Old Sword-Play Book

I'm little conflicted about it. I simply love the idea. I love that the author have reaserched so many sources to be able to write this book.

When it comes to the content it's sometimes seams unnecessarily hard to understand. E. G. It describes 6 different cuts and refers to them by numbers without explaining which number comes from which direction. You can still figure it all out, but it requires a lot of cross referencing and some pre-knowledge about directions of parry.

My second problem with this book is that it's surprisingly basic. Sure, in one chapter it describes 6 different cuts and 6 different parries, but the ONLY difference between them is the direction. The direction is important for fencers for sure, but it's also very obvious that if you want to parry a cut to your upper left you will need to move your sword to your upper left. It describes some very few complex contra parries, but even they are kind of odd. "If you opponent turns his back to you, then you move in, grab and threaten him"... Well thank you very much captain obvious!

On the other hand, I feel very bad for being so harsh on the writer. It's really not his fault that his historical sources are lacking depth. I maybe just had to big expectations.