My Two Cents

I left the book at my mom's last week and hence have been unable to comment on any specific passages from Labyrinth this week. D'oh. To make up for the lack of blogging, here's my review I wrote a few days ago for Amazon.

Fails as literature June 14, 2010

WARNING: Labyrinth by Kate Mosse blatantly ignores the following standards of fiction:

1. That the human characters resemble human beings in their thoughts, speech, and actions and thus allow the reader to identify with them in some way. The human characters in Labyrinth: a) rarely carry through a thought to its logical conclusion; b) habitually abandon conversations halfway through, and; c) unless they decide to do something supremely stupid such as ride alone at night through a war-torn countryside populated with armed thieves, never take action of any sort unless forced to do so by a cackling villain.

1a. That each character has a distinct personality. Upon reading a piece of dialog or a reaction, the reader should reasonably be able to guess at who said or did that thing based on the personalities presented. The reader shouldn't have to struggle to the realization that Authie and Audric are different characters, nor be forced to puzzle out that Raymond-Roger and Trencavel are in fact one and the same man (who is called by both his first and last name seemingly at some random whim of the author). The main personality traits of a Mosse character are blandness and forgetfulness, in that order. We can add to that apathy and stupidity, if the character is good, and a fondness for sex and/or torture, if the character is bad.

1b. That the characters, once established, act in a manner consistent with the author's description. For instance, a girl described as "brave" and who is volunteering at an archaeological dig should not be tremendously upset upon discovering some skeletons. Nor should a medieval, married girl described as "fearless" and "independent" quake in fear at the sight of a distant corpse and then go running to her daddy.

2. That the story progress at a healthy enough pace that if the reader turns 100 pages ahead, he does not see the characters doing the same things they were doing 100 pages ago. Let's say that on page 119 a man hands you a phone number, then is immediately run down by the bad guys in front of your eyes. What do you do? Call the number to find out what's going on, or wander France for 200 more pages before thinking of the number again, and then only after it is told to you a second time? I bet you can guess what Kate Mosse's heroine does.

3. That the historical references and the researched facts be a natural part of the story and presented only as necessary to the plot. The reader should not have to maneuver around them like orange barrels at a roadwork site. Kate Mosse continually violates this simple rule.

4. That the author should regard the reader as a thinking human being with a memory. It's enough to mention once or twice that Pelletier has gone to Montpellier. After five mentions even the most forgetful reader will have acquired this information; by the ninth or tenth mention the reader will become annoyed, and by the twelfth mention the reader may want to throw your novel across the room.

5. That the phrases "suddenly" and "straight away" should be used sparingly, not well over 100 times in 500 pages. It's not necessary, for example, to describe Alice ordering her meal "straight away"--would it not suffice to say she ordered food? Kate Mosse tends to use "straight away" to begin sentences, which makes this even more distracting. Straight away, I noticed that Mosse has an obsession with the term "straight away."

6. That an English language book be mainly in English; that foreign words be used appropriately--such as when the English word will not do--or occasionally for flavor. We don't need entire strings of conversation in French, especially not when the conversation consists of someone telling their secretary to make a phone call. And we don't need to be patronized by having words like "allo" followed immediately by the English "hello" by way of translation. Kate Mosse believes she's the only person in the English-speaking world to ever learn French, and she is darn well going to teach it to us.

7. Finally, and most importantly, that the story and/or characters entertain the reader. Judging by other comments here, Kate Mosse has a rival in Dan Brown. Dan Brown's novels suffer from some of the same mistakes as Mosse's do--infodumps, wafer-thin characterization, repeated words, excruciating dialog, etc. However, Dan Brown, for all his human failings, knows how to create a story and move it along, and thus ENTERTAINS the reader. I'll take an over the top, ridiculously implausible Holy Grail story over a meticulously researched, deadly dull Holy Grail story any day of the week. Et toi, Kate Mosse?