I really enjoyed Labyrinth by Kate Mosse although I felt the ending was a let down after the highs of the rest of the book so I was really looking forward to reading (listening actually as I aquired it on audiobook). Unfortunately the weak points I felt held back Labyrinth where increasingly in evidence in this book. The descriptions of the Languedoc were powerful still, but the underlying mystery of the Sepulchre and its link to Tarot symbols and a mysterious power was weakly explained to the point of almost being ignored. I felt that ending seemed rushed after the slow gradual buildup of the novel overall and many intriguing bits of mysterious happenings or things discovered in the novel seemed to have been forgotten by the end or rolled up in a general "Well things are all interlinked in some mysterious way" explanation which failed to satisfy me.

Positives of the book were the descriptions of the environment and the obvious research that went into writing about the south of France. I agree however with another reviewer on the site the the occasional popping up of sentences in French were a bit jarring as I assumed all of the English sentences the French characters said to each other would have been in French - I didn't need a French sentence to remind me the Verniers were French.

I feel underneath there is a good novel yearning to get out in Sepulchre, but the rush of the ending and the various unexplained occurrences really let it down for me. ( )

I listened to this on audiobook, read by the same woman (Donada Peters) who so excellently narrated Mosse's previous novel, Labyrinth. This is a similar story: modern woman's life is intertwined with that of long-dead French woman. In this case, the women's lives are only about a hundred years apart. I wish I'd been able to read this closer to Labyrinth. It's not a sequel, but some characters do reappear. The best part about listening to this on audiobook was that the song "Sepulchre," which plays a significant role in the story, is played in the background at various points in the recording. It was hauntingly beautiful. ( )

Not as good as Labyrinth and good read all the same. I found it difficult to get into, but once things started quickening up from the middle onwards I really enjoyed the story. ( )

I have to admit I am a bit overwhelmed with writing my review of Sepulchre by Kate Mosse. Luckily I am on vacation so I have all the time I need to give it a go. Sepulchre is over 735 pages long not including the Reader's Notes and Sepulchre Tour pages. Very daunting number of pages to any reader I should imagine...and then writing a credible review that encompasses all the themes...well you can see why I'm daunted! The book was very seductive though and breezed by on a tense plot, shortish chapters and intrepid characters. Sepulchre blends mystery and crime with gothic drama and a hint of romance.

I'm a big fan of timeslip novels...although usually I find a character from one period is more interesting or stronger in voice than the character in the other time period. I thought the main characters from the past and present were equally as strong in Sepulchre, though more of the story is given over to the past. Leonie Vernier is our heroine from the late 1900s, a young girl of seventeen who demonstrates a naive willfulness that causes death and harm to those she loves. Eventually she triumphs over evil at great cost to herself...unable to rest peacefully in death as her story remains untold, she begins to haunt her distant relative Meredith Martin, after Meredith indulges in an impulsive tarot reading while researching Debussy on her long awaited trip to Paris. 2007 - Meredith Martin is come to Paris to finalize her research on Claude Debussy, although this is not her only motive for visiting France... she is determined to discover her ancestral legacy using a lone photograph she has been given of a sepia soldier. After a strange tarot card reading she begins to have frightening dreams, echos from the past, which only become more intense while visiting a mysterious hotel in southern France called the Domaine de le Cade.

Sepulchre is the second book in Mosse's Languedoc Trilogy, very loosely connected to the first in the trilogy, Labyrinth, although focusing on different time periods and events, as well as varying in tone and storyline. Sepulchre relies more upon dramatic gothic and supernatural elements to create tension, while Labyrinth trends more to the spiritual and mythical. The books have entirely different cast of characters. If you do not care for heavy gothic overtones (a malignant oppressiveness), nor have an interest in the symbolism of tarot or suggestion of supernatural patterns, repetition in music, then this is probably not the book for you...but I very much enjoy dark, mysterious novels and really was captivated by this one!! I would venture to say I preferred Sepulchre over Labyrinth, much more drawn to the features and tone of this more recent read. Reading Sepulchre was like putting together pieces of a complex puzzle, knowledge revealed little by little.

Mosse does not give more weight to the research than the characters or plot and this is an impressive feat. There was so much description given about the areas in France that the book is set in, Rennes-les-Bains, Paris, as well as Carcassonne, and patterns in music, symbolism of tarot but these do not distract from the plot which flows along seamlessly in parallel with all the details. I can't imagine the amount of research Mosse must have put together...but you can get an idea of her sources by perusing the Sepulchre Tour inclusion at the back of the novel. This is a book to savour...to put down and ponder before greedily snatching up again.

The third book in the Languedoc trilogy is The Winter Ghosts to be released in hardcover this fall.

My Rating: 4.5

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Well written, but very slowly paced, I struggled through this book, but really did not enjoy it. ( )