Publishers:
Headline
Pages: 430
Main Characters:
Thomas, Richard, Maria.
Simon Scarrow is back with his brand new novel the Sword and Scimitar! The book is based
around the Ottoman/Turk invasion of Malta in 1565 and tells the tale of an English
Knight called Thomas. Thomas is part of the Templar Order of St. John that has
its base on Malta. However, as a young man Thomas is exiled from the order
because of a love affair he has with a young noble woman who is in the Order’s protection.
Thomas returns home
to England and lives out the next twenty years of his life on his small land
holding. But, one day a French Knight turns up at Thomas’s farm with a summons
from the Order’s new leader, telling Thomas to return to Malta to help fight
off the imminent Ottoman threat. He decides that he will return to Malta, but
not to help fight the Turks, but in the vain hope that his love (Maria) will
still be there. Unluckily for Thomas, the French Knight has been noticed by the
authorities in London and Thomas has to travel there to explain why a Catholic,
French Knight has been in correspondence with a Catholic English Knight, in
what is now a Protestant Kingdom. Thomas is confronted by Robert Cecil and
explains about his summons back to the Order. Cecil seizes this opportunity and
sets Thomas a mission to receive an important document that was lost in Malta
with the death of Henry VIII. To aid him in this mission, Cecil sends one of
his best agents called Richard to act as Thomas’s squire and to look for the document. What Thomas
and Richard don’t know is that their coming together is not a coincidence, but
part of a thorough plan of the Queen of England’s spymaster.
When the duo reaches Malta, they soon discover that finding
the document is the least of their worries. They will have to fight the hardest
battle of their lives to help the small Christian garrison stem the flow of the
Ottoman horde that looks to conquer the whole of Europe! Plus, enemies within
the Order of St. John will make it harder for Richard to find the document and
Thomas to find Maria.
This was an excellent book from Simon Scarrow and shed some
light on a period of history that I was not that familiar with, but which
defined the era of conflict between Christianity and Islam. The story was also
interesting because it told the tale of a Catholic Knight living in Elizabethan
England. It showed the dual loyalties to both the crown and the church which
many Catholics had, but which over the centuries were discriminated against
because they were seen (by Protestants) as been only loyal to the Pope. The
story of the siege was also brilliant and extremely detailed, telling of the
new war techniques, which both sides used as warfare moved away from sword,
shield and bow, to gun, cannon and pike.
However, I did have one issue with this book and that was
the ending; it seemed to drag! I personally think if Scarrow ended the book a
hundred pages earlier then it would have been much better. I thought the last
hundred pages really didn’t need to be there, it sort of reminded me of a movie
when it cuts to black and you think ‘that’s the ending’ but then it goes on for
another thirty minutes which doesn’t really need to be there.
Nevertheless, I did enjoy the book and would suggest it to
any Simon Scarrow fans. I would also suggest it to fans of C. J. Sansom’s Shardlake series because they are both
set in the Tudor period and both revolve around a mystery.
For author’s official website click here.
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