Rating: 
Summary: Fiction
Review: I read this book when it came out the first time years ago. I never read a book as bad as this book. The whole book is fiction a bunch of what ifs. There is no facts or evidence to support these findings. Christians do not read this garbage! This is new age at its worse. There has never been any true historical books written about the missing years of Jesus in any of the gospels missing or otherwise.
Rating:
Summary: Not this junk again!
Review: It's pretty amusing that this book has come back to haunt us, largely on the back of the support it was given as a major source of Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code". It's even more amusing that many of the reviewers who have bought this book after reading Brown's simplistic pulp novel have found "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" heavy going.What Brown didn't tell his wide-eyed readers is that even the authors of HBHG are no longer convinced of the thesis they present in this book. In more recent years other researchers have revealed that, far from being a 1000 year old secret society linking the Merovingians, Templars, Cathars, Masons etc, the Priory of Sion is a hoax invented in the 1950s by an anti-Semitic, neo-Nazi, collaborator, convicted fraud and fanatical French royalist, Pierre Plantard. Most of the documents used by Baigent et al were put in their path by Plantard, who tried on and off to propogate the idea that he was the true successor to the throne of France up until his death in 2000. HBHG is riddled with errors and leaps of logic and is inspired by fraudulent material planted by a well-known eccentric hoaxer. This book is worth reading as a curiosity only - it is worthless in any other respect.
Rating: 
Summary: Just now!
Review: I can't believe so many people are just now getting around to this book. I read it YEARS ago when it first came out. Back then, everyone I told about it was astounded at the subject material. Now we have had The Da Vinci Code, The Passion of the Christ, The Temptation of Christ, and everything in between. Still, Holy Blood is a fascinating book and should be read. If you don't choose to believe it, then it's at least food for thought. Also recommended: LIFE OF PI, McCrae's BARK OF THE DOGWOOD, and POMPEII by Harris
Rating:
Summary: Please...
Review: It took the collective imagination of 3 authors to synthesize this piece of fiction. At the request of a friend, in recognizing Dan Brown's reliance on this (among other) writings in his background work for The DaVinci Code, I read excepts of this book. When not bogged down in a quagmire of questionable "fact", the reader will arrive at an unbelievable series of conjectures on Jesus' life and the "suggestion" of a marriage with Mary. The only thing this book "proves" is that anything can make it into print.
Rating: 
Summary: Too much digression, not enough on the subject.
Review: HOLY BLOOD, HOLY GRAIL is a book about a conspiracy. Unlike THE DA VINCI CODE, which took the research of HOLY BLOOD, HOLY GRAIL and turned it into a best-selling thriller, HOLY BLOOD, HOLY GRAIL is ostensibly non-fiction, though readers will find there's as much (if not more) speculation as fact in its pages. Those expecting a thrill-a-minute reading experience will likely come away disappointed. The authors of HOLY BLOOD, HOLY GRAIL speculate that the Jesus of the Bible was, in fact, attempting to regain the throne of Israel, a throne that had been usurped by invaders up to and including the Roman Empire. To this end, the book provides a great deal of compelling analysis that draws together historical documents, apocryphal religious material and more to create a convincing picture of Jesus quite different from the peace-loving rabbi from Nazareth. The speculation goes further, however, and suggests that Jesus was not crucified or (the authors try to have it both ways) survived his ordeal to continue his quest to overthrow Roman rule. If these allegations were not explosive enough, HOLY BLOOD, HOLY GRAIL also theorizes that the Magdalen, a constant female presence in the Bible, may very well have been Jesus's wife. After the failure of Jesus's coup in Jerusalem, she fled to France, either with Jesus's son, or with his unborn child within her. This royal bloodline became the basis for the Holy Grail story, and later French monarchs, specifically the Merovingians, were direct descendents of Jesus the Nazarene. This is fascinating stuff, and though the authors fail to provide conclusive evidence that any of this happened, they draw together enough disparate resources to indicate that the traditional ideas most have about Jesus, the Magdalen, and Jesus's ministry are due for a major overhaul. Unfortunately, these things come only after 300 pages of the most turgid, yawn-inspiring nonsense collected between two covers. HOLY BLOOD, HOLY GRAIL starts well enough, with intriguing questions about a cover-up in the south of France involving the historical record of Jesus. The book then devolves into a bone-dry examination of secret societies in the 12th and 13th centuries, and how these societies interacted with the ruling authorities and Catholic Church. It's enough to put a fire to sleep, and bears only tangential relationship to the subject of Jesus, on whom the book is supposed to focus. The authors' scholarship is suspect, as mentioned, with speculation and fancy replacing research more often than not. Once the book brings in the infamous, anti-Semitic forgery THE PROTOCOLS OF THE LEARNED ELDERS OF ZION as a legitimate resource, astute readers should know there's a problem. Genuine research has gone right off the rails. HOLY BLOOD, HOLY GRAIL is worth reading even if one skips directly to the last 100 or so pages in order to get a new perspective on Jesus. The rest of the book is ponderous in the extreme and hardly worth anyone's time. Only those with a fetish for secret histories, and who already have a strong grounding in the European history of the period discussed, will derive much from the bulk of the reading. Greater focus and stronger editing would have done HOLY BLOOD, HOLY GRAIL much good.
Rating: 
Summary: Pulp History
Review: I am struggling to find another qualification for the genre. The factual, bibliographical and contextual support for the theories put forward are very tenuous. That, in my opinion, disqualifies the book as being a serious historic study. That being said, the theories in the book are curious, and as a result, it reads more like a mystery novel of the type of "The DaVinci Code". It has a little more basis in reality and history that the "Code", but not much. For those really interested in history of the period, a good place to start would be "The Albigensian Crusades" by Joseph Strayer or "The Cathars in Languedoc" by Malcolm Barber. For those who like the pulp history of this type, they may try the books by Jean Markale, such as "Montsegur and the Mystery of the Cathars". The sequel to "Holy Blood", "The Messianic Legacy" is not worth the read!
Rating:
Summary: DaVinci Code: The Making Of ...
Review: For those of us intrigued and wanting to know what aspects are DAVINCI CODE were 100% fictional, 80% fictional or 0% fictional - HOLY BLOOD, HOLY GRAIL was Dan Brown's building block. Honestly, Dan Brown pretty much encapsulated this book in the DAVINCI CODE in a much more interesting manner. Unless you want to know every blood relative in the Medvegen (sp?) line - this book actually covers no new ground. There is no additional revelation in this book that is not used as a main point in DAVINCI CODE. Because this was one of the first major books on the subject - they felt they had to convince us AND to write it in a way so not to spoil the surprise. The problme is even if you don't read the Amazon reviews, the back of the books tells you exactly what "surprises" they are exploring ... so most of the 'unfolding' of their detective story is pointless. Because their first objective is to sell us their credibility, they spend way too much time on that. And frankly, they bury the lead (in newspaper parlance). Read the TEMPLAR REVELATIONS instead. It is much better written and they freely admit that HOLY BLOOD was their starting point. TEMPLAR REVELATIONS is much more fluid and covers the ground in a much easier to digest style. Maybe it was just my copy but the typeface is too large for the page size and the binding was extra tight also - it was literally and figureratively difficult to read. Again, buy and read TEMPLAR REVELATIONS.
Rating:
Summary: very worthlss and plain boring
Review: Your reading this book because of the d-Code. I was a sucker also. This is a very dry book that had no acctualy reading value unlees you can't sleep. You'll be nodding off quickly. It should be recomended to insominiacs, a great cure for that.
Rating:
Summary: Total TRASH - throw it in the garbage
Review: I couldn't even get past the first couple chapters. I'm no Bible-thumping Christian, but this is utterly ridiculous. Unless you want a big laugh, don't read this nonsense. The author wrote this book based on his opinion, not facts or even good guesses. Not only was this book unbelievably unbelievable, it was also extremely long and wordy. Go get yourself "The Da Vinci Code"!
Rating:
Summary: If you enjoyed the Da Vinci Code...
Review: For those of you who wish to venture into historical speculation about the divinity of Christ. Why did a Pope together with a king of France crusade against the Knights Templar?
This book discusses what the Knights Templar may have discovered about historic Jesus. The authors give splendid examples from the scriptures, other writings, and works of art to support their fundamental theory -- Jesus Christ survived the crucification and established a royal bloodline. In essence, this is the "Holy Grail"- the royal bloodline started by Christ.
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