Book Review - Requiem Robyn Young

Requiem is the last in the trilogy about Will Campbells life as a Kight Templar. This is Robyn Youngs first series of books as an author and she's gone straight into the best seller list with them all.

As a book on its own it probably doesn't work as it dives into the story line where book 2 left off and a lot of references to previous events would leave you lost I think. So if you've not read these before start with Crusade then The Bretheren before reading Requiem.

The book is very engaging making you want to follow the lives of the various main characters with our hero Will at the very center of the action. This book starts a little after the second book finished which was with the sacking of Acre in 1291 by the Mameluk army. The first book in the series was of Wills early life mostly in Europe as he joined the Temple and struggled to find his place in it. The second book was much more based in the Middle East with Will as a fully fledged knight within the Temple. So now with the last stronghold in the Holy Land lost the focus switches back to Europe.

Will is of Scotish descent and the narrative weaves in a lot about the stuggle of the Scotish at this time against Edward I who continually fought and conived to put Scotland under English control. The wars with William Wallace and later Robert Bruce are brought out here. Given I'd been intrigued by this time in Scotish history via Neil Olivers recent BBC2 series this was an interesting side of the book for me.

Anyway the one problem with the story is that we know the outcome - i.e. in 1312 the Knights Templar were disgraced, discredited and disbanded in an alliance between King Philip of France and Pope Clement V. However the story here weaving in Ms Youngs fictional subplots around the known historical facts still makes the thing a hard to put down page turner.

Comments

  1. The Knights Templar still exist in another format but based in many ways on the originals.

    I know these things.......

    ReplyDelete

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