Citadel

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I do wish I'd known that Kate Mosse weaves the supernatural in to all her books before I started reading this. If I had, the introduction of the Ghost Army wouldn't have jolted me to a halt. It just seemed so unnecessary and daft as the culmination of its appearance was unsatisfactory and confusing. I imagine this is what it's like for people watching From Dusk Til Dawn who haven't realised there were two directors which is why the film goes oddly vampiric halfway through. Then we meet a Dark Ages monk who is protecting a scroll known as the Codex. This secondary plot should have been left out of the book. It distracted me. It takes too much away from what could have been a great story of courageous female resistance fighters. Apparently Kate Mosse always includes a supernatural twist to her novels and this is why she had to force this storyline in for the trilogy to make sense. It’s a pity because it ruins the novel. Now you, too, can be part of the history of CFT. The international bestselling novelist and playwright, Kate Mosse – a Chichester girl, born and bred – is writing the anniversary book for CFT’s first half century. Chichester Festival Theatre at Fifty is a decade-by-decade celebration, a love letter in words and pictures, based on interviews by many of those who’ve played their part in the enduring success of one of Britain’s most important and best loved theatres. The ending was of course tragic but given that I could not empathize with the characters I found that I did not care one way or the other. So for its depiction of the struggles of occupied Languedoc, Citadel earns some respect. Mosse evinces both passion and planning in her presentation of this story, enough that I can understand what makes her so beloved of some readers. Yet if the Languedoc people managed to rise up and drive out the Nazis anyway, why did they need ghost soldiers? For this reason, I found Citadel’s eleventh hour dip into the realm of fantasy perplexing more than anything else. Up until that point, the hunt for Arinius’ Codex had been pleasantly archaeological, reminding me of the conspiratorial tones of Eco and Ruiz Zafón. The actual resolution after all that feels more deflating than rewarding.

A superb blend of rugged action and haunting mystery based on real-life figures, Citadel is a vivid and richly atmospheric story of a group of heroic women who dared the odds to survive [provided by the publisher] I've been putting off posting this for weeks. I gave up. Citadel just didn't hold my interest and I kept diving into other books instead. It's not that Kate Mosse does anything badly in this book, she just doesn't do anything well enough to keep me involved. It's a pity because I loved the first two books of the trilogy and it was reading the first many years ago that tempted me to the South of France for the first time. I've been in love with the place ever since.

In Nazi occupied France the Citadel are a group of all-women freedom fighters - part of the Resistance, and determined to outwit both the Germans and the evil French collaborators. Led by 18 year old Sandrine Vidal, her sister and their friends, these woman show courage and daring, never knowing who is watching them or who will betray them to the authorities. Kate Mosse has been on the periphery of my literary radar for a while now. Hers were books that would show up on recommendation lists based on books I had like. They would appear at my friends’ houses, imposing yet reassuring with their bulk and sleek, simple cover art. I was vaguely aware that she wrote historical fiction, and that was it. The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants the things that must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, who bore witness to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw." Revelation 1: 1-2. ESV Though the elements of fantasy and magic require a firm suspension of disbelief (there is a whiff of Tolkien about the alleged powers of the codex), what capture the reader most powerfully are the horrors of the Nazi threat and the sacrifices necessary to survive and resist, which make Citadel feel the most substantial and mature of the trilogy.

I read the first two books of the trilogy and really wasn't sure where she'd go next. I only knew there would be a lot of Languedoc stuff in it. Really, I have no desire to see France, but I'd love to visit the Languedoc region! It’s one thing to take a lovely great fat book away with you on vacation, but quite another to cruise into the city which inspired it on a luxury barge, tie it up for the night and set off on the lookout for literary associations. The book I’m thinking of is Citadel, the third in a trilogy inspired by the Languedoc ( Labyrinth and Sepulchre are the best-selling first two volumes) and the writer in question is Kate Mosse.While fiction, this novel is written around real events of the Second World War, and was inspired by the massacre at Baudrigues on August 19, 1944 and the women that died there. Revelation 1:1 announces both the book's title (it is a 'revelation') and its divine author ('Jesus Christ'). The book is an 'unveiling of unseen spiritual forces operating behind the scenes in history and controlling its events and outcome. This disclosure is conveyed in a series of symbolic visions that exhibit the influence of OT prophecies, especially those received by Daniel, Ezekiel, and Zechariah. The book is also 'prophecy' (Rev. 1:3; 22:7), not only as divine prediction of future events but also as divine diagnosis of the present state of affairs."