Nine Warriors

 My new book is published in English. Nine Warriors was my first book, which was published in Italian by GDS Publishing House as Nove Guerrieri. Now, through Babelcaube, it's translated into English to enjoy a new life.

It's a fantasy and coming-of-age novel about a teenager leaving his village to take part in a do-or-die mission. I hope you'll like it.

Where can you find it? Here:

https://books.apple.com/us/book/nine-warriors/id6474717990

https://www.thalia.de/shop/home/artikeldetails/A1070645615

https://www.kobo.com/it/it/ebook/nine-warriors

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/book/1144518700;jsessionid=AEE69E85B4A9D4C3A28E303A2D1FF5AB.prodny_store02-atgap04?ean=2940179167747

https://it.everand.com/book/693957135/Nine-warriors

I was reviewed!

 A review of my book How To Misunderstand Tolkien appeared on Mythlore 143.

You can read it here.

My thanks to Nancy Martsch for the favorable review, (and for pointing out some mistakes on my part, too).

The Influence of the Great War on Tolkien

 When writing The Lord of the Rings, was Tolkien influenced by his war experiences? He denied the war had a significative effect on his writing, except maybe for some landscapes. But we know Tolkien was a bit reticent when questioned about his creative process. In his book Tolkien and the Great War, John Garth argued that the author's experiences in the conflict influenced Middle-earth's mythology.

Difficult to demonstrate. In some cases, it seems obvious; in others less evident, but we always remain in the area of conjectures.

The Raiders of Bloodwood

 Descent: Legends of the Dark (published by FFG) is an app-driven board game with miniatures and 3D terrain layouts to create the maps for its fantasy quests. The game world is also the basis of a book series by Aconyte. Davide Mana wrote for this series The Raiders of Bloodwood, a book set in the forests of Terrinoth, a peaceful land attacked by the darkness.

Who are the bad guys? The Uthuk are powerful, grey-skinned beings of (maybe) normal intelligence but driven by violent instinct, blood lust, and pitiless leaders. They are bigger and stronger than most opponents; they wear red loincloths and rags and have a natural carapace armor made of bone plaques and spikes protruding from their bodies. They are aggressive and relentless in their assaults but lack coordination; their tactical skills leave something to be desired.

After a season of The Rings Of Power

 No, I didn't really appreciate it. And yes, I saw every episode hoping to find some good bits. Most of the time, I fell asleep and had to rewatch the episode. Anyway, now it's over. Time to take stock.

The fact that The Rings of Power is a betrayal of Tolkien's vision is obvious, but sadly it's not the worst thing about this series. Starting with the politically correct: Amazon had plenty of opportunity for the inclusion of races other than white people because races, in fact, do exist in Tolkien's legendarium (and the Hobbits are, in part, brown-skinned). But the diversity casting in the series brings the American melting pot to the earth of European medieval origin, which is the base of Tolkien's books (now, this is cultural appropriation, isn't it?).

The Rings of Power is a pain?

 The fifth episode introduced a new concept: the idea that Elves need mithril (discovered by Dwarves) to repel the corruption that is slowly making them fade away.

Tolkien would be horrified by this mortification of his legends. I, as a member of the audience, am disgusted by the use of a plot device so stereotyped and insipid. But the worst of The Rings of Power is the lack of pace and the lack of soul. Yes, we are, more or less, in the world Tolkien imagines. Nevertheless, there's nothing of Tolkien's magic in this boring series. And, when it tries to be solemn, it's dull.

The Rings of Power has come

 I was waiting for this show, like many others. Sure I had expected something spectacular, and I wasn't disappointed. The Rings of Power has stirred controversy, and this also was to be expected. The characters are different from the ones we knew in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. Many details of the setting and story follow the dictates of political correctness. The feeling is different.

While The Rings of Power doesn't follow any one book by Tolkien, facts and characters are based on the Second Era of his world, which means there's no direct link with the works the audience and readers love (and that Peter Jackson already used as a base for his films). The Second Era is described in the appendixes of The Lord Of The Rings and in The Silmarillion, but the material we have is sketchy, sometimes more like a history book than a novel. The rich prose from the works Tolkien published during his life is not there; Tolkien's "magic" is not there. As I wrote in my book on the subject, it's a totally different narrative, more similar to nordic legends than to Tolkien's own fairy stories.

So everything is in the hand of directors and screenwriters. They have the task of creating something people will love like Tolkien's original work. Obviously, it's a tough task to follow. I've seen the first two episodes. The first was, I fear, a bit slow-paced and boring; the second has more life in it.

Let's go on and hope for the best...

Southvietnamese Soldiers

[un articolo in italiano a seguire tra pochi giorni] 

The first thing I've noticed about this book is a good-quality paper. Crisp white. I guess it's made to last, it shows the will to make this testimonial reach as far as possible. South Vietnamese Soldiers, written by Nathalie Huynh Chau Nguyen, is a collection of memories of war and "after." Yes, after the Vietnam War these people had another fight, another odyssey to endure. We're talking about the most disparaged army in the world, the soldiers who fought for the "puppet" Vietnam regime. The book is about personal stories: many officers, some common soldiers (and some women) in the military, the ARVN (Army of the Republic of Viet Nam), the Navy, and the Air Force.

South Vietnamese armed forces did not start very well. During the French colonial period, they were a complement of the French Expeditionary Corps, made of parachutists, the Foreign Legion, colonial troops, and other French volunteer troops. So the Vietnamese National Army was influenced by its colonial masters and some troops were ineffective, many officers more interested in politics than in the fighting. With the exception of a small club of elite units or specialists (pilots, etc.) the soldiers were more interested in being paid than in the war against the communists, and there were training deficiencies. Many of these problems were destined to remain in the new armed forces of the South Vietnamese state, reorganized under USA military and political influence (and money too) after the division of Vietnam into two separate nations following the French defeat. Some of the officers were going to gain notoriety in coups and political struggles more than by military leadership.

Was the new South Vietnamese armed forces' performance any good?

The Dice Man against Fight Club

[warning: there are SPOILERS here]

About Fight Club I made a discovery, if a discovery it really it is, by reading The Dice Man (by George Cockcroft). Probably only those who, like me, have read both The Dice Man that Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk, can relate to this. There is a phrase that struck me in the Dice Man, when the main character, breaking the precautionary obligations which he should follow as a therapist, starts giving strange tasks to his own patients. At one point he tells bullies to provoke a fight with a weaker man, but with orders to lose. That's exactly, the order that Tyler Durden in Fight Club gives his loyalists, when he begins to form his strange army of followers. I've thought about that. Two books, both breaking usual patterns, where every page could be unpredictable... but was it just a similarity?

Hiroshima & Nagasaki, 70 years ago

(in english only)


The debate is still going on, regarding the final act of World War Two: was the atomic bomb use "justified?" As a "global intelligence" website (stratfor.com) shows in a recent article* the debate is really about the moral character of the United States, more than the use of the Bomb itself. How the USA can be good if thousands of civilians were killed this way?