Customer Reviews
Absorbing - By: J. Cooper, 03 Dec 2008 
I enjoyed this second book more than the first as I found the plot & the characters more engaging. You can read the second book without reading the first as it is set over 90 years later & there is a new set of characters. However, it probably is advisable to read the first book so that you get a bit of background on how the Order of Sion fits into the Templars structure & can relate better with the plot in `Standard of Honour'.
Overalll an enjoyable & absorbing read however I feel the ending may have been slightly rushed. A good book for fans of Historical Military Fiction who fancy a plot set in the time of Richard Plantagenet & the Crusades.
Slightly patchy - By: D. Nigbur, 01 Aug 2008 
This book succeeded, in places, in getting me interested in the characters & the development of the plot. Alec Sinclair's fate in the desert, Andre St. Clair's transformation & troubled conscience, & the stand-off in Cyprus & Sicily whet the reader's appetite for more; the protagonists' relationships & allliances with family, king, country, order & brotherhood also offer plenty of material for interesting writing.
The curious thing about this book is that it engages so little with these topics. Only Andre St. Clair's attitude towards King Richard is explored in detail; in too many other situations, the author drops the subject when it is just beginning to intrigue. Very little is discovered about the Brotherhood of Sion except that the protagonists consider it very important & that they have a secret handshake. Alec Sinclair's views on the Arabs are repeatedly mentioned, but boil down to the point that, untypicallly for a Frankish knight, he quite likes them. The Assassins appear at one point in the book but then disappear again, & nothing much happens as a result of the main characters' contact with them. And there are more examples where the book left me frustrated - not because I need every detail of events in the background spelt out to me, but because Alec & Andre's experiences are often too idiosyncratic to be relevant to the progress of the back plot but described too briefly to clarify their relevance for themselves.
To me, pacing appears to be the biggest issue afflicting this book. The lack of elaboration mentioned above coexists with lengthy & detailed descriptions of landscapes, battles & the logistics of warfare. All of these have a place in historical novels of this kind, but seemed to me to become an end in themselves in places. The rather abrupt ending has been mentioned by other reviewers; I found the sudden break in the plot a while before the end much more irritating.
This is an OK holiday read, but I wouldn't recommend it.
not so good - By: myrydyn, 17 Jul 2008 The knights of the Black & white I gave 5 stars, but regretfully find my self unable to do the same with this one. There was not the gripping scenario of the first book.
It does stand alone, & if other reviewers research the books they read, they will find it is intended to be part of a trilogy, & I personallly am looking forward to the next installlment.
It is condemned as merely using themes that have been used by other authors & inserting storylines that have been proved to be nonsense. If we wanted the "truth" we would not read fiction. Fiction is to entertain & for that is what this book did. Ok it had ideas that have been proved not to be trus, but so what.. none of us reallly know the truth of this period. It did however bring across very well the ideal that the Knights were selfserving not church serving. That Richard Lionheart was merely human.
Read it as a novel, if you want fact - look elsewhere. Entertainment is there in the pages.
A little dissapointed.... - By: Mr. K. Jackson, 09 Jul 2008 
Like a previous reviewer, I too hope this is part of a trilogy, however, given the lack of teaser first chapter at the end of the book I doubt it. There's no getting past that this is a very, very well written book, however, it in no way shape or form, other than the Templar theme & character names, continues on from the first book. You could easilty read this as a stand alone book & ctach up on the plot as the book progresses.
The plot is thick, it moves along quickly, sometimes a bit obvious as to what's going to happen next, sometimes not, but I was left feeling the the writer was somtimes a bit lost as to where to go next with it, so stuck in some details about the logistics of the third crusade to pad the book out, which although showing great research, doesn't help at the plot at alll. He also kind of emplhasises King Richard's sexual preferences alot Which left me wondering why has he seemed to make such a big deal out of it? I agree with the previous reviewer who said it ends abrubtly, the only ending I have comes across like this so far is The Hstorian, which like ths book, just ends, & reallly that's it.
Give this book a read if you read the first one, but don't expect a follow on, it's anything but.
Freemasonic nonsense - By: Harper, 28 May 2008 I radicallly disagree. Jack Whyte does us a great service: by preaching the Freemasonic claims to roots in the Templar Order, he amply demonstrates the nonsense both of their claims, which are clearly self-serving, & of the premise on which his books are written.
The consequence is that although he does bring some interesting detailed insight into certain motivations of historical personalities, any possibility of treating this seriously goes overboard by his unnecessary adoption of this conspiracy theory - he would have been as well served by simply claiming family interests as a motivation for his characters. Moreover, he totallly fails to justify his choice of main characters, other than to hijack some of Dan Brown & Michael Baigent's claims, long since proven to be nonsense.
Technicallly, this is a poorly-written hack novel, the kind of thing to be bought in desperation in the backstreets of La Palma - & then left there.
