I approached this book from four fronts; first as a student of the middle ages, next as a member of a Masonic family, third as a person interested in Gnostic teachings and finally as an uninformed reviewer equating "Young Adult" to "a little light reading". When you read The Templars, Two  Kings and a Pope, as every person seeking spiritual enlightenment will be drawn to do, you will be delighted with an intricate midrash for seekers in the 21st Century.

We start with William Montfort, a young Cistercian monk with high-ranking, but invisible, guardian angels, and follow his growth for 30 years through battles, many journeys, family crises, and the  execution of his plan to save the Templars from extinction. Mr. Fedan has an excellent understanding of the medieval mind-set and you will have to go back to this kind of thinking, and the archetypes of 14th-Century loyalty and honor, when William does something you don't understand, like get married.

Another thing that you may need to have clarified is why there was such a fuss about talking directly to God. In our house, we interchange the terms praying and meditating. In 14th century Europe that was just plain heresy. People were supposed to keep in their place and talking to God was getting above yourself, even for the nobility. That's why there were Catholic priests to act as intercessors. I smiled to myself at that simplistic explanation, and then got rocked straight back in my seat. This is exactly what they are fighting about in Ireland TODAY!

I haven't told you much about the plot and to that end I lean on an old saw, "A picture paints a  thousand words".  The book cover depicts a battle-weary Templar on his knees in the sand before the  cross of his sword. Stinking of the sweat and blood that mats his hair and is ground into his tunic, surrounded by the dead and injured from both sides, he tilts his dirty face Heavenward to tell God... what?