Kate Mosse

Labyrinth — (2005) Available for download at Audible.com. Publisher: 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 — (2007) Available for download at Audible.com. Publisher: An elderly priest brutallymurdered. The body of a young man floating in the River Aude. A nervous woman sitting in a damask-draped room. A smiling man in the shadows. Four different people, scattered across France, scattered across the ages. The only link, the painted tarot cards they hold... SEPULCHRE is a spellbinding adventure that carries us back from the present day in the French spa-town of Rennes-les-Bains, first to the 19th century, and then further back into the stories of the ancient kings buried there with their treasure. For those who stumble upon the cards, unravelling the mystery of the painted deck will take them on a treacherous journeyof forbidden knowledge, the power of the church and the pull of the occult. A tale of strange music, personal ruin, murderous greed and age-old secrets — prepare yourself to turn over the cards...

Sepulchre: Obnoxious pretension

Kate Mosse's Sepulchre is a historical fantasy — historical fiction with fantastic elements. I enjoy both genres, and this novel features a female graduate student (somebody I can relate to) as one of the main characters, and it's available for download at Audible.com, so I thought it would be good entertainment on my commute. I got about ten chapters in before quitting.

The book seems well-researched, is competently written, the tone switches easily from past to present and back, and the characters are interesting enough. Here is the problem: It is full of enormous amounts of tedious descriptions of ancient and current French landmarks, French historical events, French historical figures, and untranslated French dialogue. I realize, of course, that France is the setting of this historical novel, but the effect of all of this name-dropping is to make me think that Ms. Mosse feels the need to prove she did her research — she's trying too hard, and it comes off as pretentious. And obnoxious. Especially when I'm listening to it in audio format and I can't just skim over the French words. Here are some examples:

"It was not quite dawn, yet Paris was waking. In the distance, Anatole could hear the sounds of delivery carts. Wooden traps over the cobbles, delivering milk and freshly baked bread to the cafes and bars of the Faubourg Montmartre. He stopped to put on his shoes. The rue Feydeau was deserted; there was no sound except the clip of his heels on the pavement. Deep in thought, Anatole walked quickly, to the junction with the rue Saint-Marc, intending to cut through the arcade of the Passage des Panoramas. He saw no one, heard no one."

"By the time a smoggy and hesitant dawn broke over the offices of the Commissariat of Police of the eighth arrondissement in the rue de Lisbonne, tempers were already frayed. The body of a woman identified as Madame Marguerite Vernier has been discovered shortly after eight o'clock on the evening of Sunday, September 20. The news had been telephoned in from one of the new public booths on the corner of the rue de Berlin and the rue d'Amsterdam by a reporter from Le Petit Journal."

And this one was the worst:
"In the next stack she discovered a first edition of Maistre's Voyage autour de ma chambre. It was battered and dog-eared, unlike Anatole's pristine copy at home. In another alcove she found a collection of both religious and fervently antireligious texts, grouped together as if to cancel one another out. In the section devoted to contemporary French literature, there was a set of Zola's Rougon-Macquart novels, as well as Flaubert, Maupassant and Huysmans — indeed, many of the intellectually improving texts Anatole tried in vain to press upon her, even a first edition of Stendhal's Le rouge et le noir. There were a few works in translation but nothing entirely to her taste except for Baudelaire's translations of Monsieur Poe. Nothing by Madame Radcliffe or Monsieur Le Fanu ... The first was Dogme et rituel de la haute magie by Éliphaas Lévi. Next to it was a volume titled Traité méthodique de science occulte. On the shelf above, several other writings by Papus, Court de Gébelin, Etteilla and MacGregor Mathers. She had never read such authors but knew they were occultist writers and considered subversive. Their names appeared regularly in the columns of newspapers and periodicals."

At first, I found myself rolling my eyes at every French phrase and name-drop, but since that started to become a driving hazard, I just quit listening. I would much rather read a story whose purpose is to entertain me, not to enlighten or impress me. Sadly, Sepulchre did none of these things. —Kat Hooper

The Winter Ghosts — (2011) Available for download at Audible.com. Publisher: By the author of the New York Times-bestselling Labyrinth, a story of two lives touched by war and transformed by courage. In the winter of 1928, still seeking some kind of resolution to the horrors of World War I, Freddie is traveling through the beautiful but forbidding French Pyrenees. During a snowstorm, his car spins off the mountain road. Dazed, he stumbles through the woods, emerging in a tiny village, where he finds an inn to wait out the blizzard. There he meets Fabrissa, a lovely young woman also mourning a lost generation. Over the course of one night, Fabrissa and Freddie share their stories. By the time dawn breaks, Freddie will have unearthed a tragic, centuries-old mystery, and discovered his own role in the life of this remote town.