This was my first experience with Mr. Berry's work and wheras I will say I enjoyed his writing style enough to keep turning pages, I would not recommend this book to anyone based on the plot.When it turns from being an enjoyable story into an agenda driven doctrine of (non) belief based on stuff the guy made up to tie together loose ends, that's when I know that I've had enough of the Da Vinci "Mode" for a while.I'm going back to DeMille.

This Dan Brown wannabe has written an amazing number of books. If the others are as bad as THE TEMPLAR LEGACY, I'm amazed they've been published. Aside from spelling errors and confusing use of pronouns -- one paragraph discussing one character, the next beginning with the pronoun "he" but referring to someone else -- the story moves along at a snail's pace. Robert Ludlum famously and wisely once wrote that if you can't engage your reader on the first page, you've lost. Steve Berry has lost big time. I had downloaded this book to my reader, but I've deleted it. No thanks!

I won't rehash the many criticisms of this book... but fair warning to anyone who picks it up: the story is good, but a little cliched and dull in points. Characters are one dimensional and dialogue is contrived and wooden (tip for author - when characters "shout", try adding an exclamation point or anything other than a simple period.) Writing style is decent and the story contains fairly good dramatic elements, but there's nothing new here... a good vacation read, but nothing more. One cool thing - I like that the author highlighted his variations from actual history at the end of the book, and didn't try and pretend that the historical context was accurate - Dan Brown could take a queue from this.

This was the first book that I have read by Steve Berry. I picked it up on a whim when vacationing in Ireland, and I had it read before the end of my vacation!!! It starts out fast and remains full of twists and turns and an excellent historical mystery!! Berry has done his homework on the Templars, and I am quite impressed!! I read his other books, "The Amber Room", and "The Romanov Prophecy" and enjoyed them immensely! I place The Templar Legacy over Dan Browns "The Davinci Code".

I too was very dissappointed by this book. The story is ridiculous, characters are mostly one-dimensional and the few that are given a deeper background are completely unbelievable. The early conversations between Cotton and his former boss are terrible. The whole guilt-theme related to her (also completely unbelievable) relationship with former husband is repeated over and over - it's the start of every new location/conversation, and gets lethally boring.I still finished the book but knew for sure it was a waste of time once I got about halfway, Avignon and the character in the asylum... sigh. I only gave it a second star because of the topic - gotta love the Templar theme - even though its badly abused in this book which depicts the Templars as quite a deranged bunch of hoodlums. Stay away from this book.

I realize that not all books by the same author are going to be of the same quality, and I went into "The Templar Legacy" expecting a lot more.I was not interested in the characters, who didn't seem as though they would ever exist in real life and I really didn't care what their fates would turn out to be. Cotton, especially, seemed without a personality.The most unsettling aspect of this novel was that its "secret" was not based on any logic. It seems as though the "theory" came first and then all the jigsaw puzzle pieces were cut to fit. Where there were no puzzle pieces with which to play, another puzzle piece was miraculously found at the end.It's not unusual that Christians would be offended at the book's "interpretation" of a basic New Testament occurence.I also think that people who demand logic in the course of a novel, should be the ones most offended.