Kindle Edition Category:  Fantasy Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform ISBN-10:  1508471835 Pages: 445 Copyright: February 18, 2015 ISBN-13: 9781508471837 Price: $2.99 (eBook) The convent or the crown... A destiny revealed... A priceless treasure at hand...  The Leper King is dead. His sister, Countess Sibylla, longs to return to the convent and leave the crown in the hands of her young son. But when the boy suddenly dies, the Order of Sion forces Sibylla to become queen and crown her estranged husband, Guion de Lusignan as king. Meanwhile, a squire named Ernoul discovers that a woman attending his sick mother in the Hospital of Saint-John is the beloved saint, Mary Magdalen, and that he is the illegitimate son of a powerful lord. As the Order of Sion regains strength and the kingdom moves ever closer to war with Salehdin, Mary seeks out the hiding place of the lost Cup of Christ... but is it the end of a long quest or a trap set by the enemy to destroy her?

Recommended
Scott Rezer follows up his excellent The Leper King, the first book in his Magdalen Cycle, with The Pawns of Sion, in which Countess Sibylla, the sister of medieval Jerusalem’s fallen “Leper King” Baldwin IV, is struck by a second tragedy in rapid succession: the sudden death of her son, which forces Sibylla to take up the rule of Jerusalem herself in conjunction with her husband Guion de Lusignan.

The tensions between the city and Salehdin, the Muslim ruler of Egypt and Syria, are on a razor-edge, and into this mixture Rezer adds a mystical religious element centering around a squire named Ernoul (and the Holy Cup of Jesus Christ, and other mystical artefacts), as well as a variety of confidently-done plot twists.

The novel’s historical research lends a rich atmospheric texture to the storyline, and Rezer’s sharp ear for dialogue adds to the vivid portrayal of his characters. All the multifaceted politics and faiths of the Holy Land during the late 12th Century are brought wonderfully to life in this intensely enjoyable book, which can be read independently of its predecessor. Recommended. ~ Steve Donoghue, Historical Novel Society Reviews May 2015