Justin Cronin continues his "virals" story with "The Twelve."

Released on Oct. 16 by Random House Publishing Group, "The Twelve" is the second boo in the "Passage" trilogy.

The 592-page book is described:

The end of the world was only the beginning.

In his internationally bestselling and critically acclaimed novel The Passage, Justin Cronin constructed an unforgettable world transformed by a government experiment gone horribly wrong. Now the scope widens and the intensity deepens as the epic story surges forward with . . .

A heart-stopping thriller rendered with masterful literary skill, The Twelve is a grand and gripping tale of sacrifice and survival.

Entertainment Weekly gave "The Twelve" a B+.

"Along the way, Cronin solves old mysteries and concocts a few new ones, crafts some genuinely scary scenes, and deftly pushes a complicated array of characters and mythologies toward an easily foreseeable but rousing climax. Does it matter that not everything makes sense? That the plot sometimes feels contrived and tinges of spirituality seem a little grandiose? Not really. The Twelve doesn't always match The Passage's dexterous storytelling and almost-plausible world creation, but it's still an unnerving and mostly satisfying tale of existential-threat disaster and its harro wing aftermath," the website said.

The 12 "virals" are essentially vampires, but nowhere near the "Twilight" kind we all know so much about. "These dracs are a different beast from the pasty-faced blood-draining lovebirds you're now picturing with some degree of fondness or disgust. They're vicious and animalistic, armed with limb-ripping teeth and claws and driven by an insatiable thirst. They were born of a military-cultivated virus, which the government injects into 12 (note that number) death-row inmates--turned--test subjects in the first book. Things predictably spiral out of control, and the virus - oops! - destroys modern civilization," EW explained.

Cleveland.com writer John R. Alden said "The Twelve" is even better than "The Passage."

The anticipated book got mainly four and five stars from GoodReads reviews. One commenter said the second book is "A worthy, suck-you-in, obsessive follow up to The Passage." Another said, "I was looking forward to this sequel so much. The Twelve is fantastic, it doesn't have quite the same feel as The Passage but links all the characters, their stories and secrets then ends with a bang."

Cronin recently dished on the third book in an interview with CNN.

"My goal is for the third novel in some ways (is that it) follows the design of the earlier books, which is to briefly take the reader back to year zero," Cronin said. "To see yet again something they did not see the first time that resets the terms of the story, so that the book has its own propulsive engine. The only other thing I can say is it's the last book so the big questions that remain will be answered. That's the job of the third book is to end the story. The goal is for the book to come out in 2014, and all mysteries will be revealed."

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