Standard of Honor

by Jack Whyte

Overview

The season's most eagerly awaited thriller has arrived.

FIRST TIME IN PAPERBACK

Knights Templar order member Sir Henry St. Clair is asked by Richard the Lionheart to join his army and free the Holy Land in a war. Sir Henry reluctantly agrees, but the many intrigues of Crusade leaders bring the St. Clair family and the Order to the edge of disaster.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101215296
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	01/24/2008
Series:	A Templar Novel , #2
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	800
Sales rank:	397,140
File size:	1 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Jack Whyte was born and raised in Scotland and immigrated to Canada in 1967. He is an actor, orator, singer, poet, and was awarded an honorary doctor of letters for his contribution to Canadian popular fiction. He is the author of the Dream of Eagles series (eight Arthurian novels set in Roman Britain) and the Templar Trilogy (featuring the legendary Knights Templar). Whyte’s novels are also published in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Brazil, and Russia. He lives in Kelowna, British Columbia.

Editorial Reviews

This second entry in Whyte's Templar trilogy (after Knights of the Black and White), covering Richard the Lionhearted's crusade, finds the author in top form. Alexander Sinclair, a Knight of the Temple, is part of a 50,000-man army headed to battle in the Lower Galilee. At stake for the Christian army is its claim to the Holy Land, now under the jurisdiction of Kurdish Saracen leader Saladin. The coming disaster will force English King Richard to raise an even larger army and set sail from England himself, along with Henry St. Clair, the English army's master-at-arms, and Henry's son, Andre, a member of the secret Templar society, Brotherhood of Sion. Whyte gilds the tangled political complications of the late 12th century with a rich trove of Templar lore-a treat for some readers, but superfluous for the more action oriented. And action is the point here: few authors can match Whyte when it comes to epic battle scenes involving blazing heat, choking dust, rearing horses and thousands of sword-wielding knights and Saracens locked in mortal combat. (Dec.)

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Publishers Weekly

The Templar Trilogy (Knights of the Black and White, 2006) continues as Europe's most powerful knights follow Richard the Lionheart on his crusade against the armies of Saladin. It's 1187. On his last legs, Henry II refuses to name his gay son Richard as heir to the throne of England and the string of duchies on the continent. The king is just being ornery. Richard is the greatest warrior of his time, a real man's man-and there are plenty of ways to get around that production-of-an-heir business. When the king dies in 1189, Richard lines up the best and the brightest to go to the Holy Land to avenge the recent stupendous rout of the Christians. At the top of the prince's must-have list are Henry and Andre St. Clair. Widowed Henry is moping about his estate in Poitou, mourning his wife and readying himself to join her, when son Andre gets into a spot of woman trouble, from which he is capably rescued by the St. Clairs' feudal lord, Richard Plantagenet. Accompanying the Lionheart on this foray is Robert de Sable, a member of the Templars' crypto-Jewish inner circle, the Brotherhood of Sion. Richard shakes Henry out of his funk and bullies the old warrior into becoming his Master-at-Arms for the upcoming crusade. Meanwhile, de Sable prompts Andre to renew his lapsed commitment to the Templars and the Brotherhood of Sion in addition to serving his king. Once the younger St. Clair reaches Palestine, the Brotherhood instructs him, he must contact his Scottish cousin Alec, who has spent the past few years as a prisoner of the Saracens. Two comely queens have cameo roles as everyone marches off to reclaim the Middle East for the Christians. Middle-of-the-adventure story told in sturdy,serviceable prose.

Kirkus Reviews