The Twelve, Cronin - C

As I struggled through this book, I kept wondering if it was just another middle book of a trilogy that didn't advance the story, or if I had been badly mistaken last month.  As the book came to what I hoped was a long- delayed but hopefully gangbuster finale, I checked the Times review of last fall. The well-respected Janet Maslin referred to it as "strictly a gap filler" before she said that the author "loves, blurry indecisive states of confusion".  "The Twelve is pure Soggy Middle, the Book that never Gets Anywhere with the Story of the Girl From Nowhere,  a Half-Dead Tale of the Undead".  Wow.  Thus, the finale, which apparently turned Amy into a full blown viral, yet apparently killed off all the "bad" virals and left me wondering who was going to be fighting whom in the third book, shouldn't have surprised me at all. The story clearly wasn't advanced. Indeed, I have no idea where we are. I'm just happy it will likely be a year or two before I feel compelled to tackle the finale.