Iberian Swordplay: Domngo Luis Godinho's Art of Fencing

 

Iberian Swordplay: Domingo Luis Godinho's Art of Fencing by Domingo Luis Godinho
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I started picking my way through this work a couple of pages at a time, as the archaic language and the author's assumptions about the reader were very difficult to parse. Of course, this is a manual on a certain style of swordsmanship, not a novel or essay or short story, but a textbook. The glossary in the back was somewhat helpful, but as often as not it is self-referential, again, assuming much about the reader's background knowledge and experience.

I've been fencing, off and on, since college - foil, epee, rapier & dagger, and, most recently, messer. I'm not great, but I had good coaching (my first coach was an olympic bronze medalist), and I would feel pretty comfortable if things came down to a real duel with just about anyone (sharp blades make one sharper, as they say). But I admit that learning fencing theory was never my strong suit. So, this one was a bit of a struggle.

At a certain point, after nipping and poking at the work, though, I decided I needed to just plunge in, read, practice some of the techniques, as I understood them. That did seem to accelerate some of my learning, much the same as learning German or Latin or Swahili - immersion is the key.

Part one of the book, on "Sword Alone," was definitely the most tedious, but also the most foundational, as one would expect. A brief introductory chapter by Tim Rivera was definitely helpful, but if I could have any wish about this book, it would be that it was thoroughly annotated and illustrated by Rivera. Swordsmanship is something done in space, and trying to translate the written word into spatial movement in real-time is nearly impossible without some kind of visual representation. This was my biggest complaint about the manual - and it is a HUGE complaint.

Part Two: Sword and Shield, can be summarized: protect your hand, slash at your opponent's legs or stab him in the belly, and whatever you do, do it really, really quickly, like a snapping turtle.

There are other sections on a variety of topics, not all of which I will mention. Some standouts, though, were:

Part Four: Two Swords. Need to know how to clear a street? It's in there. Surrounded by enemies who are threatening your treasure or your lady? There are solutions to that.

I should note here, also, that in both the section on Two Swords and in Part Six: The Two-Handed Sword, there are very clear instructions on how a bodyguard should defend an individual in his charge, and there are a lot of details beyond just the proper footwork and cutting or thrusting techniques that I just would not have thought of. Things like: Where is it best to place your back (or not) at a four-way intersection? What if your back is literally against the wall? How do you defend yourself and another in those circumstances? And so forth.

I always wondered why those beefcake sword and sorcery covers and frontispieces (see: almost every issue of Savage Sword of Conan) had the hero standing and a woman kneeling or sitting at his feet. Turns out this was how people were trained to defend a woman from a crowd (royal bodyguards and such). When surrounded, you have to swing in wide arcs. If she's standing behind or beside you . . . well, it's bad optics, at the very least, to accidentally decapitate the person you're trying to protect.

Part Eight: Self-Defense and Tricks, might just as well have been titled "dirty tricks". Literally dirty, like keeping a pocket full of fine sand to cast into the eyes of an opponent who "has greater advantage" or to use against multiple opponents who justifiably want to kill you because you are a scumbucket. Godinho essentially says the quiet part out loud about how you got yourself into this stupid mess, here's how you get out, but in a more refined way. Screw honor, you've got to defend yourself! By far the most entertaining section of the book!

Will I stop reading fencing/swordsmanship manuals? Heck no. I benefited greatly from reading Cappo Ferro's Gran Simulacro multiple times in the past, and I am very much looking forward to tackling Hans Lecküchner's work on Messer fighting. I am unlikely to return to Godhino's principal work on Sword Alone (though I've taken a couple of small lessons from it), but the sections on Two Swords and Two-Handed Sword are gold - if only they were clearly illustrated.

View all my reviews

____________________

If you like my writing and want to help my creative endeavors, please ko-fi me at https://ko-fi.com/forrestaguirre. Every little bit is seen and appreciated! Thank you!

Censure forthcoming from Zagava

 I am thrilled beyond measure to announce that Zagava is publishing my short story collection Censure in 2026, first as a very limited slipcased hardbound edition, then as a paperback edition. 15 dark tales, 4 of them previously-unpublished, the rest from a bevy of obscure and difficult-to-find editions (some of them also very limited). The cover art is by one of my favorite artists: Odilon Redon, the Symbolist master. Exact publication date is TBD, but here is a taste of what's coming:

Link to the signed and lettered edition is here!

____________________

If you like my writing and want to help my creative endeavors, please ko-fi me at https://ko-fi.com/forrestaguirre. Every little bit is seen and appreciated! Thank you!

The Shub-Niggurath Cycle: Tales of the Black Goat with a Thousand Young

 

The Shub-Niggurath Cycle: Tales of the Black Goat with a Thousand Young by Robert M. Price
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read this years ago, about twenty years ago, in fact, when I was finishing graduate school. I'll be honest, I don't remember if I owned the book and got rid of it or if I got it from the library, but, in any case, I didn't have my own copy for a long, long time. So, when I spotted this at a local antique store for a pittance, I just sprang for it. The question is, would it live up to my now-higher expectations of writing craftsmanship?

Lewis Spence's "The Horn of Vipula" was pulp as they come, with everything that implies: predictability, a not-so-surprise ending, plot "reaches" like miniature deus-ex-machina, and language that strives to be better than it really is. Meh. Not a great start to the anthology.

M.P. Dare tries to channel M.R. James in "The Demoniac Goat". He's largely successful but lacks the full gravitas of the master of the ghost story. Still, a decent enough story about an ostensibly dead priest and his pet goat. Well, who was the pet, really?

Even the editor notes the hackneyed subject matter of J.S. Leatherbarrow's "The Ghostly Goat of Glaramara". I agree with the editor's assessment. Ostensibly, he put it in the anthology for historical reasons. But some history is best forgotten.

I've read and enjoyed Ramsey Campbell's "The Moon-Lens" before, and while many consider it something akin to juvenalia, with a structure that pastiche's Lovecraft's own, I still find something intriguing here. It bridges the gap between folk horror and cosmic horror in a way that highlights the strong points of each. Maybe I just have a soft spot for it, as I would likely rate it more highly than others.

Careful restraint is not the watchword in John Glasby's "The Ring of the Hyades". Lovecraft's greatest folly: naming the un-nameable, describing the indescribable, leaks into Glasby's writing like a Rorschach test of purple prose. The story is alright, but rather predictable for anyone even vaguely familiar with the Mythos. I suppose that makes it a safe read for fans, but it would be jarring for newcomers.

During my years as an editor, I had an unbreakable rule that I would never publish my own work in an anthology I was editing. Price, in his . . . uh, work(?) "A Thousand Young" provides a shining example of why every editor should take this ethical stance. I hated this story. It was a twelve-year old's darkest sexual fantasy. Oh, and trigger warning: R**E. Yeah, no. No stars, not even one. Just . . .don't.

Odd that a story so poor as Price's should be followed by a sandal and sorcery story so nearly perfect as Richard L. Tierney's "The Seed of the Star God". Price can't write them, but he can pick them! Now I'm wondering if there is a full collection of Simon of Gitta's tales. I would read that! Sword, sorcery, and sacrifice in the decadence of the Roman Empire. SPQR!

It's not the story that sang to me. Glen Singer's "Harold's Blues" is an old tale, a very tried and true tale, about selling one's soul for music. You already know the story, from start to finish. But the register in which this was sung . . .well, that's where the magic lies. That old, dark magic that brings songs and storms and screams in the night. Familiar, but unsettling.

Lin Carter may have been a better writer of Lovecraftian tales than Lovecraft himself. "Dreams in the House of Weir," a story steeped in the mythos, but with just a modicum more of restraint than HPL lacked, teases the horror out instead of bashing readers over the head with it. There's a slow pull on the thread of cosmic horror here that unwinds one's sanity. If your dreams become wondrous, you should start to fear.

. . . and Carter further demonstrates his skilled pen by way of the poem "Visions from Yaddith," which is quoted in the previous story. I'm rather curious which came first? The story? Or the poem? Each path carries some interesting implications about the writing process that I need to ponder on a while. I could see each having its benefits, and I've done both, but without much intentionality. I must think on this. It's been a while since I've tried my hand at poetry.

I wavered on M.L. Carter's "Prey of the Goat". It swung from interesting to hackneyed, back to good, then to trite, wallowing in mediocrity. In the end, I'm in the "meh" camp, with a slight twinge of "interesting," but not interesting enough to take me beyond a bland assessment. Could-have-beens and all that rot.

"Sabbath of the Black Goat" carried a not-so-surprising ending. Add to this the hyper-compressed, yet somehow thin info dump by Stephen M. Rainey and you have a rushed, middling story. I suspect there was some word count restriction on the story, but whether the story should have been longer or shorter is difficult to say. It's clear, though, that the pulp suit just doesn’t quite fit right.

Another Price story, but this one co-authored with Peter H. Cannon, "The Curate of Temphill" reads somewhere between M.R. James and Umberto Eco; meaning I quite liked it. I have to attribute this to the co-authorship(?), something I've done myself with good results (with author Brendan Connell, whose work I continue to greatly admire). This tale of Templars and heretical prophecies is an unexpected and welcome find in such an anthology. No Old Ones here, but they are not needed.

David Kaufman's "Grossie" might be the most effective story of this anthology (and also has the worst title, though it fits). It's as subtle as Lovecraft is unsubtle. There is a menace of place here and the faint aroma of ancestral evil, just enough to pique the imagination, just enough for the reader to really feel the underlying horror without facing it directly, an underlying genius loci with inimical intent. Don't be fooled by the puerile title. Another tale where the Old Ones don't make a direct appearance, and they don't have to. In fact, having an "unspeakable" horror show its face would have destroyed this beautiful (but dark) story.

"To Clear the Earth" is a story lost and found to me. I remember, in the mid-90s, reading a mythos story that made a deep impression on me. It was cosmic horror writ-large, on an Earth-ending scale, but in more of a science fiction paradigm than horror. The setting was Antarctica (which makes me wonder why it wasn't in the Antarktos Cycle). And here it is, by Will Murray (also the author of the Doc Savage and Destroyer series). It doesn't resonate as much now. I was surprised by the ending (which I had forgotten), so that wasn't the problem. I think it might be the pulp-adventure tone of the second half of the story, or maybe it was the info-dumping that took place throughout. I guess it was needed back in the day, but nowadays the Mythos lore is so common as to be trite. Or maybe I've just played so much Call of Cthulhu that I recoil at explanatory passages, especially ones about the Necronomicon. In any case, the story, while good, didn't have the same magic (nefarious or otherwise), as it did last century.

So, alas, the me of twenty years ago enjoyed this anthology far more than the me of now does. Age happens. Experience happens. Nostalgia happens. And sometimes, nostalgia is deceptive. Live and learn.

View all my reviews

____________________

If you like my writing and want to help my creative endeavors, please ko-fi me at https://ko-fi.com/forrestaguirre. Every little bit is seen and appreciated! Thank you!

Garycon 2026 Preview

 Here's what's coming my way at Garycon 2026 (presuming it's not cancelled due to WWIII). Shadowdark, Traveller, Dungeon Crawl Classics, Empire of the Petal Throne, Riverbank (I am VERY excited to play this!!!), Vaesen, War of the Ring, and, of course, Call of Cthulhu:

Addendum:

A spot opened up on one of the games I wanted to get in, but couldn't at first, so I took it. It's another Traveller game, which means I'm not going to be playing Vaesen this time around. There are typically more Vaesen games offered at Gameholecon, anyway, so I'll pick one up then. Just couldn't pass up the chance to pick up a mercenary ticket!!!

____________________

If you like my writing and want to help my creative endeavors, please ko-fi me at https://ko-fi.com/forrestaguirre. Every little bit is seen and appreciated! Thank you!

I Foresee the Wild Ahead

 I'm not much of a homeowner. I often ask myself why I even own a home. The neighbors probably do, too. I'm not that guy who manicures his lawn with nail-clippers (those are the people across the street). I wouldn't survive a week in an HOA. Besides, I have no desire to deal with the politics of an HOA. Sounds like my idea of hell. 

I'm lucky enough to have a pretty "cute" home. Kind of a gingerbread bungalow. It needs work, and now that I've finally (after eight years - thank you California legal system) got my deceased parents house off of my hands (and out of the $800/month rent I had to pay to keep it on the trailer park's land), I can focus a little more on the house. Yeah, I know, I'm very, very lucky and privileged to own my own home; I get it. I look at my kids and wonder how they will ever be able to afford a home with the billionaire's cards stacked against them (and the other 98%). But, like I inferred, I am a horrible house manager.

And I really, really, REALLY hate mowing the yard. I mean HATE with a visceral passion. Might have something to do with my upbringing, where military housing is meticulously watched and people are ticketed for the slightest infractions - hey, I just discovered why I hate the idea of an HOA! Cool! Anyway, I hate mowing the yard. It has all kinds of bad associations for me. The only good association I can think of is when I was 12 and I got a walkman and a copy of Black Sabbath's Mob Rules album and listened to that full blast for the first time while mowing my yard. That . . . was cool. 

But back to my hatred: I might have found a solution. I've posted on here a few times about my (nearly daily, on weekdays, at least) wanderings on The Ice Age Trail here in Janesville. The particular stretch that I haunt the most is a restored prairie, replete with native prairie grasses and wildflowers, an incredibly diverse range of birds, one mink, and at least 11 deer, as of my last count (a week and a half ago). All of this in the city. 

So, I figured, hey, I hate mowing the yard, and I can do with it what I want because: no HOA! I've also seen others do what I'm about to do: plant native Midwest wildflowers and tall grasses. So long as I don't kill them the first year, they're perennials, so they should seed and grow themselves, more or less. No muss, no fuss. Not quite sure what I'm going to do in the fall, though, because I can't burn them down like they do on other prairies. Might burn the house down, which is a neighborly-limiting maneuver. I'll have to figure that one out.

We're going to start small. You can see the little wedge we're targeting in the photo above. We'll be expanding that and creating a sort of triangular lot alongside our house to start with. We've tried and failed a couple of different experiments there (mostly due to critters getting in and eating our squash - too bad I can't fire my .357 within city limits, or there would be a bunch of hollow rabbit and squirrel skins littering my yard), so let's see what we can do here. If it works well, then we'll expand next year. Who knows, there may come a time when I am surrounded by nothing but wildflowers and knee-high native grasses? That can't be all bad. 

____________________

If you like my writing and want to help my creative endeavors, please ko-fi me at https://ko-fi.com/forrestaguirre. Every little bit is seen and appreciated! Thank you!

The Eigengrau Oracle Deck

 Eigengrau n. The dark grey color seen by the eyes in perfect darkness as a result of signals from the optic nerves.

I just received my most recent spontaneous did-not-plan-on-buying-anything-at-all purchase, the Eigengrau Oracle Deck. Whether for Art or for Working, you can't go wrong. This is a beautiful artifact.

You can pick up a copy here. Recommended.

____________________

If you like my writing and want to help my creative endeavors, please ko-fi me at https://ko-fi.com/forrestaguirre. Every little bit is seen and appreciated! Thank you!

A Natural History of Empty Lots

 

A Natural History of Empty Lots: Field Notes from Urban Edgelands, Back Alleys, and Other Wild Places by Christopher Brown
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I have a soft spot for books about psychogeography. Having been lucky enough to have been born a world traveler (thanks, Dad), I have a strong sense of place, particularly for places I've "discovered" and wandered through. A lot of those places were (and are) off the beaten path. As a result, I was particularly vulnerable (that's the popular word all the kids are using these days, isn't it?), which, of course, exposes one, makes one maybe a little touchy, when assessing a work like Christopher Brown's A History of Empty Lots: Field Notes from Urban Edgeland, Back Alleys, and Other Wild Places. I saved up for this book, and was ready to really cherish it, give it the benefit of the doubt, you know, be vulnerable.

I'd be lying if I didn't say that things got off to a rough start. I'll be frank, the beginning was downright boring. I even thought about lemming the book. But I love the subject matter enough that I gave it a chance. It felt choppy and poorly written. Only about 80 pages in did I feel like it had gained momentum and a bit of eloquence. I'm not sure where the editing really kicked in - was the first part poorly edited, or later parts well-edited, or did the editors start with an iron fist and let off as the book ran its course? I'll never know. But at some point it felt like two different books. Even 133 pages in, my notes read:

Is this book good, or just nice? I toggle back and forth between opinions on this one. I can't decide if it's "big" or "small," and I frankly only have an ill-conceived hint of a notion about what I even mean by that. It has its moments, but, then again, it has its moments, whatever that means in my intellectually lazy assessment. Maybe this book isn't for me, or I'm not for it?

This didn't bode well.

Thing is, I liked Brown's approach: Not alarmist, but not letting us off the hook for our environmental sins so easily, either. There's a touch of sadness and a touch of hope in those interstitial spaces where wilderness and domesticated spaces meet. I find a particularly wry, grim humor at work when Brown points out that roadkill might be one of the best indicators that wildness persists even in our most urbanized areas.

Really, I think the issue might be a problem with scope. A Natural History of Empty Lots feels most effective when focused on smaller scopes. The lone-standing "Holy Tree" (I'll call it), the lot on which the author carved out his own ecological/familial niche, etc. This reading might be the result of my own experiences exploring, particularly as a child, my own little niches: the Priory at Chicksands, dirty mechanical access tunnels to underground parking at the high-rise apartments where we lived in Brindisi, Italy (I still have nightmares where a hag suddenly appears in front of me in those tunnels, sending a chill up my spine and paralyzing me), the vast water-drainage system I entered (and almost got stuck in) at the bottom of the hill where I lived in Capehart Base Housing in Nebraska, the abandoned (and supposedly haunted) owl-infested Albion school in Idaho where we had a family reunion years ago.

  

The macro-scale of the book is interesting, to some degree, on a philosophical level, while the micro-scale foci are very interesting at an experiential level. I suppose there's something to be said for having one's own (now internal) experiences evoked by an external source. Maybe that's the trick.

For instance, the subsection "Foraging for Meaning," a list of found and created objects, does more to paint the narrative of the liminal space between civilization and the wild than any narrative. It is merely a list, but to me it seemed something much, much more poignant, showing, rather than telling, revealing meaning without speaking of meaning at all. Just a list of found and curated junk, for the most part. And yet, it seemed profound. Apotheosis in the trash stratum.

View all my reviews

____________________

If you like my writing and want to help my creative endeavors, please ko-fi me at https://ko-fi.com/forrestaguirre. Every little bit is seen and appreciated! Thank you!