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Sepulchre Review
I n 1891, young Léonie Vernier and her brother Anatole arrive in the beautiful town of Rennes-les-Bains, in southwest France. They’ve come at the invitation of their widowed aunt, whose mountain estate, Domain de la Cade, is famous in the region. But it soon becomes clear that their aunt Isolde—and the Domain—are not what Léonie had imagined. The villagers claim that Isolde’s late husband died after summoning a demon from the old Visigoth sepulchre high on the mountainside. A book from the Domain’s cavernous library describes the strange tarot pack that mysteriously disappeared following the uncle’s death. But while Léonie delves deeper into the ancient mysteries of the Domain, a different evil stalks her family—one which may explain why Léonie and Anatole were invited to the sinister Domain in the first place. More than a century later, Meredith Martin, an American graduate student, arrives in France to study the life of Claude Debussy, the nineteenth century French composer. In Rennesles- Bains, Meredith checks into a grand old hotel—the Domain de la Cade. Something about the hotel feels eerily familiar, and strange dreams and visions begin to haunt Meredith’s waking hours. A chance encounter leads her to a pack of tarot cards painted by Léonie Vernier, which may hold the key to this twenty-first century American’s fate . . . just as they did to the fate of Léonie Vernier more than a century earlier. User Submitted Sepulchre ReviewsNovember 17, 2008 predictable and tedious I don't know, maybe I have super powers or something because I was able to predict exactly what was going to happen in this book one to two hundred pages before it actually happened. I found the characters to be as two-dimensional as tarot cards; the lovers love, justice is just, and the villans are villanous. The story line plods down the path like an old milk-horse, and the path it's on is straight and flat. I have no problem with lyrical descriptions, but I could have gotten more suspense from reading an article in a travel magazine. November 11, 2008 Interesting read, but don't expect second "Labyrinth" I love intellectual thrillers. What could be better than to open the book and look for clues to the mysteries in a mix of a historical and literature references? Add to this a huge dose of occult, some romantic love, a lot of French fleur and you sure will have a book that is impossible to put down. The recipe is definitely one that is used in "Sepulchre". However, after finishing the book I felt that most ingredients were overused here. To begin with, I love French history, got my four-week "French for beginners" class and I don't mind occasional French phrases in the text (especially when they are translated at the bottom of the page). The implicit editor's assumption, however, is that all "Sepulchre" readers are fluent in French, so they would not mind getting French phrases thrown at them on each page and in every second dialogue. Wrong guess; it's actually very annoying. The story begins in Paris and then moves to the Carcassones region, with the direct and indirect references to "Da Vinci Code", that were not essential distractions from the plot. Murders of the 19 century are linked to today's crimes; the supernatural forces of Tarot cards are strangely related to the music; life of Claude Debussy turns out to be connected to the main heroine's life. This is enough to keep the readers on top of their seats. The rest ... it does look like space filler. Finally, all the mysteries have been solved at least a hundred pages before the end; there was really no need to drag the plot for so long. I don't even mind a romantic ending, Nora Roberts' style (OK, I admit, I liked it). Still, the book could have lost a third of its volume without any harm to the story. October 12, 2008 Sepulchere This book was absolutely wonderful. I was sad to see it come to an end. What a fantastic journey. I can't wait to read Kate Mosse's next book. September 2, 2008 So close... "Sepulchre" has an ominous and chilling opening, an action-packed first few chapters with such rich historical detail and so many compelling characters, the plot could have gone in several directions. Smart, well researched, heavily layered; this was almost a perfect literary thriller. It missed the mark by a (copper colored) hair. Like A. S. Byatt's "Possession", the genre's gold standard, "Sepulchre" links the nineteenth century and the present day. A deck of tarot cards, some faded photographs and a mysterious piece of music are clues to a puzzle that begins in 1891 and ends in 2007. I was fortunately and immediately hooked by the vivid 19th century tale, which kept me going through the rather lackluster and hurried romance of the contemporary story in which the hero was unengaging, the baddie predictable and as long as we're nitpicking, just how many times DID Meredith "grab a sandwich"? The imbalance continues to the end. While the 19th century tale ends with a wildly satisfying mob of torch wielding villagers, the contemporary story ends with all questions answered. It's a little too pat. Since the internet plays a part in this book, why doesn't Meredith use it to do some geneological research much earlier in the story? And wouldn't it have been fun if Ms. Mosse had left a few ends loose so she could write the stories only hinted at? A definite cut above the usual literary thriller in its skillfully woven details, "Sepulchre" is well worth reading. If Ms. Mosse had only made the modern characters as interesting as those in the past, she'd have a stunner of a book, indeed. August 25, 2008 Obnoxious Pretension Kate Mosse's Sepulchre is a historical fantasy -- historical fiction with fantastic elements. I enjoy both genres, and this novel features a female graduate student (somebody I can relate to) as one of the main characters, and it's available on audiobook, so I thought it would be good entertainment on my commute. I got about ten chapters in before quitting. The book seems well-researched, is competently written, the tone switches easily and successfully from past to present and back, and the characters are interesting enough. Here is the problem: It is full of enormous amounts of tedious descriptions of ancient and current French landmarks, French historical events, French historical figures, and untranslated French dialogue. I realize, of course, that France is the setting of this historical novel, but the effect of all of this name-dropping is to make me think that Ms Mosse feels the need to prove she did her research -- she's trying too hard, and it comes off as pretentious. And obnoxious. Especially when I'm listening to it in audio format and I can't just skim over the French words. Here are some examples (some are from later in the book): "It was not quite dawn, yet Paris was waking. In the distance, Anatole could hear the sounds of delivery carts. Wooden traps over the cobbles, delivering milk and freshly baked bread to the cafes and bars of the Faubourg Montmartre. He stopped to put on his shoes. The rue Feydeau was deserted; there was no sound except the clip of his heels on the pavement. Deep in thought, Anatole walked quickly, to the junction with the rue Saint-Marc, intending to cut through the arcade of the Passage des Panoramas. He saw no one, heard no one." "By the time a smoggy and hesitant dawn broke over the offices of the Commissariat of Police of the eighth arrondissement in the rue de Lisbonne, tempers were already frayed. The body of a woman identified as Madame Marguerite Vernier has been discovered shortly after eight o'clock on the evening of Sunday, September 20. The news had been telephoned in from one of the new public booths on the corner of the rue de Berlin and the rue d'Amsterdam by a reporter from Le Petit Journal." "In the next stack she discovered a first edition of Maistre's Voyage autour de ma chambre. It was battered and dog-eared, unlike Anatole's pristine copy at home. In another alcove she found a collection of both religious and fervently antireligious texts, grouped together as if to cancel one another out. In the section devoted to contemporary French literature, there was a set of Zola's Rougon-Macquart novels, as well as Flaubert, Maupassant and Huysmans --indeed, many of the intellectually improving texts Anatole tried in vain to press upon her, even a first edition of Stendhal's Le rouge et le noir. There were a few works in translation but nothing entirely to her taste except for Baudelaire's translations of Monsieur Poe. Nothing by Madame Radcliffe or Monsieur Le Fanu . . . The first was Dogme et rituel de la haute magie by Éliphaas Lévi. Next to it was a volume titled Traité méthodique de science occulte. On the shelf above, several other writings by Papus, Court de Gébelin, Etteilla and MacGregor Mathers. She had never read such authors but knew they were occultist writers and considered subversive. Their names appeared regularly in the columns of newspapers and periodicals." At first, I found myself rolling my eyes at every French phrase and name-drop, but since that started to become a driving hazard, I just quit listening. I would much rather read a story whose purpose is to entertain me, not to enlighten or impress me. Sadly, Sepulchre did none of these things. --FanLit.net August 2, 2008 A bit too supernatural for my taste The story of two lives that are intertwined: Leonie Vernier is a Parisian teenager who travels with her brother to a country house in the French Pyrenees in 1891. She does not realize that her brother and her aunt share a secret and that her brother is on the run for a man so evil that nobody dares to stand up against him. Meredith Martin is an American who writes a biography of Claude Debussy. Her trip to Eurote brings her to the French Pyrenees where she hopes to find an answer to questions about her family. Crucial roles in the book are played by a set of Tarot cards, a ruined Visigoth sepulchre and unconditional love. Even though the book gives a nice description of upper-class French day-to-day live at the end of the 19th century and makes fun of the stories in the Da Vinci code and some other books that all hype up the region of Carcasonne for hidden treasures and connections to biblical figures, there is a lot of supernatural mumbo-jumbo in this book. It was an anjoyable book for a holiday, but not one that I will remember for a long time. July 31, 2008 Interesting. Surprising. Really good. Just shy of excellent. I looked forward to this 2nd novel from Kate Mosse (sort of, she has 2 other books that are no longer in print, apparently from another life) having read and enjoyed Labyrinth, her first effort. Reviews from other reader gave me pause, but I finally deciced I wanted to read this after I saw that one of the main characters was writing a biography of Claude Debussy, my favorite composer. Concerns of the French spoken in the book didn't give me cause for concern after 4 torturous years of the language in high school which was enough to help me through this novel. The book is set up much like here first effort with connections between a present day "heroine" and one of an earlier time. The story folds out, bouncing between present day and turn-of-the-century southern France, in the Languedoc (literally, "language of Oc" which was what was spoken there hundreds of years before). The characters, despite other reviewers beliefs, were, in my opinion, quite well written. I, again personally, found the characters of the past to be more interesting than those of the present. The characters are tied by a secret that revolves around the ancient "art" of tarot. I don't personally believe in tarot or astrology or things of the sort, but that didn't stop me from enjoying the book in the slightest. If anything, my lack of knowledge on the subject made it all the more interesting. I have seen comparisons to Mosse's first novel, though I failed to see anything too redundant in this novel; past and present heroines aside. It is hard to write a review of this book with any detail without spoiling the story so I shall not give my usual summary so as to leave the mystery there when, should you decide, you do read. All I will say is that the book is thick with suspense, bouncing forward or back at just the right moment so that you remain frustrated at the moment that you must wait to return to the applicable characters or timeframe. Mosse has a gift, in my humble opinion, obviously not shared by other reviewers, for writing characters with substance. I felt a pang of sadness as I read the last page because I had grown to know the characters and I liked, or hated, them very much. I eagerly await Kate Mosse's next novel as these first 2 have firmly placed her as a writer of mystery tinged with historical fiction. And, the Claude Debussy information, surprising though perhaps it should not have been so, was detailed and accurate. There was some creative license taken as Achille-Claude Debussy did play in to the novel, but his person and his music remain untarnished by the tale. My biggest regret from this book is that I don't play the piano. A piece from the book, written especially for the book, and which plays in to the story is left to be read at the end of the book; how I wish I could play the tune and hear it's haunting permeations. Alas, perhaps I shall find someone who can play it for me. Enjoy!!! July 31, 2008 Tedious I finshed this book but only because once I start something I have to see it to the end. Save yourself a waste of time, its tedious, the characters are 1 dimensional, and the plot, switching between century's is tedious in the extreme. I am glad to have got to the end. July 28, 2008 "Expository overkill", but still pretty good I'm a bit uncertain how to rate this book (three of four stars? I still don't know). I was a bit surprised to find that I kind of love it, but on the other hand, I can see many things that could be better. One of them being the length. Now, I love nothing better than a good, long book, but Sepulchre, with its 700+ pages, could (and should, in my mind) have been a lot shorter. One problem here is how Mosse has to describe everything in detail: what the characters have for breakfast, how they dress, what kind of wallpaper the room has, and so on. It's her style, I guess (haven't read anything else from her), but I ended up just skimming through many pages, and didn't really feel like I'd lost anything. Another thing is her use of adjectives... could do with less. (This goes with the obsession to describe, I guess.) And the adjectives tended to be a bit... hmm, well, let's just say that things were alabaster, emerald and ebony, not white, green or black. And overall the style was quite... like this: "her copper curls hanged all the way down her back like a skein of silk..." (Or then her alabaster cheeks flushed or her emerald eyes shone... well, who cares. I liked this character, Léonie, nevertheless.) One minor thing that annoyed me a little was the constant use of French. The characters (most of them, anyway) are French, and every now and then something they say is, for whatever reason, written in French. Trying to make it feel more authentic or something? I dunno. The French sentences weren't that hard nor too central ("Alors, on y va," "Dix minutes d'ârret," "qu'est-ce qui s'est passé ici?") and I know a little bit of French so that I understood most of it, but I know how much it bugs me when the author uses a language I don't understand, even if it's something totally unimportant. Trying to get to the point... the story itself. I found it pretty good, overall. (There are summaries available everywhere, so I won't get into that...) As another reviewer pointed out, the story attempts to be a bit of everything (from romance to coming-to-age story to supernatural thriller), and in the end I've got to say that it does succeed in that quite well. Plotwise there isn't really anything for me to complain about. It's just the way it all is delivered.... I did get the impression that there is a great deal of research behind the book, though. Maybe the story didn't quite manage to avoid being somewhat cliche every now and then, but it was entertaining enough that I didn't quite care about that. I just wish the author and the editor would have worked a bit more on it - it could have been even better. But check the beginning - if you think you can deal with the style, by all means, do try it. July 25, 2008 Wish she had it re-read by a knowledgable Frenchman! I am three-quarters through this book and the story is definitely interesting and one wants to keep turning the pages. However, the BLATANT errors in 19th century Parisian geography/history, coupled with the linguistic errors in the French citations of the characters (e.g. after a shooting, when calling the ambulance, a character says "oui, il souffle encore"), makes it VERY hard to maintain interest. Hoping the last 200 pages' intrigue will override these annoyances. For more Sepulchre reviews click here.
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