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Sepulchre | 
 enlarge | Author: Kate Mosse
Publisher: G. P. Putnam's Sons
Category: Book
List Price: £16.98
Buy Used: £2.64
You Save: £14.34 (84%)
Used (15) Collectible (1) from £2.64
Rating:  101 reviews
Sales Rank: 1092313
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 592
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.1 x 2.1
ISBN: 0399154671
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9780399154676
ASIN: 0399154671
Publication Date: April 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Ships from USA, arrives in 2-3 weeks; 100% Money Back Guarantee; Shipped daily; Over one million satisfied book lovers read with Experienced Books; Good condition, showing modest signs of wear; Some aging/yellowing of text pages; Some discoloration/sunfade of cover/spine; Some rubbing on cover;
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| Customer Reviews: Read 96 more reviews...
 I gave up reading this, too... November 17, 2008
Glamour Girl (UK)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I know people don't like someone writing a review if they haven't read the full book, but personally I think if a mystery can't hold your interest enough to make you finish, then that says more than anything else could. I was so hopeful for this at first - the prologue, all about the "city of bones", was so atmospheric. But ten more pages in, the description had got too much. I think a skilled writer can evoke a scene with one or two well-placed sentences, rather than resorting to page after page of narrative. The "mystery" also wasn't very compelling - I didn't really care about either of the two main female characters or what happened to them. After 100 pages, I wondered how I was ever going to get to the end. After 320 I decided it was time to throw in the towel - and I HATE not finishing books! Instead, I switched to the eminently more readable page-turner, Maeve Binchy's 'Light a Penny Candle'.
missed opportunity November 12, 2008
Angel of Nine (The Hague, Netherlands)
I think I have been reading an unedited version, either that of the book was simply never edited. Which is a damn shame, because the grammatical errors alone are enough to annoy the heck out of you and it would have been nice if an editor or proofreader could have dealt with the structural errors in the story as well. It is really not great writing. Having said that I somehow still managed to enjoy the book so it wasn't all a big loss, but it really could have been so much better!
 Awful waste November 6, 2008
M. Hill (Surrey, UK)
Well I bought this book thinking I'd seen it on so many bestseller shelves in bookshops that it should be good.
Wrong! Well, not totally wrong... The underlying story was quite good, although I too much preferred the flashback chapters to the present day cringing romantic drivel.
But there is some utterly annoying writing in this book. For instance - and this is the main annoyance - random, needless insertion of French words. It's so goddamn pretentious it physically made me cringe. Fair enough, in dialogue, a French phrase here and there adds to the ambience, but to have random French words in descriptive paragraphs is wholly unneccesary and, well, cheesy.
And then we get to the end... Total, total disappointment.
Please don't buy this. Not if you like reading. If you don't like reading then you probably enjoyed Dan Brown's books and so maybe this is right up your street.
A Long Read November 4, 2008
Mr. Peter Steward (Norwich, England)
In many ways this was a difficult book to review.
For a start it runs to well over 700 pages and so the initial question has to be: Does it hold the reader's attention over such a marathon?
I read Mosse's previous novel Labyrinth and found it to be unnecessarily rambling and complex and at times tedious. Thankfully Sepulchre doesn't fall into this trap but it does take an effort at times to keep going.
Sepulchre is a simpler and more constrained book with less sweeping vistas than Labyrinth. The characters are reasonably well drawn and the early descriptions of Paris of 1891 are sharp. A number of reviewers have complained about the Americanisation of some of the passages, but I didn't find this a problem with the narrative flowing reasonably well.
At times my attention did wander somewhat but it would be some author that could sustain tension over such a long stretch, I still believe, however, that this book would have been better served at around 500 pages. At times background descriptions are just too detailed and lose interest. The minutae of character behaviour is sometimes over-stretched.
There are some other annoying aspects to the book. Firstly, even after 700+ pages you get the feeling that the author has suddenly decided it's time to tie up the loose ends and end the story. The conclusion therefore reads more like a report than part of the narrative.
Another annoyance is when the characters suddenly lapse into French in an attempt to make us believe they really are French. The story is in English 99% of the time but just occasionally changes track. It is the equivalent of the old boys war comics where Germans occasionally used a Germanic word such as achtung just to re-inforce the fact that they were indeed the Hun!
Annoyances aside I have to say it is not a bad read at all. There are almost two distinct stories here. One is the supernatural mystery but the other is quite a fascinating Victorian melodrama and it is possibly this that is the most effective.
The action ultimately ends in more of a whimper than a bang as if a cataclysmic climax is just too much for the author. Overall I would recommend it as a decent read as long as you aren't expecting a classic.
I can't finish this book either! October 28, 2008
Donny Fan
I thought it was just me! I read Labyrinth and really enjoyed it and was very much looking forward to reading this but oh dear, what a chore. I am glad I am not the only one who cannot manage to suffer until the end.
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