Tannhauser Trilogy Books in Order

The Tannhauser Trilogy is Tim Willocks's sprawling historical saga about Mattias Tannhauser, a Saxon born soldier of fortune who moves between Christian and Ottoman worlds in the sixteenth century. The books drop you into battles, conspiracies and love stories on a vast scale.

When the series opens in The Religion, Tannhauser is living in Messina, Sicily, having remade himself as an arms dealer and sometime smuggler after years as a Janissary in the Ottoman army. He speaks the languages of both camps and understands their customs, which makes him useful but also deeply suspect to fanatics on every side.

His quiet life ends when Carla La Penautier, a young French countess, arrives in Sicily. Twelve years earlier she was forced to give up her newborn son, and she now believes the boy has been taken to Malta, where the Knights of Saint John are bracing for an Ottoman assault. Carla hires Tannhauser to run the blockade and help her search for the child, drawing him into a siege that will test every skill he has learned.

On Malta the story widens into a portrait of holy war. Willocks sets brutal close quarter fighting against political scheming in the Church and at the Sultan's court. Tannhauser must navigate inquisitors, spies and rival commanders while trying to keep Carla alive and hold on to a fragile sense of personal honour in the middle of carnage.

The second book, The Twelve Children of Paris, shifts the action to France in 1572. Tannhauser and Carla are now married and expecting a child. She travels ahead of him to Paris for a royal wedding meant to heal the rift between Catholics and Huguenots, unaware that the city is about to ignite. When she disappears, Tannhauser rides into a maze of narrow streets, gang territories and court intrigues on the eve of the Saint Bartholomew's Day massacre.

As rumours of slaughter thicken, he finds himself hunted by militias, assassins and the law, all while tracking the grotesque underworld boss Grymonde, who has his own plans for Carla. The novel follows Tannhauser through palaces, dungeons and taverns as the city slides into organised chaos, with a young stable boy as his unexpected ally.

Across both novels the tone is dark, physical and intense. Battles are described in detail, from the weight of armour and the recoil of cannon to the smoke hanging over shattered walls. At the same time, Willocks gives space to quieter moments of friendship, desire and doubt, so that the violence always has a human cost.

The trilogy is planned to span Tannhauser's whole arc through the religious wars of the sixteenth century, though only The Religion and The Twelve Children of Paris are currently available. You can read either book on its own, but starting with The Religion lets you meet the characters in order and watch their loyalties and scars deepen from one cataclysmic conflict to the next.