Novelish

ISBN: 978-0399153440 Pages: 510 (hardcover)
Author: Kate Mosse

To some extent, it’d be hard for me to not enjoy Labyrinth, simply due to the (mostly) intriguing tale, the unique combination of historical and contemporary fiction, and the French settings like Carcassonne and the Pyrenees.

But it wasn’t as much fun as it could have been, and pretty much every aspect of the book could be improved on. So, without further ado…

My three main quibbles:

Characters

None of the characters in Labyrinth felt truly developed to me. Or to put it another way, they were largely generic, even with the little traits that differentiated them from each other.

To be fair, it could be that I didn’t get a proper chance to know any of them - the viewpoint character switched around quite a lot.

Writing Style

The writing itself is… well, not good, but in the same way that I consider the majority of bestsellers to be not good. I could write paragraphs on what exactly is wrong with it, but in the end, it all comes down to one thing: it just doesn’t sound right.

Plot

I liked the plot well enough, but I think the inclusion of supernatural elements makes it a lot weaker - especially since I wasn’t expecting them. I mean, fantasy is one of my favorite genres, but for this sort of book it’s a cheap way of doing things.

What do I mean by cheap? Well, consider The Da Vinci Code (which IS a comparison many reviewers make). It “reaches into the past” in the same way as Labyrinth, but Dan Brown went to considerable effort to ensure everything was technically feasible - and as someone who knows how much easier plotting gets when you add a little magic, I have to admire him for that.

See also:

• Labyrinth review on BookWitch
• Review on Between the Covers
• Read the prologue (in third-person present-tense; the rest of the book is third-person past-tense)
• Kate Mosse’s advice to writers

Forthcoming on Novelish: Reviews of Rebecca, On Writing, and The Name of the Wind, a post on the dangers of using stock photography on book covers, and thoughts on whether listening to a book on tape “counts” as having read it.