Labyrinth

Gave up at 12%.

I grew increasingly infuriated with this book. Perhaps I had too high hopes for it. I'd anticipated a literary version of Dan Brown - all the excitment and adventure, but well written.

As a number of other Goodreads reviewers have pointed out, it's actually the direct opposite of Dan Brown. Everything he does badly, Mosse does well. Unfortunately, it also means that what Brown does well, Mosse does badly. Primarily, plotting.

Brown has puzzles and secrets and mysteries and twists and brawls which drive you relentlessly forward. Sure, it's not pretty, but it's engaging. Mosse seems to edge around all of these things: there are chases and fights, but they entail no peril; there are secrets, but they are mundane; there's what I think is supposed to be a twist but it was already clear after 200 of the 550 interminable pages. (Spoiler: Audric Baillard is Sajhe!)

But there are no puzzles. There's no clever working out, or excited discoveries. As a reader you don't feel like you're joining in the uncovering of a mystery. There's just a ring, and a disc, and some books, all of which have some mystical (religious?) powers.

And there's another difference: Brown's books are very much rooted in reality, the grim treachery of religions, and the people who use them for their own ends. Labyrinth is supernatural, though without much explanation or excitement. You pretty soon get bored of people half-recognising other characters, or feeling like they've been somewhere before, but not knowing why. All this tentative, allusive language is an apt representation of reading the book. There's just no way in. There's a ghost of something fun and compelling, but it's evasive.

And there's absolutely no need for this book to be 500 pages. After 400 pages of tedium, there's then 50 pages of exposition where one character just tells another character what other boring stuff happened.

I'm sure that all the historical research would be interesting to anyone who's keen on this period of history - and I certainly learnt a lot more from this than anything Robert Langdon uncovers on his own terrifying thrill rides through Europe.

But if I've bought a ticket to a theme park I'd much rather spend 10 minutes on a rollercoaster than an hour in a lecture theatre.

I was going to give it 3 stars but have wound myself up writing this and realised that I didn't really enjoy it, at all, so have dropped it to 2 stars.

Sepulchre honestly had been better than this one, but both deserve 5 stars, and even more. The book is magnificent. It is something that I will carry within me - just like sepulchre - my entire life. Words cannot really describe how good these books - sepulchre and labyrinth - are.
Kate Mosse gave us just a little tiny piece of information every chapter only to blow our minds in the end.
I am only wondering if Marie-Cécile is one of the descendants of Oriane. It seems so hmmmm

Just one little defect exists in this book. Kate Mosse goes on telling history and describes places in what seems like pages that bored the hell out of me. But hey, you can't ask for everything, can you?
And honestly, honestly, honestly, I think Dan Brown should kill himself because of her. Kick some asses, Kate! HIGH FIVE

Okay I know this will seem weird, but Alice at the beginning of the book drew the entrance to the cave. So I tried to sketch it as well. Maybe the result was not very satisfying, and it seems retarded lol but hey... Have a look.



My heart is hammering so fast at the moment. I am still living in the ecstasy of this book, in the world Kate Mosse has created where people live hundreds of years if they knew the right people wink wink just kidding... if they knew the right secrets.
The same happened to me when I finished (even if I broke up with my ex just after finishing it but that's not the point) Sepulchre.
Both Labyrinth and Sepulchre are books that once you finish and look around, for just a few seconds you wonder “where the hell am I?” but then everything comes back into you, and think: My life is soooo boring. (Even if so much death exists in her novels but I expected it)
I can't wait to read citadel. But not right now. I just want some time to descend from the ecstasy this book has lifted me into.


My life seems so empty right now.... Sigh :(

There's a lot to dislike about this book. The unnecessary, unbelievable characters, muddying everything up. The last-minute flurry of exposition. Not to mention Mosse's irritating narrative tics (how many characters can we reasonably believe can/should be knocked out over the course of a 600-something page novel? Do French people actually say everything twice, once in French and again in English?). Certainly, it's more literary than Dan Brown, but this sometimes works against the novel. Mosse is clearly aiming for a fast-paced thriller at certain points, but then gets bogged down in description, parading the amount of research she clearly did. On the one hand, I really do feel like this would have been a better, more exciting book if she'd toned down the literary aspirations. On the other hand, it's perfectly satisfactory holiday reading.

This was a good fictional account of the 13th century Albigensian Crusade (also known as the Cathar Crusade) in which the French Catholics in the northern part of France attacked the Cathars, a Christian sect, in the Languedoc in the south. I liked how these events were portrayed in the lives of Alais, her sister Orianne, her husband Guilhelm, and her father, Bertrand.

The 21st century scenes were not as good as the 13th century ones. I wanted to know more about how various characters were counterparts to the 13th century ones and many characters had similar names which added to the confusion. Still, I liked how Alice discovers the truth about her ancestor, Alais.

Enjoyed this one!!

I liked it. It's not as good as Katherine Neville's Eight, but better than Da Vinci Code. I like the mystery part of the book - the idea of that the secret is being protected by Goddess herself and thus it won't open if you are not worthy...