There is so much err­on­eous inform­at­ion about the Knights Temp­lar that a fact­ual encyclo­pædia is an excell­ent idea. Unfort­un­ately this one, though a brave att­empt, is far better in its con­cept­ion than in its exec­ut­ion; it needed better org­an­is­at­ion and far stronger edit­ing.

As it is clearly aimed at the gen­e­ral reader, it would have bene­fited greatly from an intro­duct­ory scene-sett­ing chap­ter briefly tell­ing the story of the Templ­ars, their found­ing, heyday and down­fall, and per­haps high­light­ing some of the more sign­if­i­cant ent­ries in the book: a road­map for the reader.
Throughout the book, Karen Ralls use­fully count­ers some of the assert­ions of spec­ul­at­ive “hist­ori­ans”.