France, 1209: A Knight Templar riding through an eerie forest is suddenly attacked by an assassin as a man and woman watch from a distant hillside. When his death seems certain, the woman takes up a sword...
Present, Formula 1 race, Magny Cours: Observed by the very same couple, Conor Westfield, a career-obsessed Scottish driver, is in a horrible racing accident. Miraculously, he survives what seemed to be certain death.
As he is recovering from his injuries Conor’s childhood nightmare recurs, a strange jumble of terrifying images that feel more like memories than dreams. Can it be mere coincidence that the very next morning he is informed a mysterious woman with whom he had very brief affair has died and left him as her heir? But this was no ordinary woman and no ordinary affair. Dogged by a niggling feeling of déjà vu, Conor travels to Amsterdam to identify the body. At her home he finds an illuminated book that transports him back in time, to a woman he left behind and a life lived in the shadow of a tragedy that cries out across 800 years for resolution.
Weaving history with the present, fact with fantasy, The Knightmare is an unforgettable story of angels and alchemy, betrayal and sacrifice, and a truly extraordinary love.
*May Contain Spoilers*
Deborah Valentine invites readers to discover the distillation of life in her novel, The Knightmare. As the novel aligns two lifelines, one in the present and one in year 1209, the characters slowly discover that the nightmares that haunt them are their past mistakes and the present may be too late to fix them.
Conor is the main character of the novel, though most of it is focused on (what seems to be) his original life as a Templar Knight in historic France. Conor is honorable, known as a hero, brave, strong, and leads a righteous life, but he fails to do one thing. Love. He expels it from his life and it seems the more lives he lives, the more terrified he becomes. He is forced to relive his failures until he learns how to love. Readers will connect with the history of Conor and be intrigued with the mystery that surrounds the woman he's fated to.
The plot is the alignment of both Conor's present life and his original life. As Conor is trying to the solve the mystery around a woman's death (a woman he had a brief affair with), he discovers that he and the woman have a longer history than he believed. The story line is full of magic and mystery but for someone to really love this book, they need to also like the historical genre. I'm not much of a history buff and I found a few parts heavier than I usually enjoy. Although it was a bit of a slow roller, the novel itself was quite intriguing and kept me reading right up to the end.
Rating: 3/5 Cups
