The City of Tears: A Novel

Burning Chambers, Book 2

By: Kate Mosse

Narrated by: Hattie Morahan

Following number one Sunday Times best seller The Burning Chambers, New York Times best seller Kate Mosse returns with The City of Tears, a sweeping historical epic about love in a time of war.

Alliances and romance.

August 1572: Minou Joubert and her husband Piet travel to Paris to attend a royal wedding which, after a decade of religious wars, is intended to finally bring peace between the Catholics and the Huguenots.

Loyalty and deception.

Also in Paris is their oldest enemy, Vidal, in pursuit of an ancient relic that will change the course of history.

Revenge and persecution.

Within days of the marriage, thousands will lie dead in the street, and Minou’s family will be scattered to the four winds....

A Macmillan Audio production from Minotaur Books

©2020 Kate Mosse (P)2020 Macmillan Audio

Deeply engaging and well narrated

When the writing style and the capacities of the narrator match, the power of a good story is free to reach the reader/ listener. This is definitely the case with this book and its predecessor “The burning chambers”, where the author’s dedicated historical research underlies her complex and compassionate re-imagining of a dramatic era in European history. The writing is tight and dynamic so that the complex interweaving of characters don’t overwhelm the reader , and the calm intuitive narration serves as a vehicle rather than an irritation. For me it was a relief to discover this series as I am one who could not say the same for Labyrinth, even after reading it twice, and hesitated to choose another book by the author. So I recommend this series and hope the trend towards depth of characterization, tightness of style and effective flow across a complex range of story lines continue since the author has so much to contribute to our understanding of iconic transitions in history.

Sweeping historical fiction

Think Ken Follett or other writers of historical-type tomes. Just riveting! Highly recommended if you’re a fan of this content.

Narrator Issues

The story is fine. Not nearly up to the standard of Labyrinth and Citadel, but ok.
However, I really hate it when narrators sound...juicy. For real, please swallow your spit more often. Totally a personal preference, but I find it distracting, and it makes me want to constantly swallow while I'm listening. Gotta bail on this one.

Much more tragic than the first one

The first story was more mystery and historical fiction. I would call this tragedy and historical fiction. The pace picks up for the last fourth, but first you have to watch this family just really go through hell.