The Templar Salvation

This is an excellent adventure story, which quickly engages the reader and holds the attention through 500 action-packed pages. At the same time, it raises some thought-provoking observations on how Christianity has evolved, and how the dogma of major religions reflects political rather than spiritual necessities.

When I started the book I was a little bit trepidatious to be reading yet another tale of secrets from the Knights Templar being exposed in modern times. This fashionable seam of subject matter must be close to being worked out, and it’s a credit to Khoury that he has managed to extract another fine adventure, even if there are times when the echoes of his earlier book are perhaps a bit obvious, especially in the nature of the revealed secrets, the historical narrative and the watery denouement. Even if there may be scope for a third outing for the central characters, it needs to be against a different backdrop.

Refreshingly Khoury avoids making his heroes into supermen, but the same is not quite true of his villains, all of whom seem to be well-resourced single-minded psychopaths one step ahead of the good guys. A bit more variety there would also help.

Khoury writes well, much better than Dan Brown or some of his other competitors, and the book never lost my focus or interest. The action is well paced, with occasional explosive sequences of high drama. These feel slightly like the the author has an eye on the future film script, but are plausible and reasonably easy to follow. However as much as the action I enjoyed his observations on the formalisation of Christianity by the Romans under Constantine, and the extension of these ideas into yet more possible roles for the mysterious Knights Templar.

This is a thoroughly enjoyable book, with a bit more depth than some others of its genre. I just hope that the author now has the courage to develop a bit more subject matter variety for his excellent writing.