KNIGHTS OF THE BLACK & WHITE.

KNIGHTS OF THE BLACK & WHITE by JACK WHYTE.

SOURCE: On my TBR pile so long I've actually forgotten.

BACK COVER BLURB: He swore eternal allegiance to the order - but at what cost?

 It is 1088 and young knight Hugh de Payens joins the Order, an ancient society wreathed in secrecy whose alliances unite France's most prominent families in a bond more sacred than even their loyalty to king and country.

Soon Hugh is hurled into the nightmarish world of the First Crusade, but the blood-soaked brutality he witnesses there repels him. He resolves to remain in the Holy Land but dedicate the rest of his life to God, not war, forming an order of monks committed to protecting pilgrims on the road to Jerusalem.

But the Order has not forgotten Hugh, and charges him and his brother Knights with a near-impossible task: to find and bring home the lost treasure of the Order. There's just one problem. The treasure contains revelations so dangerous it could destroy the Kingdom of Jerusalem - and the mighty Catholic church itself ...

FIRST SENTENCE {Beginnings: Chapter One}: "Sir Hugh!"

MEMORABLE MOMENT {Page 23}: 'She has beauty enow for me, Hugh. Those eyebrows, that forehead, and that long neck. I have to meet her.'

MY THOUGHTS: I'm presuming well researched, it certainly reads as if it is, but I'm afraid its one thing to be able to pour facts into a novel, to paint what is essentially a thin veneer of fiction over what is obviously a detailed knowledge, yet quite another to make it interesting as a fictionalised piece of writing.

Exposition heavy and yet, oddly enough, at the same time there were so many historical events dealt with in the blink of the eye ..... to give an example, the Siege of Antioch, an event that took place over eight months, here it was covered in just under 2 pages.

More character based than action packed, perhaps a good move given that this point of view has been well tried and tested, the character led perhaps slightly less so. Its just disappointing that it is these very characters that let the book down so badly. Poorly drawn. Their language, often written in a modern vernacular, laughable. The sex scenes (though thankfully few), quite frankly, cheesy. 

Part one in a trilogy, I don't suppose it will come as any surprise when I say I shan't be continuing with the series.