5 STARS*****
“Come forth the spirits of the air. Come forth the armies of the air.
Every death remembered.
Those who died so others might live, those who gave their
lives and now live.
Then, when the battle is over, they shall sleep once more”
-
Citadel, Kate Mosse
Citadel is Kate Mosses’ third instalment in her widely
acclaimed Languedoc trilogy and is set amongst the picturesque Southern France,
in Carcassonne. The novel is split into two distinct stories; the first is set
around the monk Arinius. Arinius is on a quest to ensure the safety of a Codex,
condemned by the church as heretical. Little does he know, the Codex holds within
its verses, the ability to raise a ghost army.
The second is set around the spirited Sandrine Vidal, a
young women living in Carcassonne during World War II. After her father’s death
she is raised by her sister and housekeeper and is all but ignorant to the
world changing around her. Sandrine’s world abruptly changes when she almost
drowns attempting to save another man drowning in the Aude, from then on, she
discovers her sister is secretly part of a network helping the resistance and
together, with other like minded women, form the Citadel network.
The characters in Citadel mimic those of their predecessors,
as though their lives have already been mapped before them; there are glimpses
of Alais in Sandrine and of Guilhem in Raoul. Their relationship is fuelled by
their passion to preserve Carcassonne and its people, to exploit the truths
that the Nazi’s try, unsuccessfully so, to keep hidden. Just ordinary people
refusing to give in to the capture and torture of the place they lived and its
people.
Like Labyrinth and Sepulchre, Kate Mosse doesn’t fail to
disappoint, her characters are well developed and her story flows effortlessly –
you truly lose yourself in its labyrinth of pages. It is a remarkable novel and
by the end, like I, you will have your heart in your mouth and although
bittersweet, it bought the story of the Languedoc to a beautiful finale.
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