chuck then took his pass on it and invented new characters and ideas. Fet (one of my favorite characters) was completely invented by him. And then I did my pass, writing new chapters or heavily editing his pass, and then he did a pass on my pass and so on and so forth. This is the way I have co-written in the past. I loved Chuck's style and ideas from reading his books and I specifically wanted him as a partner because he had a strong sense of reality and had NEVER written a horror book. I knew we would complete each other in the creation of this book. What surprised me is that he came up with some gruesome moments all on his own! He revealed himself to be a rather disturbed man!
A Q&A with Hammett Award-winner Chuck Hogan
Q: What most surprised you about working with Guillermo Del Toro? Has working with him impacted your own work? In your former career as a video store clerk, did you ever in your wildest dreams imagine working on a project like this—with a legend like Del Toro?
Hogan: I'd never co-authored anything, nor had I published a true work of horror before, and here I was embarking on an epic trilogy with a master of the genre. I probably should have been more intimidated--yet I felt an immediate kinship with the material, as well as true excitement at the challenge of bringing the story to life, both of which carried me through. Guillermo is a daunting first audience, and yet an incredibly generous collaborator. Not to mention an amazing resource: it's just fun to have to ask him a question—say, about why the vampires run hot instead of cold—know that, not only will he take me through their intricate biology, but he will embroider the account with corroborating examples from the field of entomology, marine life, and some arcane fact about the function of human blood platelets.
Q:_ _
Hogan: Crime and horror are both genres of existentialism, and I am drawn to stories of man at his extremes, of people who find themselves tested, haunted, threatened. I believe a writer should challenge himself in his work just as he challenges the characters in his story—that anything less would be inauthentic and dishonest. What I love about The Strain is that the journey of the story takes this maxim and multiplies it by one thousand.
Set over the course of three intense weeks, Del Toro and Hogan's gripping second volume in their near-future vampire trilogy picks up where The Strain, the first volume, left off, as the undead, aided by elderly Eldritch Palmer, one of the world's three richest men, tighten their hold on the planet. Epidemiologists Ephraim Goodweather and Nora Martinez, Holocaust survivor Abraham Setrakian, and Vasiliy Fet, "New York City Bureau of Pest Control Services worker and independent exterminator," oppose the vampires (or strigoi), as they did in the first book. Setrakian pins his hopes for stopping the vampires on tracking down a 17th-century grimoire that describes the origins of their leaders, the Seven Original Ancients. Despite the story's essential grimness, the authors manage to inject some sardonic humor, even as the plot developments will leave readers wondering how the concluding book can possibly end well.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Note: Season of Storms takes place before the second short story but after the first one in The Last Wish; so you should read the first short story, finish Season of Storms, continue with The Last Wish on the second short story and then continue as listed above.
Geralt of Rivia. A witcher whose mission is to protect ordinary people from the monsters created with magic. A mutant who has the task of killing unnatural beings. He uses a magical sign, potions and the pride of every witcher -- two swords, steel and silver. But what would happen if Geralt lost his weapons?
In this standalone novel, Geralt fights, travels and loves again, Dandelion sings and flies from trouble to trouble, sorcerers are scheming ... and across the whole world clouds are gathering - the season of storms is coming...
SUMMARY: The visionary creator of the Academy Award-winning Pan's Labyrinth and a Hammett Award-winning author bring their imaginations to this bold, epic novel about a horrifying battle between man and vampire that threatens all humanity. It is the first installment in a thrilling trilogy and an extraordinary international publishing event. The Strain They have always been here. Vampires. In secret and in darkness. Waiting. Now their time has come. In one week, Manhattan will be gone. In one month, the country. In two months—the world. A Boeing 777 arrives at JFK and is on its way across the tarmac, when it suddenly stops dead. All window shades are pulled down. All lights are out. All communication channels have gone quiet. Crews on the ground are lost for answers, but an alert goes out to the CDC. Dr. Eph Goodweather, head of their Canary project, a rapid-response team that investigates biological threats, gets the call and boards the plane. What he finds makes his blood run cold. In a pawnshop in Spanish Harlem, a former professor and survivor of the Holocaust named Abraham Setrakian knows something is happening. And he knows the time has come, that a war is brewing . . . So begins a battle of mammoth proportions as the vampiric virus that has infected New York begins to spill out into the streets. Eph, who is joined by Setrakian and a motley crew of fighters, must now find a way to stop the contagion and save his city—a city that includes his wife and son—before it is too late.
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“A thrilling finale to a trilogy that will stand as one of the great achievements in American fantasy fiction.”—Stephen King
You followed The Passage. You faced The Twelve. Now enter The City of Mirrors for the final reckoning. As the bestselling epic races to its breathtaking finale, Justin Cronin’s band of hardened survivors await the second coming of unspeakable darkness.
The world we knew is gone. What world will rise in its place?
The Twelve have been destroyed and the terrifying hundred-year reign of darkness that descended upon the world has ended. The survivors are stepping outside their walls, determined to build society anew—and daring to dream of a hopeful future.
But far from them, in a dead metropolis, he waits: Zero. The First. Father of the Twelve. The anguish that shattered his human life haunts him, and the hatred spawned by his transformation burns bright. His fury will be quenched only when he destroys Amy—humanity’s only hope, the Girl from Nowhere who grew up to rise against him.
One last time light and dark will clash, and at last Amy and her friends will know their fate.
Advance praise for *The City of Mirrors
*
“Justin Cronin’s Passage trilogy is remarkable for the unremitting drive of its narrative, for the breathtaking sweep of its imagined future, and for the clear lucidity of its language.”—Stephen King
“Superb . . . This conclusion to bestseller Cronin’s apocalyptic thriller trilogy ends with all of the heartbreak, joy, and unexpected twists of fate that events in The Passage and The Twelve foreordained.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Readers who have been patiently awaiting the conclusion to Cronin’s sweeping postapocalyptic trilogy are richly rewarded with this epic, heart-wrenching novel. . . . Not only does this title bring the series to a thrilling and satisfying conclusion, but it also exhibits Cronin’s moving exploration of love as both a destructive force and an elemental need, elevating this work among its dystopian peers.”—Library Journal (starred review)
Praise for Justin Cronin
“One of those rare authors who work on two different levels, blending elegantly crafted literary fiction with cliff-hanging thrills.”—Fort Worth Star-Telegram
The Passage
“Magnificent . . . Cronin has taken his literary gifts, and he has weaponized them. . . . The Passage can stand proudly next to Stephen King’s apocalyptic masterpiece The Stand, but a closer match would be Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.”—*Time
“Read this book and the ordinary world disappears.”*—Stephen King
“[A] big, engrossing read that will have you leaving the lights on late into the night.”—The Dallas Morning News
*
The Twelve
*
“[A] literary superthriller, driven at once by character and plot.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Gripping . . . Cronin [introduces] eerie new elements to his masterful mythology.”—The San Diego Union-Tribune
“An undeniable and compelling epic . . . a complex narrative of flight and forgiveness, of great suffering and staggering loss, of terrible betrayals and incredible hope.”—Milwaukee* Journal Sentinel*
From the Hardcover edition.
**
Review
Advance praise for *The City of Mirrors
“Justin Cronin’s Passage trilogy is remarkable for the unremitting drive of its narrative, for the breathtaking sweep of its imagined future, and for the clear lucidity of its language. The City of Mirrors* is a thrilling finale to a trilogy that will stand as one of the great achievements in American fantasy fiction.”—Stephen King**
“Superb . . . This conclusion to bestseller Cronin’s apocalyptic thriller trilogy ends with all of the heartbreak, joy, and unexpected twists of fate that events in The Passage and The Twelve foreordained.”—*Publishers Weekly (starred review)*
“Readers who have been patiently awaiting the conclusion to Cronin’s sweeping postapocalyptic trilogy are richly rewarded with this epic, heart-wrenching novel. . . . Not only does this title bring the series to a thrilling and satisfying conclusion, but it also exhibits Cronin’s moving exploration of love as both a destructive force and an elemental need, elevating this work among its dystopian peers.”—*Library Journal (starred review)*
Praise for Justin Cronin
“One of those rare authors who work on two different levels, blending elegantly crafted literary fiction with cliff-hanging thrills.”—Fort Worth Star-Telegram
The Passage
“Magnificent . . . Cronin has taken his literary gifts, and he has weaponized them. . . . The Passage can stand proudly next to Stephen King’s apocalyptic masterpiece The Stand, but a closer match would be Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.”—*Time
“Read this book and the ordinary world disappears.”*—Stephen King
“[A] big, engrossing read that will have you leaving the lights on late into the night.”—The Dallas Morning News
*
The Twelve
*
“[A] literary superthriller, driven at once by character and plot.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Gripping . . . Cronin [introduces] eerie new elements to his masterful mythology.”—The San Diego Union-Tribune
“An undeniable and compelling epic . . . a complex narrative of flight and forgiveness, of great suffering and staggering loss, of terrible betrayals and incredible hope.”—Milwaukee* Journal Sentinel*
About the Author
Justin Cronin is the "New York Times" bestselling author of "The Passage, " "The Twelve, Mary and O Neil" (which won the PEN/Hemingway Award and the Stephen Crane Prize), and "The Summer Guest." Other honors for his writing include a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and a Whiting Writers Award. A Distinguished Faculty Fellow at Rice University, he divides his time between Houston, Texas, and Cape Cod, Massachusetts."