Brethern

Brethren is the first book of the Knight templar trilogy, with the second being Crusades. As I mentioned in my blog about Crusades, I accidentally read the second book before the first one, so I had to backtrack a bit but anyway, on with the review!

So in Brethren, it once again focuses on Will, who is at this time an apprentice of a knight in England. He is hoping to become a templar knight to become a member of the Anima Templi, a secret organization tha defends and fights in the name of God and Christianity as a whole. Things seem to be fine as Will trains with his best friend Lyon as they both fight hard to be accepted into the society and live their daily lives, there are two major incidents occuring elsewhere. In the city of London, there has been an incident where the holy Book of the Grail has been stolen. With the book gone, the templars fear that if one were to have the knowledge to decipher the sacred relic, it would mean to revealing the secrets of the Anima Templi and leaving them vulnerable against their enemy organizations. If that wasn't bad enough, the Islam empire in the Middle East has finally defeated their rival, the Mongols who have been trying to expand their empire from Asia. With the Mongols out of the way, the Muslims try to rebuild their country from the costs of the war but as soon as the old Sultan has been assassinated and the famous general Baybars with his hate towards Christianity takes control, things may not go so smoothly as he sets out for war. Facing problems on both sides, the Anima Templi use all of their resources avaliable to fend off the Muslim invasion of the Christian forts and to retrieve the Book of the Grail, the organization has no choice but to send out young Will to find the book while the older veteran knights move to the Middle East for battle.

The historical fiction masterpiece was a joy to read and it just leaves you waiting for more from Young. I have alrerady read Crusades but I am thrilled to get my hands on the thrid book Requiem soon.

Lost Souls

Lost Souls by Lisa Jackson is another murder mystery novel that I happened to have picked up in the libary and enjoy reading. This story resolves around Kristi Bentz, who is far from your average girl. She's the daughter of Rick Bentz, a detective in New Orleans who is famous for being able to crack some of the most complex cases and brought down murderers that would make anyone cring when they heard their name. In the past, Kristi attempted to follow her father's footsteps by trying to bring in killers of the same caliber as Rick Bentz past achievements. The amazing thing is that she has succeeded in doing so, only that she has nearly gotten killed everytime she decideds to stick her head into dangerous affairs with the killers. Now at the age of twenty-seven, Kristi decides to pursue her true dream of being a crime-writer and goes back to her old college, All Saints university. But to Kristi, this isn't going to be just some education opportunity. The real reason she's going is because she thinks there's a mystery to solve there. Kristi has done some research beforehand about the college and it seems that four girls has suddenly disappeared from the campus and were never seen again. This seems completely reasonable, since all four girls were known to be depressed and have taken drugs, so everyone, including their families, were have thought to just run away from the campus with some random guy they picked up. But to Kristi, this similarity seems like the perfect excuse to simply ignore this issue to cover something big up and once Kristi gets to on the campus, she sees that her suspicions were quite accurate. When Kristi talks to some students, she can actually see that they are going to die very soon due to her special ability, which is seeing death. What I mean is that she can see someone's face and all of a sudden their skin would appear all pale. Then, as the days went on closer to their day of death, their faces would disappear and she would see a pale skull looking at her. This encounter confirms the fact that something fishy is going on in All Saints and she has to findout what. But she can't do this alone: she needs the help of high-school lover and ex-boyfriend Jay Knights, a prosectutor who has been hired as one of her teachers in the university. After settling differences, they finally team up and they discover that these disappearances may not just be from a single killer, but are a result of a whole cult worshipping vampires in the school. From then on, Kristi believes that her past encounters were nothing compared to this new threat.
This book is another rare mystery favorite that I happened to come across. It's so suspenseful, even more so than regular mystery novels because, as mentioned earlier, paranormal powers get involved in the situation and you have no idea whatsoever on what's happening! There are some parts in the book where Jackson refers to her past novels but this only encourages me to go out and buy them. I definitely recommend this book to any mystery fans. If a sci-fi guy like me enjoyed it, I'm pretty sure it will rank high for anyone who enjoys the genre.