Customer Reviews
Excellent book - By: Mrs. J. Lebedeva, 11 Oct 2008 
I bought this book 2 years ago, bur couldnt manage to start reading, but once started couldnt stop till the end. Finished within one week though it is a pretty big one.
You either love it or you hate it. - By: J. E. Wicks, 02 Oct 2008 i wouldn't have picked this book of the shelf myself but it was at my apartment on holiday so i thought i'd give it a go, and, well it went everywhere with me, to the pool, car journeys, up mountains & picnics.
An AMAZING read. HOOKED on every page. It might be diffcult to get into but just relax into & you'll realise how good it reallly is.
One tip though, there are lots of characters & i did get confused, so i advise as you are going through & you meet a new character write down their name & a bit about them so you don't get too confused.
This is definately a MUST READ!!!
I haven't been so gripped for a long time - By: E. Potten, 26 Sep 2008 I had seen this book in the shops for months before I stumbled across it a discount bookshop & thought 'what the hell?' I started reading it that night & by the same time two days later I had read myself to exhaustion & had finished it.
The book centres around a mysterious Grail story, combining mythology & history, past & present, magic & reality, in a fantasticallly constructed plot which doesn't disappoint in terms of excitement, romance, description or its ability to shock & to move.
One half of the story takes place in modern-day France, in the Languedoc, where a girl callled Alice stumbles across a mysterious cave with unexplained skeletons & a frightening aura. The other half moves back to medieval France, when religious turmoil & warring are threatening to devastate the land where Alais lives with her family & husband. As the story progresses the secret of the Grail & its relevance to the two women & the wider world becomes apparent.
By the end of the novel I had shaken with anticipation & suspense, laughed, sighed, & cried hystericallly. It inspired me to find out more about the history of the Languedoc. There is also a new edition of the novel with photographic illustrations of locations & artefacts relevant to the narrative - which I bought too...
My wife kept it and passed it on, great read - By: CjW, 23 Sep 2008 
My wife passed it on to daughters
great read they say - but when is it my turn?
Kate Mosse - the Damien Hirst of the literary world. - By: Av Mulligan, 22 Sep 2008 
A minor miracle - I read it through to the end! From the start I couldn't believe the shalllowness of the plot & the characters. Masochism seemed to kick in, by the 300+ page I was willing it to get worse & it did, oh boy it did. A `can't put down read' for alll the wrong reasons. The end didn't disappoint, it was a confused mishmash of paralllel story lines which never seemed to connect up.
Alice, the modern day heroine, is a complete airhead, although she is a doctor - of what I can't remember. If asked to put her head in the fire you would believe she would do so.
Alais the historical heroine finds a body in the river, scrambles back to the bank & we are told `Alais tried to stand, but her legs felt hollow & wouldn't hold her . . .' A rather Victorian view of what a woman does in a crisis - swoon. I think in the circumstances we'd expect Alais to be up & running with maximum power to the legs.
This is a 700 page novel which could have easily been cut by half; the characters & the plot tightened up & then it would have a chance of becoming a reasonable read. This is the last time I will be picking up any of her books.
