Literary Thoughts: Knights of the Black and White

I'm not a big fan of fantasy literature. Sure, I've read "Lord of the Rings" and "Watership Down" and they were  enjoyable. But mostly, I'm not into reading stuff where people are named stuff like 'Glimmermear', just can't seem to get to into it. I mean, seriously, if you have refer to a glossary just to pronounce the names, it's just too much work to make for an enjoyable read. But I digress...

Jack Whyte is an author I hadn't heard of when I ran out of reading material and was at the local Dillon's store where I managed to find this book. It is book one of the "Templar Trilogy". Now, I've always been a sucker for the mysteries of the Knights Templar, the Priory of Sion, ancient Church societies and the like. So I picked it up. He starts his tale just before the first Crusade in the mid 11th Century. Knowing this, I was a bit curious how he would handle the Crusades and subsequent occupation of Jerusalem and other areas of the Middle East.

And true to any author in today's climate who doesn't want to have a fatwa issued against him, or be branded a racist, the occupying Muslims were all nice, peaceful folks until the Franks from Christendom invaded their land and brutalized everyone. And even after that, the Muslims (along with the group who were to become the Knights Templar) were the only people who had any honor.

Now, I don't mind books that are critical of the Church or Christianity. I loved Dan Brown's "Angels and Demons" (even more than his "DaVinci Code"). And I know that throughout history, and especially in the early part of the second millennium, the Church was full of people who were only out for themselves. People who, by birth order, were pretty much forced into priesthood and what not. But come on, could Whyte not find one single Church official that would display at least some modicum of Christian ideals? For him, every pastor, bishop, cardinal and pope, everything they did, they did for some ulterior, self-gratifying motive. In addition to that, there must have been twenty or thirty pages, peppered throughout the book, where he kept repeating how evil and dishonorable the invaders from Christendom were. Once or twice, and I can get the message, but over and over ad nauseam. It started to remind me of that 50+ page speech given by John Galt in "Atlas Shrugged" (I have to be honest about that, I didn't read the whole speech).

But his misrepresentation of history aside, the book wasn't all bad. His descriptions of the people and the surroundings and the activities were well thought out. The story, while a bit slow to get rolling, did start to click along at a good pace once Jerusalem was conquered. I'm certain that I will finish the trilogy when the others come out in paperback - if only because I'm a sucker for stories of the Templars. Kind of like I'm a sucker for time travel movies, no matter how badly they stink, I can't not watch 'em.