The Religion

If Tim Willocks' prose were a man, it would be huge, muscular, lusty and frequently caked in blood and gore. And yet, it's the perfect medium to bring to life this epic tale of The Siege Of Malta, one of the greatest mis-matched battles in medieval history, pitting 48,000 troops of the powerful Ottoman Empire against less than 7,000 warrior-priests of the Knights of Saint John who called themelves The Religion.

Anyone who's read Willocks' previous books, the prison-riot best-seller Green River Rising, and the less well received but nevertheless hugely entertaining Southern Goth thriller Blood Stained Kings knows the man doesn't do subtle. The sex is frequently explicit and the violence boosted to Grand Guignol levels.

But the irony is that, while Willocks's books, in their unexpurgated form, would be near un-filmable, his narrative arcs are firmly anchored to the tropes of modern day action adventures.

While The Religion, throughout its hefty 627 pages, details the impact of the siege, the battles, lives lost, and its toll on the tiny island on the Mediteranean in exquisite detail, it's no battle treatise for the military scholar. It's a medieval action thriller, the Siege seen through the eyes of Mattias Tannhauser, warrior, trader, war profiteer and lover.

Tannhauser is co-opted, against his rational misgivings, into the search for a Maltese Noblewoman’s illegitimate son on the besieged island and is sucked into the bloody fray in no time. The fact that said Noblewoman, the Lady Carla, is a beauty with “irises green and rimed, as if with ink, by thin black circlets” wearing a dress that “clung to her body like oil, like lust… buttressed her breasts…into exquisite hemispheres” may have been a persuading factor, along with her exotic, mysterious, Spanish companion Amparo. They are aided by Tannhauser’s blood thirsty and steadfast companion Bors, and thwarted by the fanatical Inquisitor Ludovico Ludovici, plenipotentiary to His Holiness, Pope Pius IV, secret agent of Michelle Ghisleri, Inquisitor General of All Christendom, and father to Carla’s missing offspring.

The Religion is a meaty tome, jam-packed with so much medieval information that to swallow it in one sitting is not possible, neither is it recommended. Willocks paints a broad canvas, doling out Renaissance era politics, battle strategies, love story and the nature of war coupled with larger themes of birthright, redemption, obsession and religion, all shot through Willocks’ blood-spattered prose, with generous helpings of sex and carnage.

And Oh! What carnage! Chests speared, armpits maced, limbs hacked, heads severed, privates stabbed, arteries spraying blood like fountains, swordcut to the thighs, backstroke to the guts; Willocks describes these scenes with such unabashed glee that one suspects he regrets not having been there to witness it in person.

The numerous sex scenes are a welcome respite from the frequent blood-letting as Tannhauser takes time out from battle to couple lustily with Amparo as a frustrated Carla takes refuge serving the wounded. But if Willocks’ prose is flowery during battle, it’s positively Purple in the bedroom. Sentences like “ he was afflicted by a burgeoning tumescence that nothing in Creation could forefend” and “ his yard throbbed monstrously between his legs. He felt it pant like a hell dog on a gossamer leash “call for a moratorium against Renaissance era romps in books.

Mattias, born a Saxon but trained as a janissary to the Emperor of the Ottomans, navigates both worlds with effortless ease, but realizes in the end that “all cults sought only power and the submission of peoples. The people themselves… were no more than grist to their mill.”

In the Knights use of the Lord’s prayer to rally men into battle, and the Turks’ invocation of the “surah” to exhort the Faithful to slaughter, Willocks’ message is an old one : In times of war, men conveniently cover themselves in the cloak of Religion, for to pillage, conquer and destroy in the name of God gives it credence.

But in today’s political climate, it’s frighteningly current.