"The sky is an endless blue" - A Preliminary Review of Labyrinth

Not the one with David Bowie.  Obviously that Labyrinth is brilliant.  Jennifer Connolly did a crap job but we were too busy looking at the bulge in Bowie's pants to notice.

Anyway, I am speaking to Kate Mosse (not Kate Moss)'s Labyrinth, the book about "three secrets. two women. one grail."

First off, you should know that I've only got the book because there's a miniseries coming out via the BBC with Katie McGrath of Merlin fame in it.  And she's lovely.  So I want to like it very much.  I'm hoping the series has better qualities than the book.

That said, I've only read seven pages.

But lor' how those pages drag.  No, that isn't fair.  The character is mildly interesting and digging for evidence of a Paleolithic settlement and seemingly finding one in the first four pages (apparently it actually started on page three as there are some starting quotes and a map).

The thing is, the language is just very boring.

Choice lines: "Above her, the sky is an endless blue" (3-4).  Alright, let's search "sky is an endless blue" in quotes via the Google.  2,790 results.  "Endless blue sky"= 2,270,000 results.  Just tweak it a bit to, say, "the sky is an infinite blue" and you get 416 results or, for "infinite blue sky," 183,000 results.

Moral of story, if words are flowing that easily, consider using a thesaurus.  The phrase "sky is an endless blue" is clichéd.  I was pretty solidly asleep by that line (and thus sleepreading, ever so coolly).

Second choice line occurs after a boulder comes rolling down the mountain at a fast speed almost killing our protagonist.  In response, we have: "Too close for comfort, she thinks."  Honestly, when is a boulder falling down a mountain far enough away to be comfortable with?  But anyway, it is such an obvious line.  Especially in the context of someone almost getting killed.  Plus now she's in the eponymous labyrinth, which is just very quick.

I am so bored with this book, I want to give it up already.  I'm mildly interested in her falling into this labyrinth-y pit but also pissed off that one of the archeologists didn't get to have the find.  She didn't want them to because she wanted to "prove herself" though a temp summer volunteer.

Plus, the back cover has a quote by the author wanting to write about the grail legend from a woman's perspective.  Because, apparently, Mists of Avalon never happened.  And she's a bit giddy about the women having sex and I really hate poorly written sex scenes and, given the crap of the first four pages, I'm guessing they'll be lousy.

In any case, I must give it at least through the first chapter.

Still, if it is a good story it will make a nice mini-series.  So long as they give up the author's terrible internal dialogue (haven't had any external yet).