Templar’s Folly

Psychic Detective Malachi Monroe, #1

by

Luke DeSalvo 

A newly appointed spiritual guardian and a psychic witch join forces to defeat an ancient evil hidden on the island of Kauai.

Templar’s Folly by Luke DeSalvo is set on the lush island of Kauai, an exotic location steeped in Hawaiian mythology and lore, and the author crafts an intriguing, fresh paranormal story by introducing a powerful vampiric adversary straight out of Eastern European folklore. Malachi Monroe, a newly appointed Templar living on the island of Kauai, is tasked with eliminating a vampire who is stalking the daughter of a recent client, only to discover the vampire has a more serious motive than looking for his next meal. Dominic, the almost 500-year-old vampire, needs help killing his creator, an ancient vampire who is slumbering now but will soon awake to destroy humanity and the world, starting right there on Kauai, where he has been secretly hidden. Dominic needs Valerie, a young witch with unique psychic abilities, to help open a pathway to the underworld before Orion, his former mentor, awakens and Malachi’s abilities as a Templar to destroy him once found. But first, all three must come to trust each other before anything good can come from their alliance. 

I loved the premise of this book and really wanted to love the execution as well, and while promising, this work needs more refining before reaching its potential. Malachi Monroe is an engaging main character, and several nice storylines support the plot; however, I felt like I was dropped into the middle of the book, with insufficient development of Malachi’s backstory or the world of the Templars. There are tidbits of information throughout, some even repeated, that help establish both, but the whole Lavaitus Corporation remains vague to me. Were the Templars in the story a modern branch of THE Templars? I liked the chapter epigraphs relating to Lavaitus’s policies, which provided additional insights. Valerie’s presence in the story is more defined, but I still had questions about her being a witch, a ghost hunter, a psychic, and her abilities. 

The relationship between Malachi and Valerie is foretold from both their perspectives, so their meeting and immediate attraction were understandable; however, their instant declarations of love still felt premature. The feeling of rushing may be a product of the dialogue. Much of it came off as unnatural and disjointed, filling space rather than providing motive and direction. 

The underlying plot is intriguing, and the fight sequences are vivid and exciting. Malachi could be a compelling protagonist if his traits were better established. He presents, initially, as engaging, lovable, and somewhat goofy, but he’s later described as classy, which doesn’t show up in his interactions with other characters. Lastly, the book still contains way too many execution errors, such as incorrect word choices, misspellings, typos, repetitive passages, inconsistencies in character names, and continuity issues. These are all the types of things that confuse a reader and interrupt the flow of the story that another pass by an editor can fix. 

The bottom line, though, is that despite my quibbles, I enjoyed the story and would share this title, with my reservations noted, with friends and family who like this genre, especially those who like stories set in Hawaii. 

I voluntarily reviewed this after receiving an Advance Review Copy from Reedsy Discovery.