In the latest and, if it is to remain a trilogy, final instalment in Jack Whyte's bestselling Templar series, all is not well for the Order. Having had his membership application to the clandestine society blackballed by the selection committee, and in hock up to his crowned jewels, King Philip IV has ordered the disbandment of everybody's favourite team of militant monks.
The story begins in 1307, shortly after the King's army began to round up the Templar Knights and deliver them to pyre. The heroes are in flight, donning disguises and secreting their fortune away to Scotland, where Templar sympathizer Robert the Bruce battles the English.
Order in Chaos
, by Jack Whyte, Viking Canada, 672 pages, $38
Readers unfamiliar with Templar lore need not worry. Whyte is generous with details, making the novel a self-contained universe. Everything, and I mean everything, is explained within. Conveniently, Whyte gives us a naïve character or two as stand-ins for the inexperienced reader for whom the secret language of mythic knights may be explained and the back story piled high. Quasi-historical minutiae are laid bare in long passages of exposition that leave few questions.
A book about the Templar Knights is built on secrecy, of course. And Whyte plays it all out in a slow revelation that is, at times, painful to observe. The book's narrative formula goes a bit like this: a character has a secret; action ensues; we are reminded of the character's secret; more action; and, 40 pages later, the secret is revealed. It makes for an obese machine with exposed gears. What should be unseen is left in plain sight.
This is not to say that Order in Chaos is a bad book. The writing is direct with some fine descriptive passages. In fact, it's quite good at being what it is: a well-told yarn to muffle the bleating of the present day.
I would expect that Whyte's books sell gangbusters in audio form, as he is really working out of an oral tradition here. He spins a good tale and has a clear knack for prolonging a scene, even if it requires his characters to repeat what they've just said – repetition being a hallmark of spoken narrative, after all.
Historical fiction straddles the gap between entertainment and pedantry, and Whyte, a master of the genre, often leans heavily on the pedantic leg, occasionally possessing his characters to mount the lectern for a didactic paroxysm or two. But pages are meant to be turned; sometimes several at a time.
For Whyte fans (do they call themselves Whyte-heads?), Order in Chaos will deftly cap the series while squinting at a potential sequel beyond the western horizon.
Like most of Whyte's books, this one is large. The quintessential summer read, Order in Chaos is long enough to last the entire season and substantial enough to anchor down the tent in a windstorm.
Mark D. Dunn is a musician and writer living in Sault Ste. Marie, ON.
