Citadel

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As I say, I loved the second half of the book and couldn't put my Kindle down and was utterly heartbroken at the conclusion; tears of joy and sadness. There were moments of disappointment but, for the most part, Mosse succeeded in sustaining my attention and creating a story indicative of the wonderful imagination for which she is known. And there are a lot of characters, making it a bit difficult to follow at times, especially at first, but that’s to be expected in a detailed story about a Resistance network.

Some might suggest that Citadel's ending is shocking, but I did suspect about 75 pages prior to the book's conclusion how Mosse would complete her story. So I ask, why is there a book about "sacred words" and Christians, paired with and utilized by an unbelieving French resistance fighter? It's a great pity when a series of books starts out so well then the author just seems to run out of creative steam. It was only later that I discovered it lied about its age—it’s actually the third book in a trilogy.Who do the characters in the Resistance believe these spirits to be, if of God, then why are they not a believer in His army? The day to day struggles of ordinary people during the Occupation, the blossoming romances, the fear, the hardships and sometimes the joys are all captured beautifully here. Don't let my comments put you off starting the series, I recommend the first two books to all, you just might not have the stamina to finish the third.

I loved how she wove recent history with the distant past in this story about the French resistance in the Languedoc. Mosse brings to life the women and men who refused to stand still when France fell to the Nazis, and she does this in the context of a coming-of-age story, as readers watch Sandrine fall in love and transform from a somewhat sheltered girl into a take-charge woman. Sandrine is shocked out of her innocence in the summer of 1942 when her life is saved by a young resistance fighter, Raoul Pelletier, just as he discovers that his network has been infiltrated by a spy, Leo Authié, working for the Deuxième Bureau, the French military intelligence agency. Revelation 1:1 announces both the book's title (it is a 'revelation') and its divine author ('Jesus Christ').When it’s actually happening, it is a different thing entirely, more pernicious and less overtly easy to throw off. Yet again loved her description of the country and the book intensified my desire to visit that region of France. The Indiana Jones films are pastiches of 1930s adventure serials, and Citadel is similarly, if perhaps less knowingly, packed with melodramatic cliche – as characters are repeatedly jolted awake, feel their blood run cold, feel their hearts thudding in their chests and so on. In short, making it to the end, felt like a Herculanean struggle and one which I would not inflict on anyone. 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.

This action-packed epic contains everything we've come to expect - mystery, adventure and long-buried secrets just waiting to be uncovered. They came across as being one dimensional, probably because the author focused on their collective responsibility towards the resistance.And I didn’t get much from the spiritual storyline that attempts to unite Arinius’ experience with that of Sandrine and her contemporaries. It starts off very slowly with the character building etc, and at times I wondered where it was actually going. But Authié wants Raoul for his own purposes: Raoul is in possession of a map belonging to his former comrade, Antoine, who died under torture at the hands of Authié's henchman without revealing its whereabouts. Found the previous two books real page turners; this one was a slightly more laborious read and I'm not sure why. Excellent subject matter-the courage of the resistance fighters and the cruelty of their captors was vividly described.