Labyrinth ♥ ♥ ♥
Read by Donada Peters
19 hrs 38 mins
The lives of two women born centuries apart are linked by a common destiny, a labyrinth. In the Pyrenees mountains near Carcassonne, Alice, a volunteer at an archaeological dig stumbles into a cave and makes a startling discovery-two crumbling skeletons, strange writings on the walls, and the pattern of a labyrinth; between the skeletons, a stone ring, and a small leather bag. Eight hundred years earlier, on the eve of a brutal crusade to stamp out heresy that will rip apart southern France, Alais is given a ring and a mysterious book for safekeeping by her father as he leaves to fight the crusaders. The book, he says, contains the secret of the true Grail, and the ring, inscribed with a labyrinth, will identify a guardian of the Grail. As crusading armies led by Church potentates and nobles of northern France gather outside the city walls of Carcassonne, it will take great sacrifice to keep the secret of the labyrinth safe.
Set a few years after The Amber Spyglass ends Lyra, a few years older but pretty much the same girl, still lives at Oxford College. One night she and her daemon, Pantalaimon, are suddenly disturbed by a bird daemon, who has been separated from his witch. The daemon appeals to Lyra to help him find a cure for his witch’s mysterious illness, and he leads her into an alchemist’s house that is not what it seems.
Catherine de Medici was the wife of one French king and mother to three. Intensely disliked by the French she kept in the background during her husband’s reign and came into her own after the death of her eldest son. The period of her strongest influence was also one of great political and religious unrest in France; she will be forever associated with the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre of French Protestants.
The book follows Morgaine, who is known now as Morgan La Fay a priestess fighting to save her culture in a country where Christianity threatens to destroy her Goddess worshipping way of life. The book follows the lives of Guinevere, Viviane and Morguase through their noble and religous lives. These women have been marginalized in Arthurian retellings but here the Knights of the Round Table and King Arthur are instead supporting characters.
Tom Builder’s dream is to build a cathedral, but in the meantime, he must scrounge about to find a lord that will hire him. His search pulls him and his family into the politics of 12th-century England, as different lords vie to gain control of the throne in the wake of the recently deceased king. Prior Phillip, a man raised in the monastery since childhood, also finds himself drafted into the brewing storm as he must protect the interests of a declining church. When Earl Bartholomew of Shiring makes the treasonous mistake of siding with Maude in the conflict with Stephen, he ends up on the losing side. Sir Percy Hamleigh and his son William, siding with Stephen, attack the Earl’s castle, and take him captive. Imprisoned for treason, he loses his earldom to the Hamleighs. His son and heir, Richard, and daughter Aliena are left to fend for themselves, but not until William Hamleigh has slaked his thirst for revenge upon them. All of the characters meet during the building of the cathedral but in a way build a community at the same time.
In 1687 in the Connecticut Colony, Kit Tyler, feeling out of place in the Puritan household of her aunt, befriends an old woman considered a witch by the community and suddenly finds herself standing trial for witchcraft.
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