Lezersrecensie
Very promising and great potential, but not fully realized
The cover contains a, partially erased and fairly simplistic, labyrinth. That refers of course directly to the title en will play an important role in the story. In the left margin we see a number of Egyptian hieroglyphs that illustrate also some general background to the book.
The author provides some historical background, some justification why she had to write this book and a small dictionary with Cathar-English. Especially the latter comes in handy since a lot of Cathar words are used in the story while their meaning is not always clear from context or resemblance to French.
We get basically 2 parallel stories in this book. 1 is more of a romance against a historical background containing some elements from the phantastic. It covers mainly the history of the Cathars with a focus on both the myth round Cathar treasure and witchcraft and the genocidal war that the French and the Roman catholic church waged against the Cathor people. This is brought as a romantic novel and takes almost 70 percent of the book. Disappointing for the lover of mystery and also for the historian since there exist better books on the downfall of the Cathar people. The historical truth is beyond doubt there, that is also illustrated in the extensive and very welcome source list at the end of the book.
The other part of the story, as said they run in parallel, is the story of a modern-day excavation where a relic of the past is foun. And that leads to an exciting adventure with a quest, murders, mystery, some supernatural influences and an thrilling end.
The author makes clear that shocking events from the past did not come to a peaceful end and that these events are to be replayed in modern times with hopefully a different outcome. The forces of good and bad from the original events stand against each other again in the parallel train of events today.
Although the book contains 700 pages the focus on the romantic story of the past which is used to pack the much thinner set of historical facts and link between past and current characters makes it much more boring to read than the superlatives from other review made me hope.
The excellent quality of the current timeline cannot overcome that. The avalanche of names does not help either. Parallels of historic and current characters like Alaïs-Alice, but also the people that have more than 1 name under which they are known and sometimes also carry aliases to keep their anonymity together with the sheer abundance of characters and locations galore does not make it easy.
Justifyable historical facts, a lesser known dark page in our Western heritage, together with the excitement and action of modern day mystery/thriller are a plus. Too much romance, the focus on questionable psychology, self-censureship out of fear for the long toes of wokeness make this promising book loose a lot of points.
The author provides some historical background, some justification why she had to write this book and a small dictionary with Cathar-English. Especially the latter comes in handy since a lot of Cathar words are used in the story while their meaning is not always clear from context or resemblance to French.
We get basically 2 parallel stories in this book. 1 is more of a romance against a historical background containing some elements from the phantastic. It covers mainly the history of the Cathars with a focus on both the myth round Cathar treasure and witchcraft and the genocidal war that the French and the Roman catholic church waged against the Cathor people. This is brought as a romantic novel and takes almost 70 percent of the book. Disappointing for the lover of mystery and also for the historian since there exist better books on the downfall of the Cathar people. The historical truth is beyond doubt there, that is also illustrated in the extensive and very welcome source list at the end of the book.
The other part of the story, as said they run in parallel, is the story of a modern-day excavation where a relic of the past is foun. And that leads to an exciting adventure with a quest, murders, mystery, some supernatural influences and an thrilling end.
The author makes clear that shocking events from the past did not come to a peaceful end and that these events are to be replayed in modern times with hopefully a different outcome. The forces of good and bad from the original events stand against each other again in the parallel train of events today.
Although the book contains 700 pages the focus on the romantic story of the past which is used to pack the much thinner set of historical facts and link between past and current characters makes it much more boring to read than the superlatives from other review made me hope.
The excellent quality of the current timeline cannot overcome that. The avalanche of names does not help either. Parallels of historic and current characters like Alaïs-Alice, but also the people that have more than 1 name under which they are known and sometimes also carry aliases to keep their anonymity together with the sheer abundance of characters and locations galore does not make it easy.
Justifyable historical facts, a lesser known dark page in our Western heritage, together with the excitement and action of modern day mystery/thriller are a plus. Too much romance, the focus on questionable psychology, self-censureship out of fear for the long toes of wokeness make this promising book loose a lot of points.
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