The US army has a wonderful plan to solve problems like ageing (and gaining control over the World). Use extracts of the thymus of vampires to give their (the American) soldiers a very long life. This sounds like a plan that cannot possibly go wrong, right?
Of course it does go wrong. The serum is tested on 12 death-row prisoners (great plan, if I was turning people into vampires I would definitely start with the ones who felt like killing even before being transformed) and - for story's sake - a little girl.
As was not really unexpected, the vampires escape and terrorize the world by killing almost everyone they encounter (and turning one-tenth of them into new vampires). Needless to say at this point I think, we're not talking about Twilight vampires. They don't sparkle.
After this cosy, heart warming tale, we skip forward about 100 years to a special build colony that has somehow resisted the vampire (they're called virals) attacks. And this is were the story gets a bit boring. The first part is action packed, 'I'm going to check my room just to make sure there are no virals'-thrilling, the second part is more people coping with living in this colony while planning to kill all the virals (we're talking about millions of them) after the young girl reappears.
Is this the end, you ask? No, of course not. This (in Dutch version) 960(!) pages long novel is just the first of a trilogy of which The Twelve is the second part. I haven't read The Twelve yet, but it's high on my TBR.
Note: I read a Dutch translation of this book.
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