The Last Templar
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3.8 • 15 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
The first thrilling novel in Raymond Khoury’s New York Times bestselling Templar series.
In 1291, a young Templar knight flees the fallen holy land in a hail of fire and flashing sword, setting out to sea with a mysterious chest entrusted to him by the Order's dying grand master. The ship vanishes without a trace.
In present day Manhattan, four masked horsemen dressed as Templar Knights stage a bloody raid on the Metropolitan Museum of Art during an exhibit of Vatican treasures. Emerging with a strange geared device, they disappear into the night.
The investigation that follows draws archaeologist Tess Chaykin and FBI agent Sean Reilly into the dark, hidden history of the crusading knights—and into a deadly game of cat and mouse with ruthless killers—as they race across three continents to recover the lost secret of the Templars.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The war between the Catholic Church and the Gnostic insurgency drags on in this ponderous Da Vinci Code knockoff. The latest skirmish erupts when horsemen dressed as knights raid New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, lopping off heads and firing Uzis as they go. Their trail leads FBI agent Sean Ryan and fetching archeologist Tess Chaykin to the medieval crusading order of the Knights Templars. Anachronistic Gnostic champions of feminism and tolerance against Roman hierarchy and obscurantism, the Templars, they learn, discovered proof that Catholic dogma is a "hoax" and were planning to use it to unite all religions under a rationalist creed that would usher in world peace. Screenwriter and first-time novelist Khoury spices up the doctrinal revisionism with Da Vinci style thriller flourishes, including secret codes, gratuitous but workmanlike action scenes and a priest hit man sent out by the Vatican to kill anyone who knows anything. The narrative pauses periodically for believers-vs.-agnostics debates and tutorials on everything from the Gospel of Thomas to alchemy. Though long-winded and sophomoric, these seminars are a relief from Tess and Sean's tedious romance, which proceeds from awkward flirtations as they listen to Sean's mix CD to hackneyed intimacies about childhood traumas. The novel's religious history is as dubious as its conspiracy plot, but anti-clericalists and Catholics taking a break from the church's real headaches could unwind with it.
Customer Reviews
The Last Templar
As revised, it is DaVinci Code like, chapters switch eras from “their” time to “our time”. Light reading, informative, mysterious, romance