If you are reading “The Templar Legacy”, without knowing about its author, I can bet that you will most probably think of it as a C grade draft version of Dan Brown‘s novel, something which he used to practice before writing The Da Vinci Code. Sadly, author is not Dan Brown. It’s sad because if it had been the same pathetic novel but written by Brown, I could have enjoyed the company of Robert Langdon.
Steve Berry‘s novel “The Templar Legacy”, is by far just one time read which you would like to forget as soon as you reach the end. It has two male protagonist, Cotton Malone a retired US operative, now a book seller; and another one is Mark, who is next in line to become Master in Templar legacy. Female protagonist is Stephanie who is mother of Mark and previous boss of Cotton Malone.
Stephanie and Cotton got entangled in a thrilling chase running after a riddle to find Templar treasure and secret. Lars, Stephanie’s late husband was searching for the Templar’s great secret, referred as Device in the novel, which can reinstate their power again on the royals and popes of the religious world. Lars, got killed in his hunt for the truth, but he was the nearest to the device in his search when he died. Now, everyone is behind Stephanie and Malone to get their hands on Lars’s journal and decipher the location of device.
Their are other characters too, mostly uninteresting ones. What lacked in this novel was the fact that, chase is one dimensional. It’s not for clues, it’s just running from a villainous character. Most of the time they are just reading from the journal or one of them is remembering the past stories from Templar’s book. They are just reading or running. When they find out the key to unravel the secret location it was too simple, and was almost all over the place, which they couldn’t decipher for so long.(they so needed Robert Langdon in this story)
The big secret, around which the whole device is built upon, is based upon the Resurrection of Jesus. This could be a big secret, if and only if, it would have been less for religious gains but rather for discovering a new kind of faith. Author did tried to do that and justify the resurrection in his own way, through a letter, but it was not as convincing as it should be to instill that long lost faith in humanity rather than supernatural miracles.
I have always enjoyed Dan Brown, but Steve Berry, you are not even near what a real reading zestfulness is.
Waiting for my next read… 😦
My Journey So Far.... 