A NSSEB present.
Happy Easter.
This book looks really good hope you enjoy it.
:o)

Sent a couple of days ago, hope it arrives before Easter.:o)

Received as part of my NSSEB.
Thank you very much!

Apologies for taking so long to get round to reading this.

amazon synopsis:
July 1209: in Carcassonne a young girl is given a mysterious book by her father which he claims contains the secret of the true Grail. Although Alais cannot understand the strange words and symbols hidden within, she knows that her destiny lies in protecting it...July 2005: Alice Tanner stumbles upon two skeletons during an archaeological dig in the mountains outside Carcassonne. Inside the hidden tomb she experiences an overwhelming sense of malevolence, as well as a creeping understanding that, however impossible it seems, she can somehow understand the mysterious ancient words carved into the rock. Too late, Alice realises she's set in motion a terrifying sequence of events that she cannot control and that her destiny is inextricably tied up with the fate of the Cathars 800 years before.

One of the many Grail books that are around, but much better than the Da Vinci Code, although the ending was predictable. I particularly enjoyed the parts set in the thirteenth century, although I would have liked a liitle more detail about the Cathars and their beliefs.

RELEASE NOTES:

Going on the book table.

Picked up at the UnConvention. I've been looking out for this for some time. Thanks to Becky for spotting it for me. I'm very much hoping that Kate Mosse will get it right where Dan Brown went so badly wrong. Time will tell.

I concur with rahar109. The one thing that would have made this book distinctive is the Cathar aspect, something that is never properly explored. I can't help thinking how much better it would have been had it been written by Umberto Eco. As it is it's yet another book that jumps on a quite bewildering anti-Catholic bandwagon in order to cover up for a gossamer-thin plot. The characters are two-dimensional goodies or baddies; the Cathars are all wise, gentle and holistic; the Catholics are all smelly, brutish and sneering; noone ever gets punched but that fists are "slammed" into heads and pain "explodes" in peoples skulls. Like most modern authors, Mosse over-eggs the sex and violence, neither of which engage the reader in any meaningful way, and tries to keep us interested by the use of the now all-too-familiar one-lone-hero-against-the-evil-secret-society plot. It's plain that she has done a bit of historical research, decided she didn't like Catholics anyway (I wonder if she knows any) and sought out the most obvious formula in the hope of getting on the best-seller list. Just like Dan Brown's book, you have to ask why it's worth keeping the secret secret? Who cares if an evil scheming person lives to be eight hundred years old? No, I'm afraid it's a thumbs-down from me this time, making this book - for me at least - the first literary disappointment of 2008.

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

Probably at the Hub where there is a book swap happening throughout the festival