Holy Blood, Holy Grail
Holy Blood, Holy Grail
by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln
RATING: 4 out of 10
OK, so after about a month and a half of struggling (last book I finished was on May 4th), I finally finished this behemoth of historical non-fiction.
Man, was it ever not worth it.
Holy Blood, Holy Grail was the source material from which Dan Brown likely got most of his information for his controversial novel (and subsequent film), The Da Vinci Code, which I loved. Wanting to hopefully recapture some of the magic of Brown’s book, I decided that I would read Holy Blood, Holy Grail. Someone had given it to me as a gift so I figured I would give it a shot.
It was really interesting. I learned an awful lot about some history that I had no idea about (the Merovingian dynasty, the Templar Knights, the history of the early church, etc.). However, it just took way too long to get there. I understand the importance of context, but after you have heard the authors drone on for several hours about wars and heresies and crap that really doesn’t have a lot of bearing on the ultimate story, you get a little bored.
Usually, I don’t have a lot of trouble finishing books, but I almost abandoned this one 100 pages from the end. Fortunately, the authors finally get to the point in the final 100 pages.
So here’s a synopsis: some documents were found that alluded to a secret society (the Priory of Sion) and these guys started investigating the documents, not realizing what they had stumbled onto. What they found was a lot of possible evidence of a very large secret being protected by a very powerful organization. They postulate what this secret might be (Jesus having a living bloodline) and VOILA! everything falls into place in their story.
Now there was certainly some cool stuff about the Bible that I never had heard or realized or thought about for that matter (and if you want to know more about those, comment and I’ll email you some stuff), but those “oh, that’s pretty cool” moments were largely outnumbered by “oh man, if this book doesn’t start moving soon, I’m going to send it back to the 4th century with the Merovingians!”.
My analysis…if you like history, read this book. If you don’t, read The Da Vinci Code. It’s a better novel. And you aren’t really missing much. Dan Brown accomplishes in about 15 pages what these authors take over 400 to say.