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Spoiler
It was pretty good stuff, obviously - I had a very hard time putting it down. I liked most of the characters, most of the prose, and even Cronin's way of "interjecting" the story with outside elements, like the "Third Global Conference on the North American Quarantine Period" and the e-mails between Dr. Lear and the other guy near the beginning. The first half of the book - the fall of American civilization - was well-done.
It's definitely quite similar to The Stand - and I mean that in a good way. It has a similar sweep, a similar type of overaching plot (the plague, although Cronin is creative with this), and even prose that kind of reminded me of Stephen King's near the beginning (the slightly informal type).
The Many were an interesting play on vampires, although there were some obvious plot contrivances to them (like giving them super-hard natural armor that was more or less immune to bullets except in a tiny area around their breastbone, so that they actually spread and thrive instead of being wholly destroyed in the initial outbreak). Twelve separate hive-minds coalescing around the original twelve experimental subjects, who are the ones giving them focused drive and hunger. I'm still not entirely certain whether they were mostly mindless or not - it seemed almost like they did have some semblance of mind, but were wholly dominated by both their instincts to feed, as well as the drives from the Twelve. Either way, Cronin very obviously set himself up for sequels with the destruction/passage of the Babcock Hive.*
* The rest of the world outside of North and South America is a bit of an enigma. Considering that there are interjections from the "Third Global Conference, 1003 A.V." centered around the "Indo-Australian Republic", my guess is that at least some organized governments survived the spread of the Many in the Old World, and there is a global civilization big enough to have a global conference at a university in Australia. Beyond that, though, there's basically no indication as to whether or not the infection made it overseas other than Greer's speculation near the end. They might have a "28 Days" type of thing going, helped by the fact that the infection is pretty fast-moving.
I'll bet that's probably a factor in the hypothetical sequels.
That said, there are some issues I had with it, bloat being the biggest one. I think there were some parts where Cronin just stayed on too long, with the result being that it slowed down the story and came across as tangential. The first 17 pages from the POV of Amy's mother, for example - was it really necessary to go into that much detail about a character we almost never see or hear about again, other than in fleeting bits of news (like "her mother was a prostitute who killed a frat boy")?
The other part was at the "Colony". While I liked how Cronin developed the colony and its characters, at least at the beginning (even going to the trouble of providing a rough map of what it looked like), I think it has a similar problem to the "Amy's mother" section - he spends a lot of time following a bunch of town characters who then die and never seem to really influence the protagonists anymore, with the result being that the section really starts to drag until he finally gets to the Night of Blades and Stars.
It was pretty good stuff, obviously - I had a very hard time putting it down. I liked most of the characters, most of the prose, and even Cronin's way of "interjecting" the story with outside elements, like the "Third Global Conference on the North American Quarantine Period" and the e-mails between Dr. Lear and the other guy near the beginning. The first half of the book - the fall of American civilization - was well-done.
It's definitely quite similar to The Stand - and I mean that in a good way. It has a similar sweep, a similar type of overaching plot (the plague, although Cronin is creative with this), and even prose that kind of reminded me of Stephen King's near the beginning (the slightly informal type).
The Many were an interesting play on vampires, although there were some obvious plot contrivances to them (like giving them super-hard natural armor that was more or less immune to bullets except in a tiny area around their breastbone, so that they actually spread and thrive instead of being wholly destroyed in the initial outbreak). Twelve separate hive-minds coalescing around the original twelve experimental subjects, who are the ones giving them focused drive and hunger. I'm still not entirely certain whether they were mostly mindless or not - it seemed almost like they did have some semblance of mind, but were wholly dominated by both their instincts to feed, as well as the drives from the Twelve. Either way, Cronin very obviously set himself up for sequels with the destruction/passage of the Babcock Hive.*
* The rest of the world outside of North and South America is a bit of an enigma. Considering that there are interjections from the "Third Global Conference, 1003 A.V." centered around the "Indo-Australian Republic", my guess is that at least some organized governments survived the spread of the Many in the Old World, and there is a global civilization big enough to have a global conference at a university in Australia. Beyond that, though, there's basically no indication as to whether or not the infection made it overseas other than Greer's speculation near the end. They might have a "28 Days" type of thing going, helped by the fact that the infection is pretty fast-moving.
I'll bet that's probably a factor in the hypothetical sequels.
That said, there are some issues I had with it, bloat being the biggest one. I think there were some parts where Cronin just stayed on too long, with the result being that it slowed down the story and came across as tangential. The first 17 pages from the POV of Amy's mother, for example - was it really necessary to go into that much detail about a character we almost never see or hear about again, other than in fleeting bits of news (like "her mother was a prostitute who killed a frat boy")?
The other part was at the "Colony". While I liked how Cronin developed the colony and its characters, at least at the beginning (even going to the trouble of providing a rough map of what it looked like), I think it has a similar problem to the "Amy's mother" section - he spends a lot of time following a bunch of town characters who then die and never seem to really influence the protagonists anymore, with the result being that the section really starts to drag until he finally gets to the Night of Blades and Stars.
Edited by Guardsman Bass, 09 June 2010 - 11:58 AM.
