Finished reading "The Twelve" by Justin Cronin.

It is a continuation of  "The Passage"and has a similar structure of shifting times and places that are thematically linked, the early chapters dealing with a collapse of a contemporary society and later chapters describing a post apocalyptic future where the top predators in the ecosystem are feral vampire creatures that hunt in packs. It also continues the story of the main protagonist "Amy" and survivors of the "Colony", who are investigating the "Homeland" a city, showing signs of evolving from influences of contemporary society but is governed by a council of "ghouls", familiars of the "Twelve", who survive on a earlier generation ghouls blood. It is a description of a society run on near concentration camp conditions, despite the contemporary thought processes of the ruling council, who have survived for over 100 years on the ghoul blood.The institutions of the society, despite the titles and ways the council think about them have developed to meet the needs of the governing body, there is a dark comedy there.

I picked up "The Twelve" first, thinking it was similar to McCarthy's "The Road".

The beginning chapters, with some foreshadowing, further develop the apocalypse described in "The Passage", focusing on events and characters vaguely mentioned in the first book and introduces important antagonists such as "Deputy Director Horace Guilder", Lila and "Grey" , who are relatively well developed as characters in this type of fiction. One idea the author has is the feral vampires, "virals" are creatures that exist trapped in a particular memory symbolic to the individual creature, which is an interesting narrative device, it gives the "virals" a degree of pathos, and facilitates increased distinctiveness. There are a range of protagonists, some are more interesting than others but the characterizations are quite relatable.