Rating - ⭐
"In the Pyrenees mountains near Carcassonne, Alice, a volunteer at an archaeological dig, stumbles into a cave and makes a startling discovery-two crumbling skeletons, strange writings on the walls, and the pattern of a labyrinth. Eight hundred years earlier, on the eve of a brutal crusade that will rip apart southern France, a young woman named Alais is given a ring and a mysterious book for safekeeping by her father. The book, he says, contains the secret of the true Grail, and the ring, inscribed with a labyrinth, will identify a guardian of the Grail. Now, as crusading armies gather outside the city walls of Carcassonne, it will take a tremendous sacrifice to keep the secret of the labyrinth safe."
Labyrinth by Kate Mosse is the first installment in the Languedoc series.
With a book clocking in at an impressive 515 pages, I was expecting to be wowed. It promised a lot of elements that I loved - archaeology, history and mystery. In the end however, all I was left with was disappointment at how much time I wasted reading this. For a book that long, a whole lot of nothing actually happened. By the end of the book, I was left entirely unsatisfied and unmotivated to read the rest of the series.
For me, the characters fell flat and were uninteresting, and the plot was rather slow-paced. I knew I wasn't in for a good time when our first main character, Alice, who is a volunteer for an archaeological dig who does not have any experience whatsoever, picks up and object she finds and pockets it. As someone who took archaeology courses in university, I was internally screaming at this. From that point on, my interest in this weaned incredibly. If you're looking for a high-stakes mystery that keeps you on your toes, this is not the one for you.