[books 2013] Citadel
Sep. 13th, 2013 02:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
inulro53. Citadel by Kate Mosse
The final book in a sort of trilogy - I thought the first volume, Labyrinth, was OK, and absolutely loved the second, Sepulchre. Plus there's a novella that sort of fits in too called The Winter Ghosts, which is utterly fantastic.
They're set in a part of France that I'm really familiar with, the area around Carcassonne and Tarascon-sur-Ariège, which is a great deal of the appeal.
I bought this in hardcover because Amazon had a really good special and I'd ordered it from the library but couldn't renew it and didn't have the time to read it in the 3 weeks allowed. I meant to be finished it before the paperback came out, but I always had a book club book to read or other library books that couldn't be renewed.
This one is mostly the story of a cell of the French Resistance in the second world war and life under Vichy and then Nazi occupation. The historical parallel timeline is in the collapse of the Roman empire in the 340s, is relatively undeveloped and is not all that interesting (though it could have been if there was more of it).
The mystical and supernatural element really seemed to be tacked on as an afterthought here.
When I did have time to read it properly, I could get through 100 pages in a day, so it is entirely possible that it's better than the circumstances surrounding my reading would suggest. I'm still undecided.
The final book in a sort of trilogy - I thought the first volume, Labyrinth, was OK, and absolutely loved the second, Sepulchre. Plus there's a novella that sort of fits in too called The Winter Ghosts, which is utterly fantastic.
They're set in a part of France that I'm really familiar with, the area around Carcassonne and Tarascon-sur-Ariège, which is a great deal of the appeal.
I bought this in hardcover because Amazon had a really good special and I'd ordered it from the library but couldn't renew it and didn't have the time to read it in the 3 weeks allowed. I meant to be finished it before the paperback came out, but I always had a book club book to read or other library books that couldn't be renewed.
This one is mostly the story of a cell of the French Resistance in the second world war and life under Vichy and then Nazi occupation. The historical parallel timeline is in the collapse of the Roman empire in the 340s, is relatively undeveloped and is not all that interesting (though it could have been if there was more of it).
The mystical and supernatural element really seemed to be tacked on as an afterthought here.
When I did have time to read it properly, I could get through 100 pages in a day, so it is entirely possible that it's better than the circumstances surrounding my reading would suggest. I'm still undecided.
