Labyrinth - Kate Mosse

I really enjoyed this book. Kate Mosse (with an E, not the cocaine snorting supermodel...) is a fantastic writer. It's fast paced, sympathetic to it's subject and really engaging to read. I'd describe the story as a cross between Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code and Mitch Albolm's The Five People You Meet In Heaven. Labyrinth a really really good book but unlike The Da Vinci Code, it's not as in your face with all that irrelevant descriptive rebellious twaddle that got a bit irritating by the end of Brown's story (as much as I enjoyed the plot). I'm probably not going to even begin doing it justice in the review I write here.

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The story of Labyrinth flits between two main characters; Alice Tanner in the 21st century, and Alais Du Mas in the 13th century. Whilst on an archaeological dig in the Sabarthes Mountains, Alice discovers a hidden chamber with a strange labyrinth symbol carved into the wall with two skeleton remains in a shallow grave. And so begins the puzzle unraveling in the 21st century side of the story... murder, deception, cult rituals, kidnappings and discovering the truth of the past.

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Meanwhile in the 13th Century... 17 year old Alais resides in the Cite of Carcassona with her husband Guilhem, her sister Oriane and her father Bertrand Pelletier, Intendent to Viscount Trencaval. This part of the story is set just before the crusade war as the North invade the South in an attempt to eradicate all heretics as instructed by the catholic church. Once evening Alais' father reveals to her that he is one of three guardians chosen to protect the Holy Grail and due to the imminent war on their land he needs her help to keep the secret safe and so begins Alais's story to achieve this.

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When I started to read Labyrinth the first thing I did was read the Authors note at the beginning which had the effect of making me think "oh god, it's going to be a history novel whereby you have to be dedicated historian to understand what on earth's going on". Not the case at all. All you need to know is that the people of the South were pretty much free to follow whatever religion they wanted. But the Catholic church wasn't happy about this and instructed a Crusade to invade and wipe out anyone who denounced God, known as heretics. The North helped the Crusade under cover of wanting the same thing, but really they only wanted the lands of the South for themselves. But all this is pretty easy to follow in the story... it's not like you have to have a PHD in French history to understand the significance of events.

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I won't reveal too much else about the actual storyline as I won't be able to do it the justice it richly deserves. All you need to know is that Mosse's writing is excellent. The way she dovetails the two stories together is expertly done and she has this knack of being able to pick out exactly the right word needed for her descriptions so that you totally understand where she's coming from and what the characters are thinking at feeling.

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But I think it's her interpretation of what the Holy Grail is that makes the story for me. It's such a clever idea and although I'm not religious at all, it's definitely a theory I could believe if I was that way inclined. One of the key concepts she reveals in the book is what better way to keep a secret than to have it concealed beneath another secret... a cunning idea for sure. The idea she portrays the Grail as being is very interesting in the fact that it can apply to all religions... it's not tied to one thing... which makes more sense to me that other Grail offerings.

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I shall leave you with the extract of a poem Alais quotes within the book in the language of the Midi. It doesn't sum up the whole idea of the book and the story it's trying to tell. I just liked it :)

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"Res contr' Amor non es guirens, lai on sos poders s'atura"

There is no protection against love, once it chooses to exert its power

Liberation Day - Andy McNab

Well, this one was definitely better than the last I am pleased to report :D. The plot is good although it does finish pretty quickly - as I suppose most operations on the ground usually do. The epilogue at the end ties things up nicely though with an element of hope. The bad thing that I thought was going to happen at the end of this book didn't, so I reckon it'll probably happen at the end of the next. But I think we'll have a McNab break for a bit.

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The plot of Liberation Day opens with Nick Stone in a good place - he's a happy guy for once. Yay! He has a girlfriend he's willing to give up doing deniable ops for, with the possibility of a good job as a bar tender at the local snooty yacht club while she run's her mum's B&B. Nick Stone? A Bar Tender? In a yacht club? Yeah right... that was never going to happen was it, lol. Anyway, desperate for a US passport so he can stay in the country with his girlfriend and be on the same continent as Kelly he carries out one last job. The job amazingly goes well with no hiccups and a delightful package of a severed head is offered up as confirmation. Excellent... everything sorted, nothing more to worry about, right?

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Wrong. Stone employers have pretty much stitched him up again. It seems that the 'one last job' they need him to do turns out to be the small task of fighting the war on terror (since this story is set after the Sept. 11th attacks). So obviously this is going to take a little longer than merely a quick job to dispose of a few bodies and pick up a pint of milk on the way home. And so Nick is forced to trot off again, this time to the south of France to disrupt the financial chain between terrorists based in the US (posing as normal citizens) and Al Queda. Unfortuately this pisses his girlfriend off (she's not really into violence and has slight tree-hugging tendancies) and she hot-foots it off. Poor Nick, just as things were starting to look up too. Still we knew it wouldn't last.

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And so the story develops from here really. It is a pretty good story and not overly complicated so is easy to keep up with. From a woman's point of view (yes, yes, I know...) it was nice to see a bit more of Stone's emotional side - not much of it mind... bit it was there none the less. He seems genuinely cut up that Carrie (the girlfriend) couldn't understand and had left him. Still, like the experienced deniable op that he is he cuts away and gets on with the job. The two other guys in his team are great characters also. There is some nice banter between them all and you get a really nice sense of commeraderie between them - the scenes described in the safe house are good for a chuckle :) - and at last you're glad that Nick finally has some help with him. Again we see a bit more of Stone's emotional side here as he reveals the bond between them. Alot of the dialoge takes place through the radios that all three use to stay in contact while actually doing the job. This is pretty good as it puts you right in the thick of it along with them. There's not too much jargon in there either so it's pretty easy to work out what they mean when they refer to 'trigger', 'go complete' and 'foxtrot'.

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So all in all a durn good book and a whole lot better effort than the last one. McNab's crown has been fully restored to his rightful position :D

Last Light - Andy McNab

Ok, where do I start... Probably with the fact that it took me ages to read this book. And I really do mean ages! I started it back in October and I only finished reading it at the beginning of Feb. Shocking behaviour I know but I can't be held entirely responsible...

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Last Light I think is probably McNab's poorest effort in the series so far. I just couldn't get into it at all. It just seemed to drag on forever... and ever.... and ever... Probably not helped by the fact that it took me so long to get through which probably made it seem worse. For me there was just far too much description of things that as reader I really didn't give a monkeys about. Normally McNab's descriptions of the why, what and where are really interesting and help move the story along and give you insider knowledge as to all the goings-on. But this time around it just annoyed me. There seemed to be far too much of it and not enough raw action and the main point as to the story was a bit lost on me since I was getting a bit bored of wading through all the descriptive text. It may be that the format was beginning to get bit old also. It seemed to be the same as all the past books.

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However, you still do have to feel a bit sorry for Nick Stone. At the beginning of this story he is really down and out... proper style. He has nothing... which I admit did seem a bit odd since in Firewall the Russian Mafia Boss had given him the deeds to over a million pounds worth of property... so what happened to all that lot I have no idea. Maybe Stone spent it all on Kelly's treatment but he never mentions it which is strange. Therefore he takes a job he doesn't want to do in order to get the money he needs for Kelly's therapy. Needless to say, in an attack of conscience it goes all wrong and thus he has to head off to Panama to finish the job... and this is where the story begins to flag I'm afraid. For me anyway. I'm sure there are loads of other out there who loved it :).

But anyway, it hasn't put me off reading more of McNab's work... at the moment I'm half way through Liberation Day which has been pretty good so far... but from the other reviews I've read I get the impression something really really bad is going to happen a the end... eek!

Never Look Back - Lesley Pearse

I think I’ve been going through one of my book “lulls” of late since I haven’t managed to read anything since October. It happens. Next, I’ll probably go into one of my “read to the exclusion off everything else” phases. Anyway, I went to Los Angeles in January and it’s amazing what a 10+ hour flight each way can do in re-introducing the greatness of reading, lol.

I finished this book in Jan whilst I was away but just hadn’t got around to writing about it yet. It’s a pretty hefty book so I did well to read it within 10 days I reckon. The story focuses on the life of Matilda “Matty” Jennings and her epic journey as she leaves England to begin a new life in the States in the 1800’s (very appropriate for my trip then!), firstly in New York and then travelling across the country on a wagon train – alone and… pregnant! Not a good position for a woman to be in in those times of course.

The story is great. Poor old Matty has a great head on her shoulders and successfully turns her hand to anything she needs to in order to survive. But life never seems to run smoothly for her and you can’t help but hope as you turn the pages that surely she’s got to catch a break soon…? But alas, life is never that kind. She is a lovely character; kind, sensitive, wiley and canny, loved by everyone (except the bad guys) and although life gives her all the things she needs materialistically speaking, you sense there is always an emotional need that is never fulfilled for her. She spends most of her life trying to make lives better for those less fortunate and again, she does a great job. I think she dies happy. I guess I am an old romantic though and I really wanted her to get the guy and live happily every after. I know I might be giving a little away here so I do apologise, but to be honest when you read the story you know deep down that she’s not ever going to get the fairy-tale ending. But then, would our Matty have been any happier with that than the life she led otherwise…? Probably not :)

It’s a fab book; Lesley has done us proud again! I've released this book into the wild via http://www.bookcrossing.com/ and it's BCID is: 675-5135918. Enjoy it.

Till We Meet Again - Lesley Pearse

It looks like I might be back on the reading wagon again, having read this book in under a week :) But then again, it could just be that it has Lesley Pearse an the author - and Lesley never lets me down with a good story.

Till We Meet Again doesn't disappoint at all. It's possibly not quite as hard-hittingly graphic as some of her others have been but this doesn't make her plotting and and story-telling any worse or better. It continues to be great. Pearse still writes a fantastically good story and once again makes the reader question things that maybe we take for granted.

The story opens immediately with a double murder. Susan Wright walks into a doctors surgery and kills the two people seemingly in cold blood. She then gives herself up, wishing to be punished for the crimes she has committed. In a cruel twist of fate her childhood friend Beth Powell is randomly appointed as her solicitor. And thus begins the unraveling of the past lives of these two characters and the events which lead them to this point in their lives. How circumstances and actions affect each other and how two seemingly very different women can have so much similarity at their core.

Once again, Pearse handles what are quite difficult subjects in a forthright but sensitive manner, always taking the time to explain clearly the motives which justify the actions of her characters. Her sensitive handling of Beth's traumatic past but without shying away from details enables the reader to really feel for Beth and to want to understand her more deeply. Similarly the way she leads the reader to develop their own sympathies for Susan's restrictive and manipulated childhood enables us to care so much about the characters and to want justice for them. It is fairly obvious to me why Lesley Pearse is one of our best-selling authors :) An engaging story-line and well thought out characters who you can't help but care deeply about.

I've released this book into the wild via www.bookcrossing.com and its BCID is 112-5135927 - enjoy!

Mr Commitment - Mike Gayle

Oh dear... my book reading time (or lack there of) has been shameful lately. Other things have just gotten in the way... and nothing particularly constructive either so I don't even have a proper excuse... bad Charlie :)

Anyway, I have finally read another book. But it's nothing to write home about really. It is one of those easy going, timid, everything-works-out-okay-in-the-end books of no substance that could probably even be given away free with a copy of Glamour magazine. Sorry to sound harsh. These types of books are great for an easy read on the beach or on a plane but they are just so full of nothing. No nitty-gritty with characters that mean something or have depth.

As these types of books go it was ok but you'll probably have heard the punchlines a billion times before. General storyline as follows: Boy loves girl, girl loves boy, girl wants to get married, boy scared of commitment, boy and girl have fight, boy and girl split up, boy pines after girl, boy realises boy can commit to girl, girl discovers she is pregnant, boy and girl get back together, boy and girl get married and live happily ever after, amen. Mike Gayle probably wrote it in his lunch hour :)

Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows - J K Rowling

I can't remember how long I've waited for this final book to come out... which I know is very sad for a 27 year old to admit! I totally wasn't into these books when they first came out figuring that they were just kids books really. But then the Book People came round at work and I bought a box set of the first four just so I could see what all the fuss was about... and I've been hooked ever since!
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It took me over month to read this final installment, just because I wanted to make it last as long as possible (much to the annoyance of my mates who couldn't talk about it in front of me until I finished it - sorry guys!). After all the hype and anticipation of the final book I was slightly worried that it wouldn't live up to expectations and that there would be questions left unanswered. Which way was Rowling going to take the ending? Does Voldemort get defeated? Can Snape still be trusted? Is Dumbledore really dead? Will Ron and Hermione get it on? And most importantly.... will Harry survive the end?
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I won't go into too many details regarding the actual story as I'm sure there are still some peeps out there who haven't read it and I wouldn't want to spoil any surprises. But surffice to say, it was totally worth the wait. Rowling has done an excellent job in finalising the story for us all and in a way which was both sympathetic and heroic. All the questions that I had were answered and there were no loose ends at the end of the book to worry about. It's just fantastic.
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My only criticism (and it's only a little one) is that the final chapter was a little too short for my liking. I wanted to know more about what happened immediately after the battle and in the days following. But to honest Rowling has probably got it spot on. If she had of gone into these details the book would have been twice as long no doubt. And in any case, leaving us to fill in the blanks with our own imagination helps to highlight the sense of daze, relief and dream-like quality the characters must have felt after things work out the way they do (no hints from me here!). It's kind of sad that it's all over. But at least I know I have seven books sitting on my shelf knowing that they will always be there should I want to re-read the whole story again. Which, I am sure, will happen several hundred times between now and the day I die, lol. Enjoy x