Citadel

Product Information

Kate Mosse's much-loved non-fiction book shares the story of what it is like to care for those we love.

I read the first two books of the trilogy and really wasn't sure where she'd go next. I only knew there would be a lot of Languedoc stuff in it. Really, I have no desire to see France, but I'd love to visit the Languedoc region! Kate Mosse is an award-winning novelist, playwright, essayist and non-fiction writer, the author of eight novels and short story collections, including the multimillion-selling Languedoc Trilogy, The Burning Chambers Series and number one bestselling Gothic fiction The Winter Ghosts and The Taxidermist’s Daughter. Her books have been translated into thirty-seven languages and published in more than forty countries. The Founder Director of the Women’s Prize for Fiction, she is the Founder of the global Woman In History campaign. I did not like the Epilogue. I felt that it took away the impact of the last chapter (mainly that last paragraph) and seemed rather unnecessary; however, it may have done something to tie in the rest of the books in this series. Kate Mosse grew up in Chichester and attended Chichester High School and New College, Oxford. She graduated in 1981 with a BA in English and spent the next 7 years publishing in London. In 1992, she left publishing and started working on her writing career. In 2001, she began working on the first book of her series, Labyrinth which has sold millions of copies in more than 40 countries.It is the second book in the series and involves Leonie Vernier and her brother Anatole. In 1891, they are invited by their widowed aunt to the beautiful town of Rennes-les-Bains in southwest France. Their aunt owns a mountain estate, Domain de la Cade which is famous in the region. Citadel is probably best described as a 'time-slip' story, with the main part of the novel set in France during the German occupation in 1942 - 1944. Also featuring is Arinius, a monk living in 342 AD. Arininus is desperately trying to find a hiding place for the forbidden 'Codex', which is said to have the power to raise a 'sleeping army of ghosts'.

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.

Publication Order of Anthologies

I felt the parallel story set in the 4th C was rather dull and repetitive, it was there purely to serve the main story and that showed. The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants the things that must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, who bore witness to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw." Revelation 1: 1-2. ESV I do wish I'd known that Kate Mosse weaves the supernatural in to all her books before I started reading this. If I had, the introduction of the Ghost Army wouldn't have jolted me to a halt. It just seemed so unnecessary and daft as the culmination of its appearance was unsatisfactory and confusing. I imagine this is what it's like for people watching From Dusk Til Dawn who haven't realised there were two directors which is why the film goes oddly vampiric halfway through. Alas, it’s fair to say that Citadel and I did not hit it off. Ours was a date best described by words like “tepid” and “mediocre”. Citadel likes to talk about itself, and boy, it had certainly had its share of adventure sto relate. But I kept wondering when the real story would start and when I would actually learn something about what kind of book this was. Instead, it kept referencing new people and events in its life. And the worst, by far, was Arinius. Kate Mosse got married to Greg, her old school friend. Currently, she lives with her husband and family in Chichester and Carcassonne.