The Effect
Psychological Subtleties 2 goes over different subtleties that can be used in mentalism. It discusses different psychological forces, and how to properly perform them. It also suggests many ways of explaining such things to the audience.
Cost
$47-$55 (US dollar)
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)
Review
This book of psychological subtleties and forces is very helpful. It uses ideas from many performers who read the first book, and decided to use it for themselves, and they created many effects and ideas that are shared in this book. In the book, there are many presentation ideas and points that well known proffesional mentalists have used.
Banachek clearly has fine ways of presenting mentalism, and explains how each performer uses their subtleties to help them. He also gives some great ideas of his own.
In this book, Banachek and others give their ideas down to each little yet important detail, giving performance ideas for many different performing situations.
As Banachek explains at the beginning, this book is not just a book of tricks and effects. It is a book of ideas and details that you can look at, and that can help to better shape you're own mentalism.
In this book I found many great ideas, as well as some little effects that I thought, "I'm not sure I could use that" or "That doesn't seem very strong to me." I found some of the forces given to be rather weak. I don't think I would ever use the shape in shape effect, which is mentioned in several routines. But as Banachek said, this book is not just one that shows you some effects to use. It is one that talks about different ideas for mentalism presentation. You're not just adding on to you're list of effects.
Presentation of mentalism is something that needs to be detailed for performers of mentalism, and that is what Psychological Subtleties 2 does.
This book has certainly helped with giving me subtle presentation points that I can always hold on to, and can hold up any mentalism routine. It provides mentalism presentation points that could be used by any mentalist, and help one to develope their own great way of presenting mentalism.
Overall
The book includes certain great effects that many mentalists could use.
You may not want to use every little effect in this book, nor does this book give a long list of great new effects.
But Psychological Subtleties 2 gives amazing ideas on the presentation of mentalism, and is a great mentalism book that every mentalist should read!
8/10
-Ben
