The burning chambers by Kate Mosse

Minou Joubert receives a strange anonymous letter in her father’s bookshop in Carcasonne. ‘She knows that you live’, it says. A few moments later, she helps the Huguenot Piet Reydon flee the city after he was falsely accused of a murder and the theft of a holy relic. When she and her brother are sent to Toulouse, she meets Piet again. But in Toulouse the strive between Catholics and Huguenots is coming to a climax. And it seems that the lady of Puivert, Blanche, is looking for Minou. But why?

I’ve never been really interested in Mosse’s books because I thought they were more Dan Brown themed books with people looking for the Holy Grail. But still I’ve heard a lot of good things about ‘The burning chambers‘ (which is the first part in a trilogy) and the setting during the Huguenot wars in France drew me in. And now, I’m regretting I didn’t try her books sooner.

I expected entertainment and a historical mystery and that’s more or less what you get. The book opens in Carcasonne where both Piet and Minou have a mystery to solve. Minou receives a strange letter after her father has never recovered from a journey earlier this year. Piet reconnects with an old friend, now a renowned bishop, but he gets himself unwillingly accused of a murder. With Minou’s help, he can flee back to Toulouse where he’s one of the leaders of the Huguenot resistance.

When Minou and her brother Aimeric travel to Toulouse to live with their catholic uncle and aunt, they find themselves trapped in a city full of religious unrest. Already some Huguenots have been killed in other cities in the Midi and also in Toulouse blood will flow. Here, Minou and Piet will meet again and they’ll dependent on each other to make it out of the city alive.

I could relate quickly with Minou, as she is a young and intelligent woman trying to make sense of the world. It took me some more time to connect with Piet but the pair of them make for great main characters. At the same time, there are a lot of side characters that I enjoyed reading about. Such as Minou’s younger sister Alis, the kind madame Noubel, Minou’s troubled aunt Madame Boussay and her cold sister-in-law.

Mosse brings the historical context of the Huguenots to life flawlessly. You feel the tension growing stronger on the streets of Toulouse. Mosse also tries to incorporate the court politics of Catherine De Medici in the story, but if you don’t know about the real history that might be more difficult to follow. In some way, this all reminded me of the excellent darkness to light trilogy of Golden Keyes Parsons, although that one is set in a different century.

The next book, City of Tears, will bring Piet and Minou to Paris during the st. bartholomew’s day massacre and I’m looking forward to see how their story will continue.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 4 out of 5.

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