Book Review: Labyrinth

This book has been floating around between my bookshelf and my mom's bookshelf for the past few years. I think she bought it originally because the story blurb on the back cover interested her. She liked The DaVinci Code and this book sounded reasonably similar without being a rip-off. It sounded like an archaeological mystery with some history mixed in to add to the background of the main storyline. I'm honestly not sure if my mom ever finished this book because that is not at all what the novel was about.

Labyrinth by Kate Mosse

What should have been a relatively entertaining archaeological mystery, in my opinion, was an entirely too long historical fiction about religious persecution. The writing felt contrived and almost forced. I assume the historical accuracy was good; but the subject matter within the book is not my forte so I don't really know. The book felt like it juggled two main story lines while attempting to intertwine them in a messy fashion. I could never keep up with who was who in what era or what was really happening. The names of the main female characters were similar, with reason, but the connection between them could have been organized or described a little better. I also never knew who was the good guy and who was the "bad" guy. I assume there was a bad guy, since the entire novel was about destroying a people based on their faith and the retrieval of artifacts important to the persecuted people. Yeah. I know. That's how I felt. Lost.

This is apparently the first in a trilogy. I am not really sure how a sequel to this book would come about since it ended rather cleanly. I don't think I will be reading the other two books in the series, honestly.