The Last Templar
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4.0 • 220 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
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
A unique and fascinating subject that was well exploited in the first half of the novel but ended into hundreds of pages of pseudo theological, philosophical, psychological rhetoric.
Characters and action are not easily believable in many respects and therefore difficult to identify with.
A pale attempt to mimic the Da Vinci Code.
Still deserves 3 stars for the historical research and the first 300 pages.
The Truth Will Set You Free
Exciting thriller with a new take on what the real treasure of the Knights Templar discovered. An exceptional blend of Templar history, archeology, Vatican cover-ups, modern FBI criminal investigation, the meaning of faith, and how religion is used as both a weapon and a source of spiritual fulfillment. Well written with descriptions that allow the images and action sequences to become real within the mind as the story unfolds to a stunning conclusion.
Incredibly Frustrating
The first 500 pages of this book are pure gold. You will not want to put the thing down until you are done.
And then come the final pages. I was so dumbfounded at the end of this book, I literally tossed it across the room.
Great way to keep yourself enthralled in a good story for a while. My suggestion though is to just disregard the final chapters and think of your own ending.