Towards the end of the book when it's building to a crescendo I found it odd that there was a change in the emotion of the plot. After the protagonist is tortured, there is repeated reference to how she'll never have children as a result. It's a small point but it was jarringly emotional, a different style to the rest of the book. Also, Lucie's style of calling Sandrine 'kid' was irritating. 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'. As in the previous books it's told in 2 time lines the 4th century and 1942-1944 when the Germans occupied the Midi (France) Then we meet a Dark Ages monk who is protecting a scroll known as the Codex. This secondary plot should have been left out of the book. It distracted me. It takes too much away from what could have been a great story of courageous female resistance fighters. Apparently Kate Mosse always includes a supernatural twist to her novels and this is why she had to force this storyline in for the trilogy to make sense. It’s a pity because it ruins the novel.

So for its depiction of the struggles of occupied Languedoc, Citadel earns some respect. Mosse evinces both passion and planning in her presentation of this story, enough that I can understand what makes her so beloved of some readers. Yet if the Languedoc people managed to rise up and drive out the Nazis anyway, why did they need ghost soldiers? For this reason, I found Citadel’s eleventh hour dip into the realm of fantasy perplexing more than anything else. Up until that point, the hunt for Arinius’ Codex had been pleasantly archaeological, reminding me of the conspiratorial tones of Eco and Ruiz Zafón. The actual resolution after all that feels more deflating than rewarding. According to Alais’s father, the book harbors the secrets of the true Grail, the ring and is inscribed with a labyrinth. It is also the one to identify the guardian of the Grail. Unfortunately, there has to be a great sacrifice to protect this secret from the armies outside the city walls of Carcassonne. Beautifully designed, it’s the perfect gift book for anyone interested in theatre, film, television. A one-off chance to celebrate the first fifty years of CFT and to look forward to the future. 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.

Fabrissa is also mourning from the losses of World War 1. One night, Freddie and Fabrissa share their stories and this is when Freddie knows his role in the life of this remote town. In World War II, another man Audric Baillard is looking for the Codex, trying to keep it out of the hands of the Germans and others who would not honour it. Audric is an old man by now, but still strong and smart and working with the Resistance to save France. Citadel is both the name of a house in a small mountain village, and the name of a Resistance group, a group of women working actively to defeat the Germans. 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. As usual, we have strong women at the centre of the novel, in both time periods, and the men who love and honour those women. It’s one thing to take a lovely great fat book away with you on vacation, but quite another to cruise into the city which inspired it on a luxury barge, tie it up for the night and set off on the lookout for literary associations. The book I’m thinking of is Citadel, the third in a trilogy inspired by the Languedoc ( Labyrinth and Sepulchre are the best-selling first two volumes) and the writer in question is Kate Mosse. This was the first book in the series Languedoc. It is set in July 2005 in Pyrenees Mountains near Carcassonne. A volunteer of an archeological dig, Alice, comes across a cave and discovers something that sent shivers down her spine – strange writings on the walls, two crumbling human skeletons and a labyrinth pattern.

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. It is 1912, Sussex. Villagers gather in a churchyard on the night when the ghosts of those who were to die the following year are seen. I never felt invested in the story of Arinius and wife Lupa. I was given a brief introduction to each of them, but never felt an attachment. As in the first two books, Mosse sets up two narrative threads progressing in parallel, though the difference here is that neither concerns the present day. Although the principal story follows Sandrine and her friends as they attempt to find the codex, while evading capture and throwing Authié and his collaborators off the scent, we also glimpse the far distant history of the region in the subplot of the codex's original journey into the mountains, in the hands of a young, fourth-century monk risking death to save the heretical text from the flames.Nazi-occupied France. Sandrine, a spirited and courageous nineteen-year-old, finds herself drawn into a Resistance group in Carcassonne - codenamed 'Citadel' - made up of ordinary women who are prepared to risk everything for what is right. And when she meets Raoul, they discover a shared passion for the cause, for their homeland, and for each other. 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.

Sam is an ordinary teenager who has built her life through friendship and a special bond with her twin sister through entertainment and schoolwork. The novel revolves around an adopted twin whose sister has died for her real parents.I felt that the one redeeming feature was that much of the novel was drawn from historical detail. However, in her afterword, what Mosse actually reveals is that she has made everything up. Twisted facts entirely for her own purposes and played God with history to such an extent that nothing can be said to be even vaguely based on what was really occurring during this epoch. Aroinius bleef nog even staan en keek zuidwaarts, naar de bergen, en vroeg zich af wat voor hem in het verschiet lag - 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.