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The Effect

A selection of moves and routines that were left out of the original Session book for one reason or another.

Cost

A very reasonable £9.99 from Alakazam.

Difficulty
(1=easy to do, 2=No sleights, but not so easy, 3=Some sleights used,
4=Advanced sleights used, 5=Suitable for experienced magicians only)

3-4 I suppose.

Review

Having bought the Session a few months ago I was pleasantly surprised to see this little volume was available. It's basically a bit of background to the Session (what Jay was trying to achieve with the book and the process they went through to make it) with nine other effects or sleights that were left out of the first book, with explanations as to why they were not included.

The material is card heavy but there's some really handy things in there, particularly a way to do a dribble force without a break, a method for doing Bill Simon's Prophecy move without turning over the card that has been inserted (which I found very interesting as I've been playing with the move all week) and a multiple card force. A nice card transpo and a rather clean spelling effect with a Svengali deck caught my eye too.

In terms of non card material there's a cool Penetrating Match handling which ends with one match stuck inside the other and a coin sequence that isn't too bad but is a little gimmicky for my liking. That's the only gripe I have with some of the stuff, I can't imagine myself being bothered to set it up or get the odds and ends required that I don't already have. That's not to say there's a huge amount of effort to put in but I am one lazy magician at times, in the Session itself there's a discussion of how situational some of the tricks are and Joel explaining why that isn't a bad thing.

Joshua Jay assumes a certain level of technical knowledge and is open about this, as he says there are plenty of books that teach beginner moves, this just isn't one. Not to say that this is a hardcore collection of sleights but you'll need to know what how a flipper coin works, for example. Having said that he does explain what a Svengali deck is, which is a tad confusing when he doesn't go into the difference between a Faro and an out-Faro. Oh well.

Overall

Personally I think I'll get more usuable stuff out of this than the 'big book' so a solid 7/10 from me.