| Rating: | ★★★★ |
| Category: | Books |
| Genre: | Mystery & Thrillers |
| Author: | Kate Mosse |
If you haven’t already guessed I’m a big fan of historical fiction and both of these books didn’t disappoint on this front. Her first book Labyrinth was released not long after Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code & initially I thought “great another grail story riding on the coat tails of current popularity”, however after reading this book it was evident that Kate had spent years of research on this book, her attention to detail is amazing.
I like the fact that Kate has strong female characters in her stories, and she also splits the story between two time frames, that of medieval France (Labyrinth),19th century France (Sepulchre) and the modern day (both). Some characters in the first novel also appear in the second, although it is definitely not a continuation of the same story.
Of the two books I preferred Labyrinth but they were both a great read.
A brief synopsis of the books is given below:
LABYRINTH
When Dr Alice Tanner discovers two skeletons during an archaeological dig in southern France, she unearths a link with a horrific and brutal past. But it's not just the sight of the shattered bones that makes her uneasy; there's an overwhelming sense of evil in the tomb that Alice finds hard to shake off, even in the bright French sunshine. Puzzled by the words carved inside the chamber, Alice has an uneasy feeling that she has disturbed something which was meant to remain hidden...Eight hundred years ago, on the night before a brutal civil war ripped apart Languedoc, a book was entrusted to Alais, a young herbalist and healer. Although she cannot understand the symbols and diagrams the book contains, Alais knows her destiny lies in protecting their secret, at all costs. Skilfully blending the lives of two women divided by centuries but united by a common destiny, LABYRINTH is a powerful story steeped in the atmosphere and history of southern France.
SEPULCHRE
October 1891: A young girl, Leonie Vernier, and her brother, Anatole, are invited to leave the gas-lit streets of Paris and travel south to a mysterious country house - La Domaine de la Cade - near Carcassonne. There, in the ancient, dark woods, Leonie comes across a ruined sepulchre and is drawn into a century's old mystery of murder, ghosts and a strange set of tarot cards that seem to hold enormous power over life and death. October 2007: Meredith Martin decides to take a break from her research trip in Paris - where she is studying musician Claude Debussy - and head down south to a beautiful hotel in the woods. She becomes fascinated by the history of the place and particularly by the tragic events of one Halloween night more than a century before that shocked the small community. Thus her fate becomes entwined with that of Leonie. But it is only when she too stumbles over a secluded glade in the forest that she realises that the secrets it contains are far from dead and buried...A haunting mystery of revenge and obsession, set against the rich backdrop of southern France.
