I thought the reviews were too glowing to be true-thank goodness I ordered it from the library and not the bookseller! I thought the DVC was a readable beach book, but NOT the century's best thriller. But nothing breeds rushed, inferior imitations like a mention on the best-seller list! I'll cancel my reserve today!
I wish the boys who wrote Rule of Four would get on with the sequel.
cece

>This is apparently the new Da Vinci Code. A huge best-seller. ...Well, frankly, this is badly-written tosh

Apparently she took her cue from DVC bad writting and decided to really go for the gusto.

Trust me - Dan Brown is Proust compared to Kate Mosse

Thanks for warning us. I had just marked this in "Book Page" as one to look for, as I've an interest in the Cathars. I'll avoid it.

FWIW, I liked "Rule of Four" very much, but wonder if the authors will ever collaborate a second time....

Woodnynmph, have you read All Things Are Lights by Robert Shea? It's unfortunately OOP, but I really loved that book. It's an epic that follows the adventures of a young man through the Inquisition and his involvement with the Cathars. Amazon has some used if you're interested.

I shall avoid the Kate Mosse, thanks Martin!

Here is a link that might be useful: All Things Are Lights

sheri, no, I've not read that one. Thanks, I'll look for it, as it sounds just my cup of tea....

re: Rule of Four.... if any ending cried out for a sequel.....
I will be disappointed if they don't wrap up some loose ends. Then again, I enjoyed Overnight Float written by Clare Munnings: the pseudonym for Jill Ker Conway, former president of Smith College, and Elizabeth T. Kennan, former president of Mount Holyoke College. It was billed as "the first in a series" and according to the jacket notes, they were hard at work on the next book-but it was published in 2000 and nothing since. I've never been able to find any info on that one.

Thanks for the warning, Martin, as I had been eyeing that book recently, wondering if it was worth a read. I'm in the camp that The DaVinci Code was a light but occasionally entertaining read, albeit poorly written, so I will definitely steer clear of Labyrinth, enticing as it may appear.

I agree with Martin, and I definately enjoyed the DVC more than Labyrinth.

Not worth all the hype!

Jane
UK

I wouldn't presume to tell other people what to read...all I can do is say what I have read and enjoyed-or not-we all have different reading tastes and opinions about books.

I read DVC when it first came out and took it for what it was - a mystery novel-not the best one I had read, not the worst, but it was thought provoking, and obviously here we are years later still talking about it and it is still on the Top Ten best sellers!

I read Rule of Four last year and didn't care for it at all. I do plan to avoid all the new books out dealing with the Templars and similar subjects-enough!

I have requested Labryinth from the library because I agreed to read it for a book discussion in May, so I will be happy to give my opinion-for what it is worth-after I have read it!

Pat

Pat - I have no intention of telling people what to read or not to read. But I respect greatly the opinions of people on this forum, and tend to agree in general about their views on books. Even if I don't agree about the book, I generally agree about the quality - I may not like it, but I admire it.

The reason I posted such a blatant warning against Labyrinth was because it was such a badly-written and -edited book. There is a perfectly good book buried in there; it would probably take a month of work by a decent editor to dig it out. It would be about a hundred pages shorter, would have quite a fun story, and would be harmless tosh. It wouldn't have concerned me that it was a best-seller. But as it stands.....

Labyrinth received a pretty good review in the Book World section of The Washington Post this morning. At this point I don't plan to read the book but sometimes I like to read books with such variation in viewpoints just to see what I think.

Liking or disliking a book is so subjective. I really enjoyed The Da Vinci Code and didn't care at all for The Rule of Four.

Has anyone read The Secret Supper by Javier Sierra? It has just been released in the US but is supposedly a huge hit in Europe.

Here is a link that might be useful: Review

This sounds like the kind of book that I would read and think, "Hey, I can be a writer! I can write better than this!" That's how I felt about The Rule of Four. And yeah, I trust my fellow RPers more than any book reviewer who doesn't know me and probably has his/her own agenda.

Thanks very much, Martin! There are plenty of good books out there clamoring to be read, so I appreciate a tip that stops me from looking for, possibly even buying, a bad one.

I liked the Rule of Four much better than DVC. In DVC, I felt like very 50 pages or so, the plot would stop for a lesson, so that the poor reader could understand what was coming next.
Plus, my DD is in college. The stories I hear from her and her friends sound like continuations of RoF. For instance, one of her dear friends is at one of the Ivy League schools-(for those not familiar with US universities...R of F is set at Princeton; the other Ivy Leagues are Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Univ. of Pennsylvania, and Yale) and when this friend had an assignment for a particular class, one of the other students raced to the library and checked out every applicable book on the topic, so he could do the assignment and no one else would be able to do as good a job! Academic skullduggery lives!
(They bribed his roommate with appropriate beverages and reclaimed the books!)

I hate to announce this, but 'The Labyrinth' has just won the Richard and Judy Best Read Prize at the British Book Awards. I must say I have been disappointed in the list of R&J books this year, after last year when 'Cloud Atlas' won the prize, and the list included 'Time Travellers Wife', 'Shadow of the Wind' and 'My Sister's Keeper'.

The only book in this years choices in the same calibre as last year is History of Love IMHO.

well, at least My Sister's Keeper didn't win-

meow.

Hey! I liked My Sister's Keeper.

*claws exposed* and *hiss* and cries of "Cat fight, cat fight!" Ha! :-)

I have been reading reviews on BookReporter and everyone that has read this book (Labyrinth)has said they enjoyed it....I am still on the waiting list at our library so it might just be awhile before I get to read it.

Pat

I already had Labyrinth in my TBR pile so I am going to go ahead and see what all the fuss is about. Now I am curious.

I never read threads until I read the book; a vigorous thread means I will eventually pick up the book. Only because I'm going through a painful divestment of books right now did I pass on Labyrinth at the bookstore last night. So this morning I open the thread to see what I missed. Whew!!! My natural suspicion of copycat books helped save me again. Thank you, Martin!

I also passed on The Last Templar. Anyone read it yet?

Katherine Neville's The Eight is highly recommended for those wanting religious comspiracies. Although I think most of us have read it.

Chris, I've not read "The Eight". Would you want to tell a bit more about it?

Chris, I tried reading The Last Templar and threw it down in disgust after several chapters. It began fairly well but faded fast.

The first and best of Katherine Neville's books, the gold is in the plot and conspiracies. Set in 1972 and 1790, in France and llit is a search for Charlemagne's chess set and employs, if I remember correctly, and I may not - can't find the novel just now, the Knights Templar. Chess knowledge probably enhances the novel, but I enjoyed it with minimal chess expertise. (i.e. I can usually beat a 9 year old. LOL)

Pardon me - keyboard fluff when I tried to edit.
If not Knights Templar, at least Freemasons.
And it takes place in France, New York, and Albania. An historical puzzle

OK-I finished it last night!

I kept setting the book aside for other-more interesting to me books!
It was far too long and as Martin said, it needed some serious editing! I found myself rolling my eyes as I was reading some parts.

The book evoked memories of books such as Green Darkness and similar books where the 'heroine' has memories or connections with someone in a previous life or century, and also the Indiana Jones movie-can't think of the title -but the one where they search for the Grail & find that old Knight waiting in the chamber....so almost as though Mosse had seen & read these various books & told herself-hey-I can write about that with my own twists.....

As an aside Mosse makes out Simon De Montfort to be a nasty cruel vicious man - much different version of a man that Sharon Kay Penman wrote of as a hero, and I know the town of Leicester in England has places named after him-and I attended concerts as a teen at De Montfort Hall.

Has anyone else read it since Martin's critique?

Pat

Yes, I did. By the way, I also noticed the difference between Mosse and Penman in their portrayals of Simon De Montfort.

I thought the book was too long, and yes, I rolled my eyes and snorted in disbelief several times. For some reason, though, I read the whole thing, maybe because I was in need of a little bit of light reading where I didn't have to think too terribly hard. On some levels I enjoyed it, simply as entertainment, much as I occasionally enjoy a mindless movie, which brings me to my next thought: Is it just me, or did you get the feeling that the book was written to be turned into a movie?

A co-worker gave me this book and begged me to read it so we could talk about it. (Would you believe I have several co-workers who think I'm some kind of literary intellectual type?) I couldn't deal with the truly abhorrent writing. I only made it two hundred pages into the book and that was it. Really a shame, the basic premise is quite interesting. In the hands of a better writer, it could have been very entertaining. I truly can't believe this book won any awards or got good reviews. I don't know who Richard and Judy are or what their qualifications are to review books. They must not have made the leap to this side of the pond. Of course, I normally hated Oprah's book selections. I don't think I ever made it through any of hers, either. (Some of them were quite good books, I will certainly agree about that, but not my cup of tea.)