Sometimes all you need is something to tide you over. Dinner is in an hour but your stomach is rumbling away so you nibble on a cookie, chow on a candy bar, suck on a ring-pop. The food might not be the greatest and a couple hours later you've probably forgotten you had it. But it did the trick. It took care of your hunger for the moment.
James Patterson and Andrew Cross's new book Jester is little more than the bag of nuts you get on an airplane to keep you going until your next layover or until you reach your destination. You wish your flight had a meal served on it, but are happy to at least have the snack.

Jester is an exciting tale of love, wars against royalty and quests for religious relics. While the tale briefly begins in present time, the true story begins in 1050 A.D. when Hugh De Luc watches people head off on crusades. He holds himself back from partaking in the religious battles at first, but when a second opportunity arouses, he is unable to keep himself from going to war. He leaves his wife Sophie at home and fights for the freedom he feels is right.

When Hugh returns home he finds that his decision to join the crusades has affected his whole villages and his wife, who has been taken captive. Going on about the plot might actually make the book seem less appealing and more dime-store-romance-novel-ish... But essentially that's what it is, with only a fraction of the smut.

Patterson and Cross do a very good job of writing an entertaining story that keeps you turnings the pages. With no less than 153 chapters in only 452 pages, Jester is broken up into bite-size chunks easily accessible to anyone. The book is flawed: while the book begins in the present, we never return to the beginning characters but instead end still in the time of the crusades; the plot is much too predictable.

When you want a nice easy read though, perhaps on a long flight where you just want to be distracted from the crying babies behind you and the coughing passenger besides you until your next layover or until you reach your destination, open the Jester. You might not remember much about the book when you're finished, but you will enjoy the read.