Citadel

Product Information

Een prachtig verhaal wat geschiedenis, bon homme, een codex, een oorlog, en liefdesverhaal met elkaar verweven. I felt that the central story of a group of women resistance fighters, in the Languedoc region of France, during WW2, to be sufficient, in itself, to maintain the reader's interest. Photograph: Martin Godwin for the Observer Kate Mosse OBE, her reputation as a champion of popular fiction cemented.

At the centre is a young woman Sandrine and as the book begins we see her becoming aware of what is happening around here and beginning to plan her group. And when she meets Raoul, they discover a shared passion for the cause, for their homeland, and for each other. According to Alais’s father, the book harbors the secrets of the true Grail, the ring and is inscribed with a labyrinth.She is impressively knowledgeable about her adopted corner of France, and you can't fault her evocation of the "Frenchness" we Anglo-Saxons love. A superb blend of rugged action and haunting mystery, Citadel is a vivid and richly atmospheric story of love, faith, heroism, and danger—and a group of extraordinary women who dare the impossible to survive. I loved how she wove recent history with the distant past in this story about the French resistance in the Languedoc.

I often found myself skimming a few too many times within the same hour-long reading period and not feeling the urgent need to pick up the book each night when bedtime arrived. Yet again loved her description of the country and the book intensified my desire to visit that region of France. I think this would make a good holiday read - well apart from when the Gestapo are involved - it is pacy and made me question again what I would do if my country was invaded as France was, and how I would respond to torture, but in my opinion it isn't quite as good as her other work, perhaps because instead of telling a more straightforward tale of the resistance, Mosse attempted to press the story into the same shape as the first two Languedoc novels.I don't really think she knew where it was going when she set out and some characters like Laval seemed to have no particular significance and their role and affiliations were utterly unclear. She is 17 and lives with her father, the taxidermist, in the remains of what was once Gifford’s world famous museum of taxidermy.

And new heroes and heroines, Raoul, Sandrine, Lucie, Marianne, too many to name all related somehow to the story of the characters of the previous book like a cycle. As the war reaches its violent and bloody conclusion, Sandrine's fate is tied up with that of three very different men. Led by 18 year old Sandrine Vidal, her sister and their friends, these woman show courage and daring, never knowing who is watching them or who will betray them to the authorities. Cruise one of the oldest canals in the world; the Canal du Midi is unique and breathtakingly beautiful, earning the title of UNESCO World Heritage Site. Labyrinth was followed by Sepulchre in 2007, and again, I loved it and have anticipated the release of Citadel for such a long time.This idea of a connection between the story of a secret Cathar treasure and the grail was given substance in the 20th century by the work of Otto Rahn, a German historian and SS officer who believed that the Cathars held the key to the grail mystery, and that the evidence was somewhere beneath the ruins of Montségur. The international bestselling novelist and playwright, Kate Mosse – a Chichester girl, born and bred – is writing the anniversary book for CFT’s first half century. It was a super emotive book, not only due to what was happening, the Nazi occupation, the deportations to the camps, the isolation, but also the unity and loyalty of people, their bravery to fight not only the Nazi but their own government accepting Hitler's regime and also the way that the author linked these characters to the ones in the previous two books in the series.

She has a particular knack for creating vivid action scenes — the blood, debris and panic of a bomb attack, or a skirmish – but she describes with equal precision the small, daily hardships of life under occupation: the endless paperwork, the difficulties of communication, the twitching curtains next door. Chichester Festival Theatre at Fifty is a decade-by-decade celebration, a love letter in words and pictures, based on interviews by many of those who’ve played their part in the enduring success of one of Britain’s most important and best loved theatres. There is no sense of discrimination from an industry that is nowadays entirely driven by money rather than literary worth or producing novels that are worthy at least in terms of enjoyment. The final volume of Kate Mosse's Languedoc Trilogy is nigh on 1,000 pages long, a suitably millennial length for her trademark long view of French history. Like their ancestors who fought to protect their land from Northern invaders seven hundred years before, these members of the resistance—codenamed Citadel—fight to liberate their home from the Nazis.However, rather than simply dealing with this, Mosse chooses to interweave the most ludicrous plot about a Codex. Her network - codenamed 'Citadel' - is made up of ordinary women who risk everything to fight the sinister battles raging in the shadows around them. I enjoyed reading about Carcassonne and greatly enjoyed the history involved in the creation of the novel.