基本信息出版社：Berkley Trade
页码：528 页
出版日期：2007年02月
ISBN：0425213978
条形码：9780425213971
版本：2007-02-06
装帧：平装
开本：32开 Pages Per Sheet
外文书名：迷宫
内容简介 Book Description
July 2005. In the Pyrenees mountains near Carcassonne, Alice, a volunteer at an archaeological dig, stumbles into a cave and makes a startling discovery-two crumbling skeletons, strange writings on the walls, and the pattern of a labyrinth.
Eight hundred years earlier, on the eve of a brutal crusade that will rip apart southern France, a young woman named Alais is given a ring and a mysterious book for safekeeping by her father. The book, he says, contains the secret of the true Grail, and the ring, inscribed with a labyrinth, will identify a guardian of the Grail. Now, as crusading armies gather outside the city walls of Carcassonne, it will take a tremendous sacrifice to keep the secret of the labyrinth safe.
From Publishers Weekly
Mosse's page-turner takes readers on another quest for the Holy Grail, this time with two closely linked female protagonists born 800 years apart. In 2005, Alice Tanner stumbles into a hidden cave while on an archeological dig in southwest France. Her discovery—two skeletons and a labyrinth pattern engraved on the wall and on a ring—triggers visions of the past and propels her into a dangerous race against those who want the mystery of the cave for themselves. Ala?s, in the year 1209, is a plucky 17-year-old living in the French city of Carcassone, an outpost of the tolerant Cathar Christian sect that has been declared heretical by the Catholic Church. As Carcassonne comes under siege by the Crusaders, Ala?s's father, Bertrand Pelletier,entrusts her with a book that is part of a sacred trilogy connected to the Holy Grail. Guardians of the trilogy are operating against evil forces—including Ala?s's sister, Oriane, a traitorous, sexed-up villainess who wants the books for her own purposes. Sitting securely in the historical religious quest genre, Mosse's fluently written third novel (after Crucifix Lane) may tantalize (if not satisfy) the legions of Da VinciCode devotees with its promise of revelation about Christianity's truths. 8-city author tour. (Mar.)
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
Kate Mosse's enviable accomplishments include being co-founder and honorary director of the Orange Prize for fiction as well as a respected commentator on the arts for the BBC. Lately, though, she's enjoyed an even more mouthwatering success. Having already published two well-received novels of a literary bent, including 1996's poignant Eskimo Kissing, she turned her hand to what she unabashedly calls "commercial fiction," a time-slip novel that her publishers have billed as a "women's adventure story." The result, a doorstop of a historical thriller, quickly sprinted to the top of the bestseller lists in her native Britain.
Labyrinth is a "women's" adventure story because, presumably, it showcases a strong female cast or, rather, a cast of strong females: two heroines, separated by 800 years, who find themselves pitted against a pair of glamorous, green-eyed female villains. As for the adventure bit, Mosse clearly warmed to her task, packing the novel with swordfights, sieges and massacres. At its heart is a hunt for the Holy Grail across the ruggedly beautiful Cathar country of southwest France.
All this medieval mayhem would be pointless without Mosse's good plot to hold things together. The story starts in the present with Alice, a lovelorn twenty-something on an archaeological dig in France, accidentally uncovering a pair of ancient skeletons and a stone ring embossed with a labyrinth symbol. So begins a fast-paced series of events that not only threatens Alice's life (cue a crucifix-wearing racist and sex offender named Authié) but also duplicates those that befell her medieval counterpart and near-namesake Ala?s, a plucky young newlywed from the nearby city of Carcassonne. The second strand of narrative -- cleverly intertwined with the first -- tells how, in the summer of 1209, as Carcassonne was besieged by bloodthirsty Crusaders, Ala?s headed for the hills with a mysterious book of hieroglyphics entrusted to her by her dying father.
Medieval history and legend are nimbly brought together in this second branch of the story. That the repulsive Authié wears a crucifix should alert us as to how Catholics (who worship what Ala?s calls a "cruel God") will become the baddies of the piece. Mosse shows the Crusaders as bent on stamping out heresy and, while they were at it, colonizing the rich lands of France's southern nobility. Their victims, the Cathars, currently enjoy a place as the most attractive and sympathetic of medieval heretics, and it's not hard to understand their modern appeal: They were, among other things, vegetarians who ordained female priests, believed in reincarnation and regarded Jews and Muslims as their equals. They were, according to Ala?s, "good men, tolerant men, men of peace who celebrated a God of Light." These liberal opinions served to get them evicted from their strongholds in the Languedoc area after a brutal, decades-long military campaign known as the Albigensian Crusade -- an act of persecution whose flesh-burning zeal Mosse recounts in terrifying detail.
Yet there's more to the Cathar story, of course. As every Grail buff knows, the Cathars were supposedly protectors of the Holy Grail, whose hiding place was the mountains of the Languedoc. Mosse duly picks up this legend but gives it a new twist: Early on, we learn how the true Grail (which turns out to have little to do with chalices or, indeed, Christianity) is summoned by bringing together three books known as the "Labyrinth Trilogy." One of these Ala?s has smuggled into a remote place in the Pyrenees; the other two have fallen into the clutches of her evil sister Oriane, a temptress who acquired one of them while bedding Ala?s's handsome new husband. Oriane will commit worse crimes than that, we suspect, to lay her hands on the final copy.
Following the extraordinary sales of a certain other bestseller, it would be tempting -- but unfair -- to attribute the success of Labyrinth to its scheming Catholics and reworking of the Grail legend. Nor is Labyrinth, as a work of commercial fiction, a cynical half-measure or crude attempt by a "serious" writer to pander to a wide audience. Mosse's writing does occasionally lapse into the clichés of the ripping-good-yarn genre. She provides plenty of what might be called cardiopulmonary hyperbole (pounding hearts, gasping lungs), as well as one too many cases of a character blacking out after an unexpected encounter between her skull and a blunt object. Still, the novel distinguishes itself by juggling two compelling story lines, unscrambling (and making digestible) chunks of medieval history and offering a pleasing wealth of information about the Languedoc, a region whose landscape and history Mosse loves deeply and knows intimately. Her contagious enthusiasm for the subject and dexterous handling of her material make for an open-throttle narrative drive across 500 pages of white-knuckle twists and turns.
A women's adventure novel? Labyrinth is a thumping good read that men, too, will surely enjoy. Why should the girls have all the fun?
Reviewed by Ross King
From Booklist
Mosse's epic adventure weaves together the present and the past in an entertaining Grail-quest tale. In the present, Alice Tanner, a volunteer at a French archaeological excavation, stumbles across the skeletal remains of two people in a cave, as well as a ring with an intricate labyrinth engraved on it. Her discovery attracts the attention of two unsavory figures: Paul Authie, a sinister police inspector, and Marie-Ceile de l'Oradore, a wealthy, powerful woman. When the ring that Alice discovered and the friend that invited her out on the dig both disappear, Alice begins to fear for her safety. Interlinked with Alice's story is that of 17-year-old Alais, newly married to a handsome chevalier and living in thirteenth-century Carcassonne. The threat of French invasion grows every day, but Alais and her father are more concerned with protecting three sacred books that reveal the secret of the Grail. The Crusaders want the books, but two people much closer to home are working against Alais and her father, desirous of the promise of eternal life that the Grail offers. Although the novel contains lulls in places, the medieval story is exciting. Expect demand.
Kristine Huntley
From AudioFile
With more than 500 audiobook titles to her credit, Golden Voice Wanda McCaddon, a.k.a. Donada Peters, is a sure bet to please listeners in this complex quest tale. The story revolves around 13th-century Alais and 21st-century Alice, bound together by a sacred trilogy of ancient books. Mysticism, ancient hieroglyphs, and secret societies add to the puzzle as Alais struggles to save the manuscripts and Alice wrestles with blackouts and memories reincarnated from someone else's past. Peters reads with gusto. The intelligence in her voice resonates in this story of the Crusades, religious persecution, murder, imprisonment, and torture. This smart book, enhanced by an accomplished reading by Peters, provides hours of engrossing listening. S.J.H.
Book Dimension
length: (cm)22.4 width:(cm)15.2
作者简介 Kate Mosse is the co-founder and honorary director of the Orange Prize for Fiction and a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.