The City of Mirrors

I just finished City of Mirrors, and I’m partly writing this review so I can talk about it with somebody. I am a pretty voracious reader, but I’ve found that my patience for long books has waned in past years, maybe because we live more and more in a 140-character world. City of Mirrors is the first book in a very long time that I wanted to savor, that I didn’t want to finish: parts of it left my jaw hanging and my eyes as wide as they can be opened.

It is not a perfect book: in my opinion, Cronin’s female characters are all a little too alike and a little too perfect: sassy, smart, headstrong (I know, could be much worse). When the men in his stories fall in love with these women, they fall instantaneously, hard, and forever, whether they’re 14 or 60. But I think that might be my only critique of his writing. So now that’s over with, I can sing its many, many praises.

Justin Cronin has a gift for creating sentences. His grasp of language and ability to use it to capture a moment so clearly it’s as though I’m watching a movie is unassailable, whether or not one appreciates his “genre.” He is able to build a story like those cotton candy machines create their cloud of sugar: completely three-dimensional, yet diaphanous, with no more structure than absolutely necessary to hold the creation together. In an era where I truly believe we are witnessing the dumbing down of our language into tweetable, textable shortcuts, Cronin pulls out his dictionary and finds the exact right word to depict the emotion of the moment. There wasn’t a single time when I thought, “this is overwritten,” or “less detail, please:” it was pitch-perfect in its creation of people, relationships, and the scenery upon which those relationships were played out.

I won’t give any spoilers: I’ll just say that for me, the book brought a very satisfying end to this epic tale. There might have been one or two places that felt a little too “tidy” and fortuitous, but overall his storytelling walks the balance between fantasy and true, imaginable possibility with utter grace. I am truly sorry to see these characters go, at least until I start reading the whole trilogy all over again, which I guarantee I will.

I loved the first book, liked the second, but this final novel was absolute torture to get through. Reading it reminded me of the feeling one has watching the last season of a TV show you once enjoyed that should have been cancelled long ago. Reading “City of Mirrors,” I found myself generally angry and aggravated with Cronin. Even his creativity with character names began to seem forced and lame and contrived (“Nessa?” “Olla?” Gag me.) By and large, however, Fanning’s 1980s Cambridge interlude was the worst and most self-indulgent nonsense I have ever been forced into reading. I’m not sure which Harvard Cronin attended in the 1980s, but I was aghast that he got so much of that era wrong. His characters behaved more like they were inhabiting the late 1950s and early 1960s as the segment began that I kept hearing the theme to “A Summer Place” and envisioning Cate Blanchett in her “The Talented Mr. Ripley” dresses. If I wanted to read a period piece about being in my late teens and early twenties during the 1980s I would have reread “Less than Zero” or “Bright Lights, Big City” (although technically Fanning starts school in late ’89.) The entire book required a strong, scolding, editor. The illustrations at the end of the book are an unexpected bright spot – but by then it is far too late.

If you’re like me, you are here to commiserate about the profoundly lackluster ending to Justin Cronin’s Passage Trilogy. Mr. Cronin won’t see this, nor will his publishers, but airing my grievances will take a bit of the sting out of paying good money for a worthless book. I didn’t originally come here to write a review, only to find validation from others as supremely disappointed as I was by this third book, which bears little resemblance to the previous two. Luckily, I read all three books in quick succession and wasn’t subjected to the added torture of having to wait four years for the final installment to windlessly limp over the finish line – THANK. GOD.

In no particular oder, these are my main beefs…

First – what the he** happened to Amy? This was HER trilogy and over the course of books two and three, she completely dissolved into absolute nothingness. Honestly, the last interesting thing she did was to free the souls of the virals in the first book. She was supposed to be the savior, her presence in the book was predicated on her powers, of her being the opposite of evil, she was supposed to save the world, but she lived a thousand years and completely FORGOT everything? She wrote some names on a friggin rock – that was her legacy? I have never read an ending as weak as this one.

Come to think of it – what happened to ALL of the female characters? They were some of the strongest story points and to end their lives so disappointingly is an extreme disservice to the audience who grew to love them for their strength and tenacity.

As mentioned in previous reviews, the hundred-plus pages devoted to Zero’s backstory is mind-numbing, unnecessary, out of place and pointless. I am a “high completion” type, so I didn’t have it in me to skip over this section, although now I really wish I would have. I had the sense at the end that I was supposed to somehow sympathize with Fanning, um, just because he didn’t die with Liz – really? He had time with her, they lived and loved – albeit shortly, but he had that. Killing billions of humans because of it? Not a single shred of sympathy here, bub. ZERO.

Pim lighting matches directly after being immersed in water. Um, what? And really, they made matches??
Oh and speaking of water – there was way too much fluidity with which virals could be brought back after drowning – I kept thinking – why the heck doesn’t Amy drown Peter, she knew it had that effect???

Thousands of people disappearing without raising any concerns – ridiculous given the history of these people.

The world in the Epilogue was frustratingly similar to the current world we live in – with cars and restaurants and tenure and male college professors with eyes for female undergrads – I’m surprised Cronin didn’t write something about the patches on the elbows of his tweed blazer. Here was an opportunity to cast the future in an entirely different light – maybe alternative fuels, alternative housing, non-traditional education, non-hierarchical social structures, alternative transportation, etc. But to think that Cronin had it in him to write anything of substance in what was clearly a phoned-in-after-the-check-was-cashed tome of nonsense is clearly asking way too much.

Anyone who read the first two books won’t skip City of Mirrors, even if they read the reviews first. Reading all of the other one and two star reviews helped me feel validated and certainly made me question where the heck all of those five star reviews came from – paid for, perhaps? I hope you’ve enjoyed, as I did, this ersatz book club, this space to commiserate, the Amazon City of Mirrors “one star club.” Now I’m off to find something GOOD!

This just didn’t do it for me at all. It felt sluggish and unfocussed with story lines that kept being added or some that were just tailed off and were left hanging, and much of the book just seemed to drift. I know many have enjoyed it and found it a worthy conclusion to the trilogy but I was left feeling disappointed. ‘The Passage’ was one of my favourite books – the action, plot and characters all hit me with a gut-punch and left me breathless and wanting more. Wow, what an amazing book. But whereas I loved ‘The Passage’ and tolerated ‘The Twelve’, I just couldn’t handle the dithering of ‘The City of Mirrors’. For me, it just didn’t live up to its predecessors.

However, the part that most reviews seem to dislike the most (Fanning’s backstory) was the part that I found the most intriguing as this was where Cronin played to his strengths again, in building characters. Characterisation was part of what hooked me in the first novel, and Fanning’s backstory seemed to focus on this once again.

I read the first one a few years back and recently realised the author had written the last two. Bought book 2 and couldn’t put it down. On finishing Book 2, had to buy Book 3 immediately and could not put that down. An absolutely wonderful dystopian trilogy. Was shedding tears on the tube in the last quarter of the final book. The characters are so beautifully rendered – so 3 dimensional. I always get a bit bored with too much action type stuff and these books have a fair amount of it, but even that didn’t stop me loving them all. Again, it’s the characters being so well written – the beauty of the writing, the perfect story telling. For those who haven’t read any, it is an interesting take on the vampire mythology – not very much into vampire stuff as a rule but this trilogy takes it to a whole new level. If dystopian fiction is your thing, read it. If great characters with wonderful story arcs are your thing, read it. If you have thought about reading a genre like this before, read it………

I generally finish one book and pick up the next but struggling to start anything else right now as still lost in that world.

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