The Religion: A Novel

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This is what we dream of: to be so swept away, so poleaxed by a book that the breath is sucked right out of us. Brace yourselves.May 1565. Suleiman the Magnificent, emperor of the Ottomans, has declared a jihad against the Knights of Saint John the Baptist. The largest armada of all time approaches the knights' Christian stronghold on the island of Malta. The Turks know the knights as the "Hounds of Hell." The knights call themselves "The Religion."In Messina, Sicily, a French countess, Carla La Penautier, seeks passage to Malta in a quest to find the son taken from her at his birth twelve years ago. The only man with the expertise and daring to help her is a Rabelaisian soldier of fortune, arms dealer, former janissary, and strapping Saxon adventurer by the name of Mattias Tannhauser. He agrees to accompany the lady to Malta, where, amid the most spectacular siege in military history, they must try to find the boy--whose name they do not know and whose face they have never seen--and pluck him from the jaws of Holy War.The Religion is the first book of the Tannhauser Trilogy, and from the first page of this epic account of the last great medieval conflict between East and West, it is clear we are in the hands of a master. Not since James Clavell has a novelist so powerfully and assuredly plunged readers headlong into another world and time. Anne Rice transformed the vampire novel. Stephen King reinvented horror. Now, in a spectacular tale of heroism, tragedy, and passion, Tim Willocks revivifies historical fiction.From Publishers WeeklyStarred Review. Willocks, a novelist (Bad City Blues) and screenwriter (Sin), strikes gold with this epic account of the Turkish siege of Malta in 1565—the first of a planned trilogy featuring Mattias Tannhauser, the son of a Saxon blacksmith. Young Tannhauser is kidnapped by Muslim raiders and trained as a holy warrior before winning his release and settling in Sicily, where he becomes a prosperous arms dealer. His comfortable life is interrupted by the arrival of Contessa Carla La Penautier, a young widow who uses her considerable charms (and title) to recruit Tannhauser to help her find Orlandu, the bastard son she was forced to abandon at birth 12 years earlier. Arriving on Malta, where Carla believes her son is, Tannhauser and Carla get caught in the Turkish attack on the Christian enclave. Meanwhile, Orlandu's father, Ludovico Ludovici, a monk and feared inquisitor, has returned to Malta with hopes of bringing Malta under papal control. Tannhauser has to find Orlandu, unmask the scheming and unscrupulous Ludovici, survive vicious combat against the Turks, win Carla's heart and find a way to escape the "island of fanatics and fools." In Tannhauser, Willocks has created a dazzling hero whose debut will leave readers eager for the next installment. (May) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Bookmarks MagazineThe first in a projected trilogy, The Religion stirred excitement in some critics and distaste in others. Tim Willocks writes with visual detail (he's a screenwriter), but he also appeals to the other senses, creating what the Chicago Sun-Times described as "a thick stew of smells, colors, and sounds." Some reviewers, however, criticized florid writing, shallow characters, and a clichéd plot. Others found Willocks's prose cinematic, his characters complicated, and the plot thrilling. Fans of swashbuckling adventures will enjoy this work and undoubtedly overlook the book's flaws. But the novel is not for the faint at heart: all reviewers mentioned the blood and gore in every battle scene.Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.