Yesterday I decided I am stupid, and it’s all right like that.
You see, I was handed a book for review purposes; the thing’s printed by a major Italian publisher and touted as the Second Coming of adventure writing. So yes, I was curious.
Pity the research backing the action was probably limited to re-watching a pair of old movies to get the fake accents right – there’s mountains smack in the middle of the greatest floodplain on Earth, there’s a lot of made-up archeology and anthropology that do not even try to look plausible, there’s a main character so derivative even his name is second-hand. The book apparently is selling in cartloads.

All of this, and I’ve been spending the last week looking for the floorplans of the Cairo Museum in the ’50s, to get the opening scene of my new Corsair story just right.

So yes, I felt stupid, but I decided it’s all right like that. Continue reading →