Mystery, supernatural, detective story and action in 'Astral Death'.

An initiatory journey that passes from reality to the fantastic, a non-stop journey between the 13th and 20th centuries where the boundaries are so thin that the reader can cross them and return. 'Morte Astrale' is the debut novel by Franco Pezzini (Polidoro/Interzona p. 425; € 18.00). The story begins, apparently, in 1904 when Ariadne, a Welsh girl who has recently moved to London to look for work, witnesses the murder of a man. In another chapter we learn that Wolfram has also had to change cities; it is 1209 and the cantor/poet has travelled to Venesburg at the invitation of the bishop-count of that territory. A shadowy figure very interested in the poet's writings and his knowledge of ancient rituals. The author seems to want to intertwine the bizarre literature in vogue at the beginning of the 20th century with adventure films such as 'Indiana Jones' and 'The Matrix', with a glance at Eco's 'Foucault's Pendulum'. Supernatural and action form the basis of this unique fantasy novel. Parallel plots, men and women from the early 20th century give way to figures from the Middle Ages. Ariadne moves in a post-Victorian era where the irrational is growing throughout the West, occult and esoteric groups are flourishing throughout Europe and she is forced, despite herself, to confront an unbelievable world.

The author does not leave her alone, he places alongside her literary (and non-literary) personalities, some of whom actually existed, such as Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood and Aleister Crowle. Franco Pezzini, born in Turin in 1962, a graduate in Canon Law with a thesis on exorcism and magic, is a refined scholar of the relations between literature, cinema and anthropology. In this first novel, he brings together all his passions and his work as an essayist, which emerges solidly in several chapters. It is a continuous challenge to the reader who gets lost in the labyrinths of the plot, where everything is black and white and divided into good and bad. There are no alternatives, no one can choose. In the technological age, it seems that fantasy is telling us about the present. The gestation of the novel was long, written twenty years ago - in another world we might say - left in a drawer and then picked up in the last period for publication.

The legendary Hermetic Order powerfully enters the novel. Founded in London in 1888, it brought together some of the restless intellectuals of the time, such as the men of letters Yeats, Machen and Algernon Blackwood and the actress Florence Farr. The practices of its affiliates included astral, out-of-body travel into different dimensions of reality. Short-lived, in the early 20th century the Golden Dawn was forced to disband after scandals and corruption ended up in court. The myths of the Saturnie fraternity move to Germany, generating pre-Nazi visions on the thread of esoteric readings of a medieval work, Wolfram von Eschenbach's 'Parzival'.

Franco Pezzini, Morte Astrale, Polidoro/Interzona, pp. 425, € 18.00