talkmagic.co.uk

I bought this book from Amazon for almost a year and so far I haven't read the book. Because I'm quite contented on what I learned from Ellusionist's videos.

After skimming for few pages, I found out that it contains a lot of different sleights and few experimental tricks using the sleights inside the book.

Would you care to go into a little more detail about the book?

Cost
On Amazon.de (where I bought it) it's 6,99 EUR which is about 5.50 BPD. Anyway, in amazon.co.uk it's 8,09 Pound.

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)

Difficulty is from 3-5

Review

The book contains four sections (which were once 4 different books as I understood):
Sleights
Conjuring at the Card Table
Manipulations
Experiments with Cards

Sleights is the biggest chapter of the book and contains about 80 different sleights. Different versions of Palms, steals, glides, shifts, riffle shuffles, counts etc are given. Some sleights like the Vernon Multiple Shift are quite easy to perform. Others look almost impossible to be performed unnoticed.

Conjuring at the Card Table is about false Shuffles, Cuts and Second dealings (one method with one hand).

Manipulation is about florishes like "Back palm a pack of 52 Cards and Produce Them in a Series of Fans at the Fingertips".

Experiments with Cards contains 40 Tricks. Every trick starts with the description of the "effect" lists the "sleights" used and explains then "the working". For almonst all trick a handful of sleights have to be mastered.


The book is absolutely not for beginners in card magic. It lacks a leitmotif and has not enough pictures in it. A lot of sleights are explained with no picture at all! The sleights are not grouped well, which makes it hard to use the book as a reference.

On the other hand you'll get a lot of interesting sleights which you may not find anywhere else.

Overall

content: 5/5
presentation: 2/5

overall: 4/5