To Speak in Lifeless Tongues

The Grails Covenant #2

by David Niall Wilson

In the second volume of The Grails Covenant trilogy, the vampire Montrovant, bent on obtaining the Holy Grail, receives word that the Knights Templar are about to fall. He sets off after King Phillip's army, despite the threat of treachery, to claim the Grail and deliver it to his sire. But time and the mysterious guardian of lost treasures pit themselves against Montrovant as he risks all for honor, power, and pride. 400 pp.

Genres: Fantasy, World Of Darkness, Horror, Vampires, Fiction, Urban Fantasy

400 pages, Paperback

First published January 5, 1998

About the author

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David Niall Wilson has been writing and publishing horror, dark fantasy, and science fiction since the mid-eighties. An ordained minister, once President of the Horror Writer 's Association and multiple recipient of the Bram Stoker Award. He lives outside Hertford, NC with the love of his life, Patricia Lee Macomber, His children Zane and Katie, occasionally their older siblings, Stephanie, who is in college, and Bill and Zach who are in the Navy, and an ever-changing assortment of pets.

David is CEO and founder of Crossroad Press, a cutting edge digital publishing company specializing in electronic novels, collections, and nonfiction, as well as unabridged audiobooks and print titles.

Reviews

[Gianfranco Mancini · Rating 4 out of 5]

Boredom can be the greatest enemy for an immortal, grudges can last forever and when Santos moves against Kli Kodesh, the Knights Templars are caught in the middle, facing their doom.
And to Lasombra Montrovant, the vampire responsible of their foundation so many years ago, it seems just approoriate to be with them in their final moments.
Not bad at all, liked a lot Gwendolyne's add to the chsracters cast and Jeanne Le Duc's one development, Montrovant is an hell of an antihero and Kli Kodesh, ancient and crazy Nosferatu with the ultimate gift to walk in sunlight, thinking to be Judas Iscariot (and maybe he IS!) is a fantastic one, sadly the Dark One seems just loving being deceived and not getting any closer at all to his goal: to obtain the Holy Grail for his Clan (and himself, of course).
And having been a VtDA/VtM Storyteller for years, it's so weird that the Cainites seems almost never using their signature Clan Disciplines: there are 3 Lasmbra of variant age but no trace of Obtenebration in the arc of two novels... WTF???



A still good and interesting read, maybe just too much similar to previous volume of the trilogy.

[Chad · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have never felt so much sympathy and desire to see success for a ruthless, amoral antihero with no particular interest in the collateral damage of his darkly obsessive quest for power as in the continuing saga of Montrovant, the main character of David Niall Wilson's "The Grail's Covenant" trilogy. The ability to maintain the same high quality of narrative power and compelling characterization as in the first book comes across as accomplished by the author with consummate ease. As a writer myself (both professionally and for my own personal enjoyment -- or, more accurately, personal compulsive urge), I know that it was likely an exhausting outpouring of intensity into the completion of the work, but Wilson never failed to make it look easy and natural, and I was sucked into the second installment of this trilogy as fully as the first.

[Welther · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as good, or well paced, as the first book.

[Nuno · Rating 2 out of 5]

This can actually have the same review as for the previous book:
"The author makes good use of vocabulary, but so much repetition... The same ideas, the same sentences, repeated time and again over the book. I can't describe the amount of times the protagonists "sensed" something, that they "blended into the shadows", that it was "a good night to day". The book really suffered from this. Another criticism is that the author wrote the historical characters in a way that it seems like they know how history will turn out, and that's a bit annoying because they seem to be guiding themselves towards that conclusion.
I'll keep reading since I have the trilogy and they read fast, but it seems like this should have been a better book."

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

I never played White Wolf games, I was more of a D&D guy, but a few of my friends played them so I knew a little about the system. I picked this series up because I had an interest in White Wolf games, but more so because I like the vampire genre and I like the medieval genre and here was a book that combined the two. Montrovant is our protagonist, a vampire of the Lasombra clan who sets out to find the Holy Grail and bring it to his master and increase the power of his clan. Finding the Grail proves to be harder than expected and it takes our protagonist through three books of interesting characters and a flavorful setting.

[D. Hunter Phillips · Rating 2 out of 5]

The plot and character development seemed pretty thin. This book really made it feel like the first book wasn't a finished thought. This book just keeps dragging on most of the same stories. It had been awhile since reading the first book and the author switching using the first or last name for the sidekick vampire was UBER confusing. For about a third of the book, I thought there were three vampires traveling together.

[Marc · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dragging out what the secrets are and the nature of the guardians is getting tedious. Character development is more pronounced for the secondary character than the primaries which is odd. But, having got this far in, I will have to finish it out.

[Deidre · Rating 2 out of 5]

Moved up a few years to the time of the fall of the Knights Templar. I thought this was the best of the three in the series, and made me wish I know a bit more detail of the history.

[Devi · Rating 4 out of 5]

The second volume in the Grail Covenant trilogy keeps the action moving along.