Customer Reviews: Read 90 more reviews...
 Same plot, different story.... September 29, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Is it only me or is Sepulchre more or less identical to Labyrinth? I'm ploughing through it, skim-reading quite a lot of it admittedly, but when Shelah O'Donnell turns up and "an incident in the Sabarthes mountains in 2005" is mentioned, the ENTIRE plot of Labyrinth comes back to me, rather than me just thinking it was tediously similar. Audric Baillard is, of course, still floating around too! I'm finding myself now trying to recap on the earlier book, rather than wondering what's going to happen next in this one, which is surely not good!
Its going to be hard work in order to finish the "final" 250 pages, which is such a shame. Kate Mosse could be an extremely competent and actually very good historical writer, as she's clearly very well-read, intelligent woman.
739 pages do not necessarily make a good book!
 Disappointing September 21, 2008
I found this book quite disappointing. It seemed to me as if the author had done loads of research on historical events, Debussy, Tarot etc and then just tried to cram it all together in this weak story and it didn't work. The book was way too long, it should have been at least a third shorter. I agree with other reviewers that the modern segments were the weakest, Meredith and Hal were not fully rounded characters. Somehow though I did want to persevere with it and read it to the end, although it was less than gripping.
 Not as good as it thinks it is September 13, 2008
To the ending first - not quite as confusing or as horrendously contrived as Labyrinth, but still irritating. If I'd been editing this book I'd have had a good go at it with my red pen, but maybe Ms Mosse's previous success left the editors afraid to cross anything out. I wish I had a fiver for how many times trees are described as 'plunging and rearing in the wind like horses', and we don't need to know the clothes and hair colour of every person sitting in the cafe when Meredith has a coffee, nor do we always need to know what she has for breakfast - silly details which slow down the action. After the first few chapters, set in Paris, I nearly lost the will to live, but once the story had moved to the South of France the pace picked up and it became more interesting. I started to enjoy it, apart from the fake Americanisms mentioned by other reviewers. I would recommend this book as a curiosity to those interested in the whole Rennes-le-Chateau thing (Sauniere makes a small guest appearance) but sloppy editing and pretentiousness make this novel not as good as it thinks it is.
a bit of everything, a lot of nothing............. September 9, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
A bit of everything, a lot of nothing.............charity shop bookshelves will have an awful lot of copies of these books.
I beg her publishers NOT to let the author write in this vein and at this length again. Or get her a writing partner.... there's clearly talent, but boy does it need honing...this is like readng a work in progress, just that someone bound it and pushed it out into the shops before it was finished....Do publishers actually READ their books bfore publishing them?!?
Predictable & Disappointing August 30, 2008
From the opening chapters you realise that there is a lot of unneccessary filling (or padding) in this novel and as the book progresses, the plot development and ending becomes predictable and obvious. I'd lost interest about two-thirds of the way through and was very tempted to stop reading. But I had to keep reading simply to prove to myself that I was right about the plot and the ending - and I was. Certain strands of the storyline are totally superfluous and had they not been included, would not have been missed. And, if I'm being honest the standard of writing is poor.
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