The Youngest Templar: Keeper of the Grail, Book 1
A young boy named Tristan, abandoned as an infant with a note about his innocence and need for safety, is trained by monks in late 12th-century England to read, write, tend garden crops, and care for the stable horses. While welcoming knights serving King Richard the Lionhearted in the current Crusader wars, he accidentally injures Sir Hugh Monfort’s horse. The latter’s reaction is so brutal that Sir Thomas Leux, second in command but possessing greater influence with the king, stops the retribution from continuing. So taken with the young boy’s abilities and responses, Sir Thomas invites the boy to become his squire.
So begins an absolutely fascinating, adventurous journey as Tristan accompanies the King’s soldiers to Outremer. But that excitement pales next to the battles Tristan fights in, an unexpected, heroic reaction that brings him fame, and his narrow escapes from secret men doing their best to destroy him for a reason he cannot fathom. In the process, might he discover what his worst enemy claims to know about the teen’s true identity? Finally, Tristan and a young archer from Sherwood Forest travel with an even more important mission.
Readers will be flipping the pages as fast as their eyes can move to discover what friends and enemies will help and hinder the youngest Templar’s quest that is much larger than even the Crusades’ outcome. Michael P. Spradlin deserves the highest praise for this wonderful first book celebrating medieval bravery, and the reader will definitely be looking for the second installment of this thrilling new historical fiction series for readers both young and old.
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The Youngest Templar is about a boy who was adopted by monks in medieval England. When a group of the Templars, crusading knights sworn to help the church, visit the abbey he is staying at, and when a knight named Sir Tomas asks him to be his squire, he joins them. Soon he is caught up in the 3rd Crusade, saves King Richard, meets an outlaw ex-king’s archer and an assassin who turns out to be a girl, and has been entrusted by Sir Tomas with one of the most sacred items of Christendom, the Holy Grail.
I would recommend this book to boys and girls from age 10-14 who like the Middle Ages.
