Sepulchre by Kate Mosse
I read Sepulchre by Kate Mosse two years ago, while on an exchange trip to Germany. I wanted something to read in English so I could have something to relax with (I can read a novel in German and understand most of it, but it takes exponentially longer than it would if the novel were in English), and only had a small selection of English-language books available at the bookstore. I have to say, it was a waste of €10, and it would have been a wallbanger if I’d been at home. Originally I picked this book up because the blurb on the back cover made it sound like a supernatural mystery:
"1891. Seventeen-year-old Léonie Vernier and her brother abandon Paris for the sanctuary of their aunt's isolated country house near Carcasonne, the Domaine de la Cade. But Léonie stumbles across a ruined sepulchre - and a timeless mystery whose traces are written in blood.
2007. Meredith Martin arrives at the Domaine de la Cade to research a biography. But Meredith is also seeking the key to her own complex legacy and becomes immersed in the story of a tragic love, a missing girl, a unique deck of tarot cards and the strange events of one cataclysmic night a century ago..."
Suffice it to say, the book did not deliver, or else I probably wouldn't be posting here about it.
Since I'm not the best at summarizing, I'm just going to post the summary from the Wikipedia article:
In 1891, Léonie Vernier is a young girl living in Paris until an invitation from her uncle's widow Isolde prompts a journey to the Carcassonne region with her brother, Anatole. Unknown to her, her brother and Isolde have been carrying on an affair, and he is being pursued by Isolde's jealous former lover, Victor Constant. For a while, they live an idyllic lifestyle in the country. However, Constant discovers where they are staying and sets out to exact his revenge.
In the present day, an American, Meredith Martin, is in France to research the life of Claude Debussy for a biography she is writing. She is also trying to find out more about her biological mother. During the visit, she uncovers information that links her lineage to that of Léonie Vernier and discovers the truth about the events in Carcassonne during that period in history."
If the two summaries sound only vaguely related, it's because they are. Léonie is supposed to be the main character, but the story's not about her at all. The entire time I was reading, it felt like what Mosse really wanted to write was the love story between Anatole and Isolde, and that she only threw in Léonie and the tarot cards and the connection with Meredith (oh yeah, turns out Meredith is the direct descendant of Isolde and Anatole) to draw in fantasy and supernatural fiction fans. The tarot cards show up in Léonie's time basically to give her something to do while Anatole and Isolde play footsie behind her back; in the future, Hal's uncle wants them for some reason I can't remember (they're super rare, I know that, but I think there's another reason he wants them).
I couldn't relate to any of the characters. Léonie is your typical high-spirited redhead who shows her independence by sneaking off when people tell her not to and pitching a fit when she has to face consequences. Anatole refuses to tell his sister a damn thing and treats her like a child. Isolde was too quiet and ineffectual for me to give a damn about. Meredith was annoying, and her boyfriend Hal was a shallow character clearly meant to be a love interest. And the villains, Victor Constant and Hal's uncle, were so one-dimensional that they just ruined the rest of the book for me. Constant is insane because he caught syphilis from a whore the first time he had sex, and therefore hates all women. Hal's uncle wants those damn Tarot cards and is willing to kill everyone ever to get at them. Do you have any characters with depth to them, Mosse?
I hated the whole plot contrivance of Léonie falling in love with Constant as his master plan to get at Anatole and Isolde. She meets him for a half hour at most, he lays the charm on her, and she falls so madly in love with him that she moons over him for months even though he's not writing to her? Blech. And I really disliked how Constant just kept fucking coming back, and he's finally killed by the demons in the sepulchre where Léonie finds the tarot cards when the cards have barely been mentioned for the last hundred pages of that plot of the book. I despised the whole 2007 plot, from the constant info dumps about Debussy that had nothing to do with anything and just felt like the author wanted praise for being able to do research, to the incredibly vague connections to the 1891 plot (including ghostly images of Léonie visiting her at night), to the hokey ending.
The writing style itself made the book hard to get through. Mosse has this tendency to write long, descriptive sentences that aren't actually sentences, because they don't have any fucking verbs in them. "The clink of harness and wheels on the busy streets" is not a sentence, it's a fragment, and there's at least one on any given page. There's also a lot of needless French, usually in dialogue - in one chapter there are five lines about ordering wine, all in French. I should not need to ask my mother to translate this book for me. Even worse, though, is that I just could not bring myself to care about any of the action. I don't know if the prose just sounded too pretentious, or the descriptions just bothered me too much, but I found the scene in the first chapter where Léonie is trapped in the theater while people are rioting boring. The fire? Meh. Constant killing her mother? Yawn. It was just so lackluster and incapable of inspiring any real interest in the well-being of the characters.
If she'd just cut out the whole romance plot and done more with the cards and Léonie, I probably would have at least vaguely liked it.