On Crusade: More Tales of the Knights Templar

by Katherine Kurtz, Katherine Kurtz (Introduction)

Overview

The bestselling author of the Deryni fantasy series has compiled a new collection of stories about a mysterious and romantic order of medieval knights, featuring tales written by Andre Norton, Deborah Turner Harris, and other of today's leading fantasists.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780446673396
Publisher:	Grand Central Publishing
Publication date:	05/01/1998
Series:	Tales of the Knights Templar Series
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 8.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Katherine Kurtz is an American author of fantasy, alternate history, and urban fantasy novels. She is most well known for her Deryni series of historical fantasy novels that she began in 1970 with the book Deryni Rising. She has also worked extensively with Deborah Turner Harris on the urban fantasy series The Adept.

Editorial Reviews

The Barnes & Noble Review
Continuing the monastic adventures of 1995's Tales of the Knights Templar and 2002's Crusade of Fire: Mystical Tales of the Knights Templar, editor Katherine Kurtz presents 11 more original stories that further explore the myths and legends of the noble order of the white-mantled knights whose mission it was to protect pilgrim routes to the Holy Land during the Crusades.

Included in the collection are stories by Diane Duane, Andre Norton, David and Alexandra Elizabeth Honigsberg, and Kurtz herself. In Duane's "Blank Check," a knight working as the head of a chapter treasury in Tripoli has his faith tested when a mysterious woman demands the unthinkable. Deborah Turner and Robert Harris's "The Company of Three" chronicles the last moments before the fall of a besieged city, when two devoted knights try to steal a terrifyingly powerful religious relic away from Islamic invaders. Norton's "Stonish Men" tells the story of the very last of the Knights Templar. Desperately fleeing for their lives on the high seas, a small group of knights reach the New World.

Also notable in this collection are the highly informative interludes after each story in which Kurtz briefly discusses the historically relevant aspects of the narrative. In the nearly 200 years of their existence and in the centuries that have elapsed since then, there has been much speculation as to the real purpose of the Knights Templar. Fans of historical fiction with strong religious themes -- like Stephen R. Lawhead's Celtic Crusades saga -- will surely enjoy this collection of absorbing short stories about the enigmatic warrior-monks. Paul Goat Allen

bn.com

The Order of the Knights Templar is best known for its members' zealous deeds in the Holy Land, but the organization was also a formidable financial institutionwealthy enough to earn the enmity of the Catholic church and King Philip IV of France, who, in 1307, ordered the Templars hunted down. This dark period provides the backdrop for Kurtz's second Knights Templar anthology (after the mass market Tales of the Knights Templar, 1995), a hit-or-miss collection despite appearances by some popular fantasy authors as well as by the head of John the Baptist, the Shroud of Turin and the Holy Grail. A Templar official pays off a draft authorizing payment of "an amount without limit" to protect a holy artifact in Diane Duane's slight "Blank Check." Andre Norton's surprising "Stonish Men," with its New England colonials speaking like characters in a B-grade western, does little with the intriguing idea that Templars might have fled to America. Kurtz's own "Restitution" merely allows modern-day reincarnated Templar Sir Adam Sinclair (from her popular Adept series) to tie up a loose end from another story. Robert Reginald's "Occam's Razor," however, is a lively tale, with William of Occam called in by the pope to investigate some suspicious deaths. Also noteworthy is the dry, neo-noir "Selling the Devil" by Debra Doyle and James D. Macdonald. Educational interludes by Kurtz knit the collection together and fill in the context that too many of the stories leave out. (May)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

A second volume of historical fantasy stories about the Knights Templar (after Tales of the Knights Templar, not seen), edited by respected fantasist Kurtz (the Deryni series, etc.). Following the First Crusade, the warrior-monk Knights Templar were commissioned in 1118 as a sort of 12th-century Highway Patrol; they rapidly developed into an impressive fighting force and soon diversified into shipping, banking, and other businesses until they were destroyed in 1307 by Philip IV of France. The Templars' reputation for matters mystical and romantic probably derives from their association with the Holy Grail—indeed, they spent the first decade of their existence excavating beneath King Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem, and who knows what they found? The galley at hand offers 10 new speculations (the publishers, however, count 11) from Diane Duane, Deborah Turner Harris and Robert J. Harris, David M. Honigsberg and Alexandra Elizabeth Honigsberg, Richard Woods, Robert Reginald, Andre Norton, Bradley Sinor, Debra Doyle and James D. MacDonald, David Spengler and Julie Spengler, and editor Kurtz herself, who also supplies links between the stories. Of greatest probable interest to Templar fans and eclectic fantasists.

Kirkus Reviews