It’s one thing to take a lovely great fat book away with you on vacation, but quite another to cruise into the city which inspired it on a luxury barge, tie it up for the night and set off on the lookout for literary associations. The book I’m thinking of is Citadel, the third in a trilogy inspired by the Languedoc ( Labyrinth and Sepulchre are the best-selling first two volumes) and the writer in question is Kate Mosse. Towards the end of the book when it's building to a crescendo I found it odd that there was a change in the emotion of the plot. After the protagonist is tortured, there is repeated reference to how she'll never have children as a result. It's a small point but it was jarringly emotional, a different style to the rest of the book. Also, Lucie's style of calling Sandrine 'kid' was irritating. During the highest tides of the season, the village struggles to fight the rising waters. Connie tries to uncover the truth behind the murder but she finds herself under suspicion. Is Constantia who she seems to be? What is the secret behind Gifford house?

But Authié wants Raoul for his own purposes: Raoul is in possession of a map belonging to his former comrade, Antoine, who died under torture at the hands of Authié's henchman without revealing its whereabouts. Beneath his official guise, Authié is a kind of latter-day inquisitor, obsessed with restoring the purity of the Catholic faith; he knows that Antoine corresponded with Otto Rahn, and suspects that before Rahn's death the German passed to Antoine a map revealing the whereabouts of an ancient codex containing a secret so powerful it could change the course of the war. The Ahnenerbe are also pursuing this codex, apparently with Authié's assistance, though to their cost they fail to realise that his motivation for securing it is quite different to theirs. I never felt invested in the story of Arinius and wife Lupa. I was given a brief introduction to each of them, but never felt an attachment. This idea of a connection between the story of a secret Cathar treasure and the grail was given substance in the 20th century by the work of Otto Rahn, a German historian and SS officer who believed that the Cathars held the key to the grail mystery, and that the evidence was somewhere beneath the ruins of Montségur. His writings attracted the attention of Himmler, whose own fascination with the occult, and with the possible ancient pedigree of an Aryan race, led to the founding of the Ahnenerbe, a society dedicated to research into proving the historical origins of a master race. This Nazi connection provides a richly dramatic setting for Citadel. The novel takes place largely between 1942 and 1944, between the occupation and liberation of southern France.

The Château de Pennautier

As in the previous books it's told in 2 time lines the 4th century and 1942-1944 when the Germans occupied the Midi (France) In World War II, another man Audric Baillard is looking for the Codex, trying to keep it out of the hands of the Germans and others who would not honour it. Audric is an old man by now, but still strong and smart and working with the Resistance to save France. Citadel is both the name of a house in a small mountain village, and the name of a Resistance group, a group of women working actively to defeat the Germans. At the centre is a young woman Sandrine and as the book begins we see her becoming aware of what is happening around here and beginning to plan her group. As usual, we have strong women at the centre of the novel, in both time periods, and the men who love and honour those women.

The 1942 storyline at least presents its share of obstacles for its characters. Sandrine certainly grows and changes as she matures from an unsure, impulsive girl into a clever and courageous woman. Although I found the simplistic way in which Mosse presents their decisions somewhat irritating, I really enjoyed how various characters, like Luce, rationalized their collaboration. In this respect, Citadel allows the reader to sympathize with what the ordinary citizens of these villages and towns must have felt as the Nazi occupation deepened. It’s all well and good to say that one would stand and fight against such an invader in theory. When it’s actually happening, it is a different thing entirely, more pernicious and less overtly easy to throw off. I felt that the one redeeming feature was that much of the novel was drawn from historical detail. However, in her afterword, what Mosse actually reveals is that she has made everything up. Twisted facts entirely for her own purposes and played God with history to such an extent that nothing can be said to be even vaguely based on what was really occurring during this epoch. But smuggling refugees over the mountains into neutral territory and sabotaging their Nazi occupiers is only part of their mission. These members of the resistance must also protect an ancient secret that, if discovered by the enemy, could change the course of history. In her own life, Kate has cared for her father and mother, and for her 90-year-old mother-in-law, Granny Rosie. Through this, she has experienced the joys, challenges and frustrations shared by an invisible army of carers. Revelation 1:1 announces both the book's title (it is a 'revelation') and its divine author ('Jesus Christ'). The book is an 'unveiling of unseen spiritual forces operating behind the scenes in history and controlling its events and outcome. This disclosure is conveyed in a series of symbolic visions that exhibit the influence of OT prophecies, especially those received by Daniel, Ezekiel, and Zechariah. The book is also 'prophecy' (Rev. 1:3; 22:7), not only as divine prediction of future events but also as divine diagnosis of the present state of affairs."Kate Mosse's much-loved non-fiction book shares the story of what it is like to care for those we love. I've been putting off posting this for weeks. I gave up. Citadel just didn't hold my interest and I kept diving into other books instead. It's not that Kate Mosse does anything badly in this book, she just doesn't do anything well enough to keep me involved. It's a pity because I loved the first two books of the trilogy and it was reading the first many years ago that tempted me to the South of France for the first time. I've been in love with the place ever since. And new heroes and heroines, Raoul, Sandrine, Lucie, Marianne, too many to name all related somehow to the story of the characters of the previous book like a cycle. It was a super emotive book, not only due to what was happening, the Nazi occupation, the deportations to the camps, the isolation, but also the unity and loyalty of people, their bravery to fight not only the Nazi but their own government accepting Hitler's regime and also the way that the author linked these characters to the ones in the previous two books in the series. While fiction, this novel is written around real events of the Second World War, and was inspired by the massacre at Baudrigues on August 19, 1944 and the women that died there.