A list of family names and locations, a detailed historical map and an author's note about the historical background of the Wars of Religion provide context for the incredible amount of information to come, but Mosse ( Labyrinth, The Taxidermist’s Daughter) never falls victim to the trap of too much detail. The perspectives of The Burning Chambers center around the following characters; Minou, who is the daughter of a bookseller, Piet, a Huguenot and ex-soldier, Bernard, who is Minou’s father, Vidal, a Catholic priest and an old schoolmate of Piet, and Blanche whose presence is menacing and mysterious throughout the novel. Kate Mosse: Endpapers in response to Revelation", Sixty-Six Books Archived 17 April 2014 at the Wayback Machine, Bush Theatre. I particularly enjoyed the delicate way the seperate stories of Minou and Piet converged in a subtle way to a great climactic ending.

The prologue, set in Franschoek, South Africa in 1862, indicates that the story doesn’t end in 16th century France. In this febrile atmosphere Mosse brings together her star-crossed lovers: 19-year-old Minou Joubert, daughter of a Catholic bookseller, and Dutch-born Piet Reydon, a Huguenot convert and leader of the underground movement engaged in raising funds and weapons for the Prince of Condé and his Protestant army. Mosse did a remarkable job in portraying the atmosphere and the climate of those times as well as imagining a fast-paced mystery that kept my interest - a family with a secret. I would like Mosse to have focused as much on the characters development as she did on the historical context, allowing us inside the head of the characters.Languedoc, region in Southern France, was marked by Cathars Inquisitions before the 14th century and after the 15th century the region experienced another Crusade now against Huguenots (French Protestants), who seemed to be putting the strongest resistance in this particular region. Meanwhile, there are powerful forces at play to recover the stolen fragment of the ‘Shroud of Antioch’ a relic with great significance in the Catholic Church, and there are those that will stop at nothing to get it back. The book has instalove, a randy priest, a counterfeit shroud, secrets (of course), a stolen inheritance and one extremely melodramatic character (who devolves into totally batshit crazy by the end of the book). Piet holds whispered meetings with other Huguenots; a tailor is tortured to death for information; a woman lures a man of power into her bed. Although the philosophical differences between Catholicism and Protestantism seem trivial to us today, it’s a timely read as we look to the deadly battles being fought in our own times between different shades of Islam.

There would be a missing will, a missing relic, a missing inheritance and a feud between these two families for 300 years.Especially as it's used to link that add-on future storyline (of the prologue/epilogue)- one more tenuous connection to make it seem like it should be in this book at all. We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006). You well know that if a lie is repeated often enough, in the face of the clearest evidence to the contrary, even the most level-headed of men start to believe in it. Labyrinth tells the story of Alais and Alice – the first a young woman in thirteenth-century Carcassone who is given a strange book by her father which purports to hold the mystery of the true Grail, the second who discovers two skeletons in a cave in the French Pyrenees in 2005.

The prologue to The Burning Chambers features one of those descendants in that same graveyard in 1862. This is done exceptionally well, the feeling of threat and uncertainty faced by ordinary people on both sides more than just a backdrop for the main plot- from les oubliettes to tortured confessions and street violence, it's a precarious time when anyone could be your enemy and every word you say might be monitored for blasphemy. Kate is the Co-Founder and Chair of the Board of the Women’s Prize for Fiction and in June 2013, was awarded an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List for services to literature. If you’re interested in reading about Cathars, highly recommend The Treasure of Montsegur: A Novel of the Cathars by Sophy Burnham. S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows.People who were neighbors now become enemies - and many of these people are drawn into the conflict as unwitting victims. But now the Ghost Ship is under attack – its hull splintered, its sails tattered and burnt, and the crew at risk of capture. Bringing sixteenth-century Languedoc vividly to life, Kate Mosse’s The Burning Chambers is a gripping story of love and betrayal, mysteries and secrets; of war and adventure, conspiracies and divided loyalties . A lot of people don't want to read a history book about the Wars of Religion in France, for a whole lot of reasons.