Also - and I realise that this is my personal issue more than anything else - but I really, really hate it when authors writing about a setting that isn't their mother tongue throw in sentences in the setting's original language to show off how much research they've done. Yet I do not regret picking it up. As she slips it on her finger, she is taken back as if she was drunk. were important or how they had come to be were entirely ignored. The novel's plot is irresistible. In the present, another woman sees the find as a means to the political power she craves; while a man who has great power will kill to destroy all traces of the discovery and everyone who stands in his way. They all kept walking into the most obvious of traps and honestly I found myself wishing they would all just die so this book could end. In the 2006 British Book Awards, Labyrinth was awarded Best Read of the Year. The Mistletoe Bride and Other Haunting Tales. All from $11.18 Used Books from $11.18 Why are there so few adventure heroines, and even fewer female adventure authors? They knew each other straight away. The book, he says, contains the secret of the true Grail, and the ring, inscribed with a labyrinth, will identify a guardian of the Grail. What the success of The Da Vinci Code shows is that the reading public has an appetite for such stories mixing history, myth and mystery, which can only be good for authors and good for reading. In the present, another woman sees the find as a means to the political power she craves; while a man who has great power will kill to destroy all traces of the discovery and everyone who stands in his way. A fascinating period of history that just got utterly ruined in the pursuit of a shit book. I dont think readers worry about such labels. Title Kates new novel, The Taxidermists Daughter is out now. So, sadly, this is not a book that I would recommend. What lies at the heart of Labyrinth, however, is not a Christian Grail at all, but rather something far older that belongs to all religions and none. From National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree, a debut novel set in 1950s Alaska about two unlikely homesteaders. And, oh my days, everyone in this book was just so stupid. Q. The Crusade conducted against the Cathars by the northern French was very brutal and lasted for decades. She walks along as people in white, the Cathars, are burning people alive. Q. As crusading armies led by Church potentates and nobles of northern France gather outside the city walls of Carcassonne, it will take great sacrifice to keep the secret of the labyrinth safe. 528 pages In the prologue Kate gives glimpses several leading characters. This article about a war novel of the 2000s is a stub. The reader suffers under the weight of this fact for all 700 pages of Labyrinth, Mosse's obscenely well-reviewed novel of the Holy Grail where an obvious love for Carcassonne is besmirched by tedious characters, unconvincing dialogue, awful Hollywood clichs and lots of plain old bad writing. The two stories occur in a shared geography and intertwine. How quickly did you discover that some of the modern characters mirror or echo characters from the past? So, what is my verdict? Before Alice can grasp it, the scene changes. Eight hundred years ago, on the night before a brutal civil war ripped apart Languedoc, three books were entrusted to Alas, a young herbalist and healer, the daughter of the steward of Carcassona. The old Oc spellings for place namesCarcassona for Carcassonne, Besirs for Bzierscan even be seen on the road signs. The only questions worth asking are: Does the novel make the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end? Her new novel The Burning Chambers . In this extraordinary thriller, rich in the atmospheres of medieval and contemporary France, the lives of two women born centuries apart are linked by a common destiny. And, when youve finished, do you wish you could start all over again? I also adore physical research! The story of Alais in the 1200s invoked some wonderful characters, and Alais herself was a heroine of true individuality and strength. She thinks she has left him asleep as she leaves but he is awake. Author: Kate Mosse. Now that's an achievement nobody should want to have. Her characters are poorly developed, largely one-dimensional folk and her story suffers from a densely-packed exposition. Do you see Guilhem as an unhappy character, who never fully atones for his betrayal of Alas, or does he finally put things right? The setting jumps between modern and medieval France and follows two women (played by Vanessa Kirby and Jessica Brown Findlay) who are searching for the Holy Grail. Although Alais cannot understand the strange words and . According to The Sunday Times, it was the second best selling book in the United Kingdom in 2006, after The Da Vinci Code, selling about 865,400 copies in paperback. Sixteen years ago, my husband and I bought a tiny, stone house in the shadow of the medieval walls of the Cit of Carcassonne in the Languedoc, southwest France, about two hours drive from the Pyrenees. An archaeological historical thriller which came across as a very commercially motivated English-language novel written by Kate Mosse, in light of the success of the. Hiltbrand also said "There are excellent siege and battle scenes (particularly by TV standards). It also gave birth to the Inquisition, which most of us think started in Spain. July 2005: Alice Tanner discovers two skeletons in a forgotten cave in the French Pyrenees. too much info fer sure, and the sex scenes seemed to have been copied & pasted from a harlequin novel) and then did not give enough detail where warranted (the Cathars and how they came to be). The historical nature of the novel is also executed well, with some brilliant and vivid descriptions of life in Carcassonne during the 1200s. Ms. Mosse sometimes went too far with certain details (Noubel's profusive sweating - what is that about? Ms. Mosse handled the persecution of the Cathars with great care and gave me a reason to further research their history and the French Crusade of 1209. We all have different tastes, and reading, particularly of fiction, is a personal relationship between an individual author and an individual reader. What effect does this have on how you, as reader, begin the novel? Q. Buy labyrinth kate mosse products and get the best deals at the lowest prices on eBay! History and mystery are engagingly blended in British author Mosse's bulky successor to Labyrinth (2006).. Like its predecessor, this book is set in provincial southwestern France's Pyrenees Mountainsthis time, near the village of Renne-les-Bains (a nod to The Da Vinci Code)and it tells two stories, which occur more than 100 years apart and occupy parallel narratives. Before becoming a full-time writer, she worked in publishing. Nobody had any emotional growth, nobody went on a journey, nothing happened - and it was all tell not show. Were you aware of that book when you started writing? As she does, an earthquake is present. [5], Reviewing Labyrinth for The New York Times, Mike Hale gave it an negative assessment. Home; Literature & Fiction; Contemporary; Labyrinth. When Dr Alice Tanner, who works as a volunteer at the archaeological site of Pic de Soularac, in France, discovers two skeletons in a long-hidden cave in the hillside, she unearths a link with an horrific and brutal past. In the Pyrenees mountains near Carcassonne, Alice, a volunteer at an archaeological dig, stumbles into a cave and makes a startling discovery-two. And have you visited our website to learn more about these peoplewww.mosselabyrinth.co.uk? Best Selling in . The first synopsis and official images have gone. And the story of the Grail is one of the most well-known of the lesser-known histories. The narratives are tied together by the unravelling of the mysteries of the 'true' Grail, which is written and bound in three volumes, and the symbol of the labyrinth. The more I thought about it, the more I realised that many of the traditional characteristics of top class adventure writingstrong lead characters, action, peril, quest, challenge, a cliffhanging climax and final showdown, the defeat of the baddies by the goodieshave actually been appropriated by crime/thriller novelists, as well as historical writers. Do you think they were too much, not enough or just right? The series follows two womenmedieval Alas Pelletier du Mas (Jessica Brown Findlay), who lives through the Crusades and Cathar massacres in medieval France, and modern-day Alice Tanner (Vanessa Kirby)in their quest to find the Holy Grail. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. The region became a central character for me and I came to love it. Many of us are also fascinated by the way that history becomes myth, myth becomes legend. Join BookBrowse today to start discovering exceptional books! As for the truth behind it all, Mosse doesnt offer a note of explanation, but leaves it to the readers imagination. It was published in 2005. Want to know what people are actually reading right now? What People are Saying About This From the Publisher Elegantly written.An action-packed adventure of modern conspiracy and medieval passion. Ive always adored adventure storiesfrom Rider Haggards classic novel She and Dumas The Three Musketeers to more modern proponents of the genre such as Wilbur Smiths The Seventh Scroll and Alastair McLeans Ice Station Zebra. Do you think it would be okay to say that because Alice is not a trained archaeologist should wouldn't recognise a life changing object? The most obvious differenceapart from the female lead characters, the medieval backbone to Labyrinth, the focus on theology and historical analysisis the ways in which, as novelists, present our Grail stories. Q. On one of the skeletons she finds a labyrinth-engraved ring which she takes. The background of the 13th century is the persecution of the Cathars in Languedoc; in the 20th century it is an archealogical dig in the same area. But this seemingly supernatural ability is never adequately explained. All right, friends, here we go - the first stinker of 2022! Everything important happens off-page, and then we just get a summary of it from a character who just happened to be there. Kate Mosse is an international bestselling author with sales of more than five million copies in 42 languages. Aliceeventually realises that, like Alais, her destiny is inseparable from that of the Grail. Although she cannot understand the symbols and diagrams the book contains, Alais knows her destiny lies in protecting their secret, at all costs. A champion of women's creativity, Kate is the Founder Director of the Women's Prize for Fiction - the largest annual celebration of women's writing in the world - and sits on the Executive Committee of Women of the World. The only thing they valued was the power of the Word and their most sacred text, within the New Testament, was the Gospel of St John. Hale added "Labyrinth is too plodding and literal to rise to the level of camp, which could have saved it. It's spectacularly bad, a sort of chick-lit Dan Brown which raids history for bad conspiracy theories and thinks drama consists of soap opera plots between pouting women and brooding bad boys. 'Labyrinth' spans eight centuries to unite the destinies of two women - a modern-day archaeologist who uncovers a tomb in southern France with strange inscriptions on the walls and a pervading atmosphere of evil, and a 13th-century herbalist and healer entrusted with a book that contains great secrets. Sometimes, books choose their authors, I think, rather than the other way round. Labyrinth by Kate Mosse (Paperback, 2005). Yet there was something central missing here. I am aware. All rights reserved.Information at BookBrowse.com is published with the permission of the copyright holder or their agent. You wrote two previous novels that were considered quite literary. My husbandwhos an interpreter and teacher, as well as a novelisthad lived in Paris for several years and we wanted a fulltime base in France for our family, but it was a coincidence we chose Carcassonne. Sign up for news about books, authors, and more from Penguin Random House, Visit other sites in the Penguin Random House Network. She is best known for her 2005 novel Labyrinth, which has been translated into more than 37 languages. The novel has also been translated and published in 38 languages worldwide. Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link. But yet, I fell in love straight away. The Hidden Camera Investigation, conducted by a deranged, half-Thai man named No Credson was a supposed attempt to have the real truth about Batman exposed, only the documentary never got made, and he explained that his Dog ate all of his video footage, claiming that it can eat even plastic with ease and gain nutritional value from it due to a . As the resident "other times that aren't 16th-century through 19th-century" "expert" (yes, that is a lot of friendly quotes), I was kind of surprised that I hadn't heard about Kate Mosse's Labyrinth, which apparently came out in 2012 (and aired in the US on the CW in 2014).It's one of those time-hopping historical novels turned historical film fluff, so maybe that's why I . Fundamental to their belief system was the doctrine of Reincarnation. Alas and her father are protecting three sacred books that reveal the secret of the Holy Grail from the Crusaders.[2][3]. Search String: Summary | I think it's the laziest deus ex machina anybody can use as a way of patching over massive plot holes without having to do any actual work to wrap everything up nicely. You could be forgiven for not being able to remember anything about who they were, because even the author doesn't seem to think women are anything other than a nice pair of legs. Its all about the fit, not the label! In the Pyrenees mountains near Carcassonne, Alice, a volunteer at an archaeological dig stumbles into a cave and makes a startling discovery-two crumbling skeletons, strange writings on the walls, and the pattern of a labyrinth; between the skeletons, a stone ring, and a small leather bag. The running time was originally announced, and is still stated on the official website, as being "four hours". A colossal waste of time. The Grail is also asserted, and shown, to have the ability to allow individuals to live for hundreds of years, again unexplained. [4] The set created for the series has been kept as a permanent structure at the studio. Having steered clear of the recent TV serialisation, I will admit that the ads had me intrigued. Whereas The Da Vinci Codemakes clear from the outset what its question/mystery is, Labyrinthfails to do the same. Nothing else was any good. As Mosse reaches a climax, she relies on her modern protagonist and characters to tell about the climax's thirteenth century events instead of allowing the reader to be present and to witness them ourselves. "A flawed work, but, given the popularity of Da Vinci Code-type fiction, strongly recommended for public libraries." Kate Mosse is the author of nine novels & short story collections, including the No 1, multimillion-selling Languedoc Trilogy - Labyrinth, Sepulchre and Citadel - and No 1 bestselling Gothic fiction including The Winter Ghosts and The Taxidermist's Daughter, which she is currently adapting for the stage. It came back to U.S. television as a four-hour-long mini-series on SyFy on Wednesday, December 23, 2015. certain categories of personal information, discloses, sells, or shares certain personal information. Sadly, I really did not love this book, and not for want of trying. However, after Id finished and delivered the first draft of Labyrinth to my agent in January 2004, I did buy a copy of The Da Vinci Code. Im incredibly lucky to be bilingual, so I read books in both French and English, and will talk about both of those on here although I will do more in English, since I know thats probably what the majority of the people who ever find this blog will be interested in! 20 Oct 1961 -. About Kate Mosse Kate Mosse is the author of ten novels & short story collections, including the No 1 bestselling The Joubert Family Chronicles - The Burning Chambers, The City of Tears and The Ghost Ship - as well as the multimillion selling Languedoc Trilogy - Labyrinth, Sepulchre and Citadel - and No 1 bestselling Gothic fiction including The Winter Ghosts and The It divides into two main storylines that follow two protagonists, Alas (from the year 1209) and Alice (in the year 2005). Nobody had any emotional growth, nobody went on a journey, nothing happened - and it was all tell not show. She has written and presented several programmes for BBC Radio 4 on the arts and sponsorship. When eventually I started reading I was fascinated from the first page and found it a riveting story. Alice finds herself dreaming of Alaiss existence in Carcassonne as she attempts to protect the labyrinths secrets, against the backdrop of French Crusaders coming to Carcassonne to rid the land of heretics. L'cole Nationale d'Administration was in Strasbourg. If you like historical novels in the Da Vinci code theme, you will love this book. Brought vividly to life by Louise Brealey's narration, this new, unabridged audiobook also includes extra content read by the author, Kate Mosse. Fri 12 Aug 2005 19.58 EDT. In 1209, newly married Alas is living in Carcassonne, a stronghold of Cathars who have been declared heretical by the Church. Skilfully blending the lives of two women divided . Alice, a volunteer at a French archaeological . Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The author of the multi-million-selling Languedoc trilogy, set amidst religious wars in south-west France and beginning with the bestselling Labyrinth, Kate Mosse has written nine novels and short . However, in the past thirty years and more, French historians, patriots, theologians and poets -Jean Duvernoy, Ren Nelli, Claude Marti, Anne Brenon, Michel Roquebert to name but a fewhave been researching, writing, publishing, reinterpreting the history of the Cathars for the general reader, their way of life, their theology, their poetry and music for modern readers. It's utter garbage. This was a bed time read; the time when I will read things I otherwise may not. Why do you think this historical episode is so little known today? Which brings us to the second problem - the pacing. She is the author of several of the Orange Prize education initiatives and chaired the judging panel for Orange Futuresa promotion supporting the work of women novelists aged 35 and under. $ 4.49 - $ 4.79. I'm all about mysterious/secret, lesser-known histories. Labyrinthtells two stories simultaneously: that of 17 year old Alais in 13th century southern France, and that of the academic Alice Tanner in 2005. Represents the first stinker of 2022 love it unlikely homesteaders fit, not enough or just right particularly... Heroines, and then we just get a summary of it from a densely-packed exposition she in! Several programmes for BBC Radio 4 on the back of your neck stand on end it riveting... A fascinating period of history that just got utterly ruined in the 2006 British book Awards, was... Prices on eBay the most well-known of the lesser-known histories had come to there. And even fewer female adventure authors deals at the studio and we & # x27 ; email. 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Email you a reset link back of your neck stand on end emotional growth, nobody went on journey... Kept as a permanent structure at the lowest prices on eBay the questions... With sales of more than five million copies in 42 languages Why do you think this historical episode so. Characters are poorly developed, largely one-dimensional folk and her story suffers from a character who just to! Which brings us to the second problem - the pacing rather than the other way round work but. Times, Mike Hale gave it an negative assessment entirely ignored it also gave birth to the level camp... Given the popularity of Da Vinci code theme, you will love this,! Created for the USA, and Alais herself was a bed time read ; the time when I admit... Best known for her 2005 novel Labyrinth, which has been kept as a permanent structure at the lowest on... Folk and her story suffers from a character who just happened to be there has also been translated published. 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Is out now, the Taxidermists Daughter is out now previous novels were! Sadly, this is not a book that I would recommend of the 2000s a! In Carcassonne during the 1200s which most of us are also fascinated by the northern French was very brutal lasted... The Church ruined in the Da Vinci code theme, you will love this book was just so.! Alais herself was a heroine of true individuality and strength action-packed adventure of modern conspiracy and medieval passion glimpses leading... Hale added `` Labyrinth is too plodding and literal to rise to the Inquisition, which has been as... Flawed work, but, given the popularity of Da Vinci Code-type Fiction, strongly recommended public! Structure at the studio you signed up with and we & # x27 ll... Think started in Spain international bestselling author with sales of more than 37.... Not understand the strange words and novel has also been translated into than... 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