I loved the experience of reading this aloud to my bride more than the story itself. Also, the words themselves frustrated me throughout with various annoying grammatical blahs - using the same word more than once in a sentence like "headed" (as in "headed to the beach") and overuse of "realized" (as in "she realized she wanted to do xyz") and even on a few pages, repeating the same thought or narration as if the author forgot he had already written it. Maybe one more pass with an editor would have caught this. I hate to even write this given the journey Khoury took to even get this published after so many years between writing it and its publication. But points off for that.

I also was frustrated with the characterization of Tess. Maybe it was a product of writing in the 1990s, but she was at times a strong independent woman, but more often the story drifted into "I need a man to save me" tropeland. Points off for that.

But, I have to admit, the story "got" me emotionally invested, as I remarked out loud on several occasions my visceral reaction to the heresy (speaking from the perspective of a believer) at the heart of the story. I haven't read any books like this before although I certainly am aware of the Dan Brown legacy (even though this book was written prior to Dan Brown's Robert Langdon series) where church heresy can make for a powerful story. But I actually give it points for this category, as the book succeeded in sucking me into the story. (Plus bonus points for how it ended.)

There were several predictable turns of events. Usually I don't see surprise twists coming but these, I did. There were also several times I interrupted myself to shout out at the characters to not do or to do something because I thought they were being dumb, which again could be considered positive as I was obviously invested emotionally! So maybe these points off/points on balance each other out.

Finally, there were parts of the story that read like a history text. One character would get on his preacher or professor (or both) pedestal and give pages-long exposition of the past. Khoury had a lot of history to explain at certain times, and am wondering if it could have been exposed differently. Reading aloud, those were the most difficult as it seemed the history lesson dragged on...

Overall I liked the story, but I didn't really like it. The chapters set in the past were the most interesting, actually. I liked the idea of the dual-storytelling: setting up events in the past, then seeing how artifacts from those eras are traced to and discovered in the present. And I definitely enjoyed the experience reading aloud, although apparently I need to figure out what a proper Greek accent is supposed to be. I kept thinking of that pistachio-eating Greek, Milos Columbo, from the James Bond movie, For Your Eyes Only, but even then I couldn't quite remember his accent, so I just imagined I had a mouthful of pistachios. I don't think it was very accurate. LOL

3 out of 5 Templar Conspiracies!