Customer Reviews

Blade Master: Advanced Survival Skills For The Knife

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This is a practial guide to fighting with a Fairburn Sykes or Stiletto knife. This is a short and to the point. It could have been made better with addition of Kali and routines

"Slash & Thrust" by this same author was better -- even though there were a few minor errors, it contained a lot of useful information for the novice.

"Blade Master", however, was a disappointment. Very few illustrations, longwinded and dull text, and the few illustrations provided were not easy to understand. The author purports to go into various methods of cutting and thrusting in far more detail than his first book, but he sticks to the 6 basic moves from the first book and barely expands upon the concepts at all.

Sanchez provides details for constructing several simple training targets for cutting drills (basically, a strip of newspaper hanging from a string, a thread, and a tightly rolled newspaper), which may be useful for some. His chapter on "Deviant Styles" briefly discusses how some people tend to attack with a knife, and weaknesses he has observed which may be exploited.

With a title like "Blade Master" I expected far more than this thin book provided.

We all learn in different ways. Perhaps my bias comes from this perspective, but honestly I think that Sanchez's book is more for a person that learns largely by reading only. It might sound childish of me, but I prefer photographs, and not black and white illustrations.

I have spent a lot of time considering the written works of "Hock" Hockhiem and I must confess the knife material is much better. As well, there are photographs illustrating exactly the technique.

But, I must say that there are chapters in Sanchez's book which were well worth a second read. In particular, I enjoyed the chapter on Deviant Styles. There were a few new pieces of practice equipment which were new to me, and while I use alternative methods, I enjoyed reading that as well.

BUT, if you are interested in a small pocket manual, and have not studied much knife fighting, then Sanchez's book, Blade Master, is a good buy. He does methodically take you through practice schedule, and gives you a lot of good techniques.

But don't believe that after reading this one book, you will actually BE a Blade Master. If there is a book beyond this one, I will certainly buy it as well. But in a choice between Hoch's Encyclopedia of Knife Fighting and this one, it is clear to me that the former is much more comprehensive work. Perhaps I need to read all of Sanchez's works to be completely fair.

So, in conclusion, I am not upset I made this purchase, but I was not overwhelmed either.

I think my review title says it all. Maybe it's just me but I read this and really didn't come away with anything. I found the writing style somewhat pompous and the material presented somewhat "academic"-i.e. not a product of the real world. The author does have some good words to say about the military stance (though he doesn't offer any real counters to it-which was his point) and the use of newspaper targets has some merit, but none of this is rocket science. There are better instructive books out there.