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.

He goes on the run, aided by Sandrine and her sister, Marianne, who is already working with the resistance. And when she meets Raoul, they discover a shared passion for the cause, for their homeland, and for each other. Mosse has marshalled a large cast of characters, although (as in Labyrinth and its successor, Sepulchre) the story centres around a determined young heroine, in this case 18-year-old Sandrine Vidal, an orphan living with her older sister in Carcassonne. 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.Authie believes he has his hands on the Codex, but hands it over to his superiors who also want to use it to gain power despite his obsessive desire to destroy. Citadel is the third book in Kate Mosse’s Languedoc trilogy, but it can be read as a standalone novel. And there are a lot of characters, making it a bit difficult to follow at times, especially at first, but that’s to be expected in a detailed story about a Resistance network. As the war reaches its violent and bloody conclusion, Sandrine's fate is tied up with that of three very different men. Her traits of stubbornness, conviction, determination, conscience, and bravery, shown in the beginning of the story, unfolds a woman capable of heroism.

This secondary thread is only a minor part of the book, which concentrates on the primary story of the struggles of a group of women Resistance fighters trying to help people escape Nazi-occupied France.Labyrinth was followed by Sepulchre in 2007, and again, I loved it and have anticipated the release of Citadel for such a long time. At about 700 pages, Citadel isn’t a very portable book (and if you try to read it in bed, try not to let if fall on your head while you doze off, like I did), but it’s worth the extra time and effort. 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. It starts off very slowly with the character building etc, and at times I wondered where it was actually going.

So I was very excited to get Kate Mosse’s new book, ‘Citadel’, which is a lovely, big, thick thwack of a book. Excellent subject matter-the courage of the resistance fighters and the cruelty of their captors was vividly described. Though not all of the characters are memorable, I am not likely to forget the courage and bravery they symbolized.

It was as if she was holding back on this because ultimately she thought she might need them to change sides later, but wasn't quite sure so just left them in an ambiguous zone that was unhelpful and eventually served no purpose. 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. 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. We were not well matched to each other, and after I turned the last page, we parted amicably without so much as exchanging numbers.