I don't think I am going to bother with Mosse any more. I probably wouldn't have bothered with this one, but someone gave it to me and there it was on the shelf in the bathroom and it made a change from working sudoku.
I recently accused Georgette Heyer of being overly fond of some of her characters. After reading this one by Mosse, I think I may owe Heyer an apology.
This story is similar to her earlier one, Labyrinth, in many respects. It is set in two time periods. The young woman in the contemporary story must discover all the connections with the earlier story. They are set in the same general region of France. And - she has recycled characters from her earlier book - unnecessarily in my opinion, since the two stories are completely unrelated.
Of course, having created an 800-year old character, I suppose she thought it would be wasteful to use him in only one story. Since he was 800 years old, I suppose he had time to become the expert on everything, but his background is not discussed in this story - unless one has read the other, you don't really know who he is - and it really isn't necessary to know - so why not just create a new character? There is even less justification for recycling the archaeologist from the contemporary portion of Labyrinth. It is completely pointless.
I love a good creepy, supernatural story - ghosts and all - but the supernatural elements of this one are so diffuse that none of it makes much sense.
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