The Last Templar by Raymond Khoury
September 26th 2006 07:42
I think my post yesterday was quite lame so I think I should meekly return to what we used to do earlier: write book reviews which no one reads. My brother for one tells me to stick to books; you’re going after cheap sensationalism, he says. I admit I did like to be in spotlight for a change (four of my posts were hanging in the popular posts at one time) but I wasn’t going after cheap sensationalism. I want it on record.
To books then. I almost feel like its my wyrd, karma or fate, whatever. The book I had been casually reading the whole weekend turned out to be more germane to what I’d wanted to say all along. So we’ll probably rip it apart and eat it for a few posts at least.
The Last Templar by Raymond Khoury is not the sort of book I typically enjoy. I don’t care if the holy grail was some fat prostitute Jesus slept with or some alchemical concoction that will make you immortal. I can barely get through one life as it is. And man, do I hate templars. They come only next to King Arthur and the Round Table shit in the sucking order.
The book opens with a cinematic scene where Saracens are defeating Christian army and taking over Jerusalem. The templars know they are about to lose, so one of them is pulled out from the melee and entrusted with a secret letter.
Cut to the present. The Vatican has arranged a show of its best art collections at the Met and four horse riders dressed as medieval knights barge into the show, destroy whatever they can and scoot off with a strange looking device. One of the horsemen murmurs “Veritas Vos liberabit” in Latin which is heard by Tess Chaykin, an archaeologist in the crowd. FBI agent Reilly is on the job, who is soon tipped off by Tess that the whole thing might be about Templars.
The early action is vivid and you think you have a nice read on your hands. But Khoury’s thin as a noodle plot vaporizes after a few chapters and the novel becomes endlessly preachy. The grail here is an apocryphal Gospel of Jesus which supposedly admits that Jesus was not Son of God but just a plain ol’carpenter, a social revolutionary of his time. The Catholic Church has been trying to suppress this earth-shattering secret for thousands of years and now that its revealed all the religions in the world (Jews, Muslims and Christians, I suppose other religion do not count) will stop fighting among themselves and live happily forever. Oh, for chrissakes!
Hopeless drivel as this is, it still redeems itself a little in the ending when it is revealed that the document in question was doctored by the templars to achieve just such an end and the novel doubts its own “Only Connect” spirit. I said the redemption is only a little because before that the spirited and scientific minded heroine actually gives up the chance to decipher the document because it would shatter the faith of so many millions of people. If only she had decided to take up the task and then found out that it was a forgery, then the redemption would have been big.
We’re done with the book. For now. We’ll start ranting about religion, politics and stuff soon.
To books then. I almost feel like its my wyrd, karma or fate, whatever. The book I had been casually reading the whole weekend turned out to be more germane to what I’d wanted to say all along. So we’ll probably rip it apart and eat it for a few posts at least.
The Last Templar by Raymond Khoury is not the sort of book I typically enjoy. I don’t care if the holy grail was some fat prostitute Jesus slept with or some alchemical concoction that will make you immortal. I can barely get through one life as it is. And man, do I hate templars. They come only next to King Arthur and the Round Table shit in the sucking order.
The book opens with a cinematic scene where Saracens are defeating Christian army and taking over Jerusalem. The templars know they are about to lose, so one of them is pulled out from the melee and entrusted with a secret letter.
Cut to the present. The Vatican has arranged a show of its best art collections at the Met and four horse riders dressed as medieval knights barge into the show, destroy whatever they can and scoot off with a strange looking device. One of the horsemen murmurs “Veritas Vos liberabit” in Latin which is heard by Tess Chaykin, an archaeologist in the crowd. FBI agent Reilly is on the job, who is soon tipped off by Tess that the whole thing might be about Templars.
The Last Templar by Raymond Khoury
The early action is vivid and you think you have a nice read on your hands. But Khoury’s thin as a noodle plot vaporizes after a few chapters and the novel becomes endlessly preachy. The grail here is an apocryphal Gospel of Jesus which supposedly admits that Jesus was not Son of God but just a plain ol’carpenter, a social revolutionary of his time. The Catholic Church has been trying to suppress this earth-shattering secret for thousands of years and now that its revealed all the religions in the world (Jews, Muslims and Christians, I suppose other religion do not count) will stop fighting among themselves and live happily forever. Oh, for chrissakes!
Hopeless drivel as this is, it still redeems itself a little in the ending when it is revealed that the document in question was doctored by the templars to achieve just such an end and the novel doubts its own “Only Connect” spirit. I said the redemption is only a little because before that the spirited and scientific minded heroine actually gives up the chance to decipher the document because it would shatter the faith of so many millions of people. If only she had decided to take up the task and then found out that it was a forgery, then the redemption would have been big.
We’re done with the book. For now. We’ll start ranting about religion, politics and stuff soon.
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Jacques de Molay failed to successfully lead the Templars through the inquisitions made against them and was burnt at the stake on an island in the river Seine in Paris, Ile de la Cité, on 18 March 1314. The execution was ordered by Philippe le Bel (Philip the Fair) after Jacques retracted all of his previous confessions, which outraged the French king. Nothing is known of about two thirds of his life. Much more can be said about French kings like the one said never to have blinked and of course, the dauphin who was picked up by Joan the Virgin d'arc and who became the Universial Spider. Historical
novels are seldom writen by genii.