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The Templar Enigma: Eden Black Archaeological Thrillers Book 5

The Templar Enigma: Eden Black Archaeological Thrillers Book 5

Her destiny is humanity's last hope.
By Luke Richardson

£10.00

When a Templar descendant uncovers a legendary relic to unleash an ancient curse and reset civilization, Eden Black must race against time to stop the coming apocalypse. But as she delves deeper into a centuries-old conspiracy, she discovers shocking truths about her own destiny and the deadly forces at play.

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Book themes

archaeological thriller
adventure fiction
Templars
France
Sintra
Seal of Solomon
Sahara
historical mystery
action thriller
Race against time

Author's notes

Uncover the truth behind the book (contains spoilers)
Read Luke's notes

Description

A TEMPLAR CURSE
AN ANCIENT PROPHECY
A PULSE-POUNDING RACE AGAINST TIME

In 1314, Jacques de Molay, the last Templar Grand Master uttered a curse as he burned at the stake. Within months, both men responsible for his downfall, the King of France, and the Pope, lay dead.

Centuries later, a Templar descendant discovers the key to unleashing the curse’s power: The legendary Seal of Solomon. Learning of the relic’s power, he plans a cataclysmic event which will return civilization to the Dark Ages.

Enter Eden Black. As the countdown begins, Eden is thrust into a web of intrigue that spans centuries, from the final days of the Knights Templar to the shadowy activities of a modern secret society.

But, learning just how deep this conspiracy goes, and who exactly is involved, Eden realizes things are much more deadly that she first thought.

From the crypt of a long-dead templar knight, to the shifting sands of the Sahara, and on to the palaces of Portugal, she uncovers shocking truths about her own destiny and the role she must play in the coming apocalypse.

With heart-pounding action, characters you’ll fall in love with, and a plot that will leave you breathless, The Templar Enigma is a must-read for fans of Dan Brown, Steve Berry, Ernest Dempsey, and Nick Thacker.

While The Templar Enigma will be full of thrills, spills and excitement, there’ll be no swearing, sex or gore.

Additional information

Weight 0.41 kg
Dimensions 20.3 × 12.7 × 2.4 cm

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FAQ

What is The Templar Enigma about?

The Templar Enigma begins on 18 March 1314, on the banks of the Seine in Paris, as Jacques de Molay — Grand Master of the Knights Templar — is burned at the stake. Before the flames take him, Molay utters a curse: that Pope Clement and King Philip IV of France will be summoned before God before the year is out. Within eight months, both men were dead.

In the present day, Eden Black is in London recovering from her last adventure when she encounters William Wolff — Grand Master of the Order of the All-Seeing Eye, a secret society that considers itself the rightful heir to the Knights Templar. Wolff believes the Seal of Solomon — a legendary ring hidden by the last Templars in a subterranean vault in Portugal — has the power to command the weather, bend reality, and restore order to a world Wolff believes has descended into chaos. His plan is to use it to manufacture disasters across the globe, then emerge as humanity’s saviour.


A cryptic riddle on an ancient parchment sends Eden racing across Europe and deep into the Sahara, to one of the ancient world’s most mysterious places, in a race to find the Seal before Wolff does.

The Seal of Solomon — a golden ring inscribed with Ancient Hebrew and bearing an obsidian hexagram at its centre — is the relic at the heart of the book. Originally discovered by the founding brothers of the Knights Templar beneath the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, the Seal was concealed in a labyrinthine subterranean vault near Lisbon in the weeks after Molay’s execution, its location encoded in a riddle that has remained unsolved for seven hundred years.


According to legend, the Seal was the talisman King Solomon himself used to build his temple, master the weather, and command demons to protect his kingdom. In the wrong hands — specifically Wolff’s — it would be used to unleash floods, droughts, and disasters on an unsuspecting world, before the Order of the All-Seeing Eye rides to the rescue and installs itself as the guiding light of civilisation. The question is whether Eden can find it first.

The execution of Jacques de Molay on 18 March 1314 is historical fact, as is his famous curse — and both Pope Clement V and King Philip IV did die within the year, a coincidence that has fascinated historians ever since. The Knights Templar, their dramatic suppression by the French crown, and the legends surrounding their hidden treasures and relics are among the most documented and debated mysteries in medieval history.


The Temple of the Oracle at Siwa Oasis in Egypt is real, and Alexander the Great genuinely did make the extraordinary journey across the Sahara to consult its oracle in 331 BC, seeking confirmation of his divine right to rule. The Seal of Solomon is a legendary artefact described in Hebrew, Islamic, and Sufi tradition, with accounts of its powers appearing across centuries of religious and historical writing. The subterranean Templar sites in Portugal — including the remarkable Convent of Christ at Tomar, built by the Knights Templar — are real and extraordinarily well preserved. As ever, the threads are real. The story pulls them together.

The Templar Enigma finds Eden in a rare moment of stillness — walking London’s Millennium Bridge, drinking ale in a four-hundred-year-old pub with Athena, and trying to decompress after the events of the previous books. It doesn’t last. When Wolff and the Order of the All-Seeing Eye present themselves as a threat of a different kind to anything she’s faced before, Eden is pulled back into action with a new urgency. This book also deepens our understanding of her relationship with her father Alexander Winslow.

The historical thread moves from the banks of the Seine in Paris in 1314, to a Templar Commandery near Lisbon in Portugal, and into the forests of Fontainebleau as the consequences of Molay’s curse begin to unfold. The present-day story opens in London — in the vaults beneath the city where the Order of the All-Seeing Eye holds its ceremonies, and in the four-hundred-year-old surroundings of Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese pub in Fleet Street — before the trail leads Eden deep into the Egyptian Sahara.


The Siwa Oasis is one of the most extraordinary and isolated places on earth: three hundred miles from the nearest city, sixty feet below sea level, and inhabited for over ten thousand years. It is home to the Temple of the Oracle, where Alexander the Great once made the extraordinary journey across the desert to seek divine guidance — and where Eden must be at sunrise on the equinox.


The clue Eden uncovers there sends Eden to Portugal and Quinta da Regaleira, a hillside estate in Sintra built at the turn of the 20th century by a wealthy intellectual obsessed with classical mythology, mysticism, and the secret history of the Knights Templar. Every inch of the estate was designed as a symbolic journey — a physical map of its owner’s esoteric beliefs. Beneath the palace lies a labyrinth of grottoes, caves, and secret passages, at the heart of which is the Initiation Well: an inverted tower whose spiral staircase winds down nine platforms to a Templar Cross at its base. For a story rooted in Templar legend and the search for the Seal of Solomon, there is nowhere on earth more fitting for it to end.

Very much so — and this book brings the genre into some of its richest historical territory. The Knights Templar, the Seal of Solomon, the Oracle of Siwa, and the question of what the Templars really discovered beneath the Temple Mount in Jerusalem are all subjects that have fascinated historians, archaeologists, and conspiracy theorists for centuries. If you’ve ever been drawn to the Templar legends, the mystery of Solomon’s Temple, or the extraordinary story of Alexander the Great’s desert pilgrimage to Siwa, this book is for you.
Readers who have loved the Eden Black series, and anyone drawn to the history of the Knights Templar, medieval secret societies, and the ancient mysteries of Egypt and the Middle East. Fans of Dan Brown — particularly The Da Vinci Code — will find themselves on very familiar thematic ground, with a considerably faster pace and a protagonist who is considerably more capable of looking after herself. Also anyone who has spent an evening reading about Jacques de Molay’s curse, the hidden treasures of the Templars, or the Oracle at Siwa.
As with the rest of the Eden Black series, there is action and danger throughout but nothing gratuitously violent or explicit. Older teenagers and adults who enjoy adventure fiction should find it a comfortable read.
The Templar Enigma is book five. It works as a standalone adventure but will be considerably richer if you’ve followed Eden’s journey from The Ark Files. Threads from across the series — including Eden’s relationship with her father, the Council of Selene, and the team aboard the Balonia — continue to develop here in ways that reward readers who have been with the series from the beginning. If you’re new to Eden Black, this is still a gripping entry point — just be prepared to want to go back to the start.

Book Details

Endorsements

Here's what readers think:

Eden Black just gets better and better! I couldn’t put this series down. Nonstop action, lots of emotion, and lots of turning the page to see what comes next. Bravo!
Reader of the The Ark Files
Blow the bloody doors off! Luke Richardson has given me more shivers and jumped up shouting from my seat in this series than I care to talk about. I can't express how much I love the Eden Black series.
Reader of The Giza Protocol
Fans of Indiana Jones will love this book and series. I’m only disappointed that I have to wait for the next book to come out!
Reader of The Atlantis Agenda

Real Locations in This Book

On the trail of the Templars in Portugal 

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