The Lost City of the Templars (Review)
The Lost City of the Templars (Review)
nother bookshop pluck – a strange novel that caught my eye with the grandiose title and a picture of a distant lost Amazon city with a crusader sword stuck in the ground. But now that I think about it, it really wasn’t a templar lost city, but a strange revelation about my favorite ancient race (anyone care to guess?)
So I apparently walked in midway through the showing of this adventure yarn. Two-fisted ex-Ranger John Holiday apparently has been a thorn of the side of just about everyone – the American political system, a massive security corporation, the Vatican, and especially the shadowy force seeking to reestablish themselves, the templar order (long through to have been burned as bankers, sorry, witches but still a shadowy presence that authors love).Nothing special here – John hops from peril to peril, nearly killed here, at the wrong end of an invasion there, just dodging bullets and cutting his way out of duct tape (before he’s to be thrown out of a plane high above the Gulf of Mexico), all that hero stuff.
It turns out that his trail this time leads him to an Amazon city (that really didn’t seem like it could possibly hide as well as it did). Turns out the city isn’t dead, but home to ex-Phoenician travelers who might or might-not have equipped an expedition to maybe or maybe-not bring the Ark of the Covenant to their jungle Shangri-La – the story kept changing and I lost track of the truth here. Yeah, I’ve got my own thoughts on the validity of a Phoenician attempt to equip and launch huge ocean-going vessels from the Levant during the time of Christ (since Alexander, some three hundred years before, and pretty much removed them from the game of Civilization). Also, there was at least one violation of Chekhov’s Gun(i.e. a lost valley of dinosaurs that had nothing to do with anything – not a single evil corporate merc was eaten by a velociraptor in the making of this book).
Look, this is a genre that people like, the hero who is in a constant battle with forces far bigger than himself, filled with all sorts of meaty weapon’s details, sneeringly homosexual villains and new scenic places to be ambushed in. I’ve gotten hooked into that story-type in the past (I can assume that this is what cowboy tales became). If you share this taste, you should perhaps consider Paul Christopher’s books. I’m just still shaking my head about those Phoenicians.