Where Fox and Willa Cross Italy

The Last True Templar by Boyd Morrison
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This second book in the series, another collaboration between brother and sister Boyd and Beth Morrison, is a lot of fun and a solid historical mystery/adventure. Four stars. Maybe 4.5.

It's another take on the lost and hidden Templar treasure, but it feels fresh just the same. The characters are likable (which I care about, yes) and the conflict is something that feels like it matters, making me eager to see Willa and Gerard reach the place and do the thing. Their happiness and the happiness of people around them is important enough to care about and root for.

Beth Morrison is an actual historian, which makes the details of the times not just accurate but compelling, helping sell the world-building to immerse the reader. And Boyd Morrison is an amazing story-teller, one who knows how to keep on-the-edge-of-your-seat tension going throughout the novel. There is no letup, no relaxing. They are metaphorically chased up the tree and attacked with rocks until the last page of the story.

In fact, that's my only criticism of anything beyond quibbles. Keeping the pressure on the MC's, making it so they are never, for one moment, able to take a free breath makes you keep reading. Ya gotta know if they get through it. But it also stresses me out. I need a breather here and there.

That's just me. It's not an actual flaw in the book, at least not how most people see it.

Anyway, I get a breather at the end of the novel, and it's a satisfying end, leaving me eager for the third book.

Recommended.

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Where Neither Knight Nor Lady Are Quite What They Seem

The Lawless Land by Boyd Morrison
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I really liked this. No question about giving it all the stars.

I'd never heard of this until we went to an a bookstore event to see Stephanie Barron and get the last book in the Jane Austen Mystery series. (So good--all of them, including this final book. My thoughts for that are here: http://inspeculation.blogspot.com/202...) Another author was there that I once tried to like but failed, though most of the attendees seemed to be there to see her. And along with them were Boyd and Beth Morrison, talking about their medieval series, now on its second book. We bought both (and got them signed, of course). Good decision.

The action is excellent, almost non-stop, but is absolutely believable all along. It reads like a fun fantasy, but it's all realistic because the research and scholarship is top-notch. That's partly because Boyd Morrison is a professional writer, but maybe more because his sister and co-author is a curator at the Getty Museum and an expert on Middle Ages documents (and lots of connected stuff, obviously). It's a great collaboration. Not only does the action ring true, but the details of the place do, too, without intruding.

Gerard Fox is racing across England and France with a noblewoman who is escaping a marriage to a horrible man, both of them protecting a secret (a good secret--an interesting secret) that her would-be husband and an ambitious cardinal want to use for their own advancement. Fox is a capable knight and Lady Isabel is a very independent woman, but they're still human and limited and vulnerable to the dangers of the time. The stakes are real. The way they use their strengths, especially their ingenuity, to fight their way through and around perils is fantastic. Action. History. A bit of Romance. Loyal friends. Amazing settings.

It's great.

I'll shortly open the second book, but I'm also gonna look up books Boyd wrote on his own, apparently set in the present. I suspect they're also a great deal of fun.

Highly recommended.

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