I was put on this earth to read a certain number of books. I am now so far behind I will never die.
One cool thing about the book is that the vampires are pretty realistic. They have advantages over humans, but they have weaknesses to even the balance. Another thing is that the vampires don’t actively seek to increase their numbers. Instead, they rely on those that approach them and share a willingness to give up their humanity. Hence, vampirism is as much a state of mind as a disease or even existence as a separate species.
Twelve certainly sounds like an interesting book and it’s the main reason I bought it. Unfortunately, I had a few problems with it. My main complaint is that the book did not feel like a historical novel. Other than political details, there is nothing that made me feel like I was in 19th Century Russia fighting Napoleon. Frankly, the tale could be have been set during Caesar’s conquest of Gaul or the Boxer Rebellion in China for all the importance of the setting. Truly, the book is not about the Napoleonic Wars at all but rather about the main character's battle against the vampires and I think the story suffers for it. To put it another way: if the setting is secondary, why have a vampire story in this time period at all?
Part of the problem with this may be Kent’s prose style. The novel is written in first person narrative yet I had quite a bit of difficulty believing in Aleksei’s motivations and actions. For instance, as an officer, Aleksei has a wife and son in St. Petersburg. He also has a mistress in Moscow, yet his love for her is never convincing. Neither did I believe his “instinctive” hatred for the vampires when all his knowledge of them is from fairy tales told by his grandmother. Aleksei even goes so far as to turn against his fellow comrades. Characterization on the whole was better for the supporting cast then it ever was for the voice of the narrative. The last third of the book, exclusively about Aleksei against the vampires, was nearly a slog to read.
Twelve has a very interesting premise. Unfortunately, I felt the author didn’t quite pull it off. Perhaps I was expecting too much from a book with a historical setting, or maybe I was not in the right frame of mind when I read it. In any case, the book might still appeal to other readers of vampire or horror fiction.
This is a survival story, albeit one set on Mars when astronaut Mark Watney is accidentally abandoned by his crew after a dust storm. It's a lot like a feel-good disaster movie with a lot of life-threatening setbacks, plucky can-do spirit and ingenuity, and drama as the main character struggles to survive in the harsh Martian landscape and the whole world tries to rescue him. It could have been extremely cheesy, but it works and I found it very engrossing. It helps that the book is about space exploration, a subject very close to my heart. I also have to give the author a lot of credit for the science. He really put a lot of thought into how someone might survive on Mars.
I'm giving this three stars because it was just as well written as the first three books and fans will probably enjoy it. For my part, I read this mainly to find out if it explained the somewhat confusing cliffhanger of the third book, Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon. And it does for the most part. However, while I suspect the author is intending this book to be part of a larger story arc, it feels too much like a re-boot for me to want to start over. I won't be continuing the series.
It wasn't quite perfect and I think it could have cut 30-40 pages and not lost much, but it was haunting and beautifully written. It's like McCarthy's The Road in that despite being very good, I doubt I'd ever read it again because it's simply too depressing.