"The set-up is this: Our Hero, Irish-Italian-American and Catholic scholar Leo Kavenaugh, is summoned to an Italian villa by his college crush to help research a mysterious tome, the Forbidden Book of the title, against the wishes of her uncle, The (obvious from the first moment) Evil Baron. His explorations of the text lead to a centuries-old conspiracy of elite noblemen misusing the hidden sexual-alchemical teachings of the work to secure and maintain their power, including the forcing of a religious near-civil war across Europe…