Reviews

Labyrinth by Kate Mosse

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marielle68's review against another edition

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adventurous dark informative mysterious tense

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes

4.0

cheye13's review against another edition

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dark mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

I found this impressively engaging in the first quarter, maybe the first third. The premise is established quickly and the introduction of various perspectives maintains tension and pushes pacing. But everything stagnated the moment the narrative threads began to merge - that is, as soon as Alice met another figure involved. There's a shift from experiencing Alais's story firsthand into being narrated by a modern character on-page, which was simply a drudge. So much to the point that I lost the thread of the narrative by the climactic scenes, and didn't quite understand what was happening.

Content Warnings

andsharman's review

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1.0

I usually find books with more than one narrative thread slow paced, and this is no exception. The author tries to weave two storylines together, mainly by giving the main protagonists close sounding names, and attempts to create a mirroring plot line with similar characters in the past and present. Unfortunately there is too much historical detail and lengthy exposition that gets in the way to make this idea work. The twin narratives only come together in the novel’s climax where the ‘mystery’ set at the start is finally resolved.

lindakat's review against another edition

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adventurous sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

I liked the parallels between past and present, but I could not work out the ‘point’ of the story. The whole narrative was around bearing witness so even if history is written by the victors at least there was someone present to see and record the truth. However, there was nothing happening in the present day to bare witness to rather it fell quite coincidental that as Alice found her connection to The Grail when there were active strides in the treasure/eternal life hunting community, being taken to precure The Grail.

My biggest issue was so much nothing happened, and I straight out did not like present Alice from the get go. She was given a list of rules about the archaeological dig and was invited as a guest and refused to follow them because she had a feeling. You are a grown woman, act like one.

Also, the cheating didn’t need to be present, there could have been plenty of other ways the books could have been stolen. But oh how G had suffered for his mistake because he loved Alise so much but that vile temptress of a sister seduced him and he had no choice. What was the message there? That he was just a man? He was the worst martyr especially when he was patting himself on the back for being faithful for a whole three months in his marriage, just gross.