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The Effect
4 of Aronsons early manuscripts in the form of 1 book with over 30 card effects.



Cost
$35 from simonaronson.com



Difficulty
mostly 2ish
(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 is a nicely produced book split in to four sections; 'Selections from KABBALA', 'The Card Ideas of Simon Aronson', 'A Stack to Remember' and 'Shuffle Bored'. All of the effects covered are card tricks, some are variations on other peoples effects (always credited and usually developed with the originator's collaboation) and some are original. Most of the tricks are easy to do, though some require settups, making gimmicks or memorising some things but generally not particularly hard stuff.

Aronson is a very creative thinker, and it shows in this book, however, the vast majority of the effects described require either a stack of some sort (be it a whole deck, quater of a deck or even just a few cards somewhere in the deck) or some kind of gimmicked cards. Often the feked cards are a little out of the ordinary and may need to be made rather than just bought in bulk.

To be honest I was a little dissapointed with this, as I was reading the book through I was very impressed with ideas and the effects but I was constantly hoping that something that could be performed completely impromptu would crop up but it didn't.

Probably the most valuable section of the book to me is that on the Aronson Stack. I had learned this memorised stack a while before I got the book and really need to know about some of the features that are built into this random looking stack. A system is described for memorising the stack (this will need memory work as the order of the cards truly is random, there is no system to it, but it puts cards into the right places for a number of effects) and all of the features that were intentionally built into the deck are described in detail, though no presentations are are given for the effects, the best of which are the gambling demonstrations, with four different types of poker deal as well as deals for a number of less popular (at least currently) games. There are also some spelling effects, which aren't really my thing but I know a lot of people like them. Aronson seems to be very keen on spelling effects, there are a number of them in the stack and in another book (Try the Impossible which I will review when I get time) he has written.

Considering what I said earlier about the setups you might be slightly surprised that I am so keen on the memorised deck section, but the point is that I like so many of the effects that I want to use them all, and with the setups required that is just completely impractical. The memorised deck is a tool, however, which can be switched in and out and is useful for more than just one effect, in fact once you have a memorised deck it doesn't even need to be kept in it's exact order to be of use, by arranging the cards just by high or low numbers in the stack you can tell if any card is out of place as easily as if it were a different colour once you know the stack cold.



Overall

I will give this book 6.5/10 I would give it higher for the quality of the effects contained and for the style of writing, going as far as 10 for credit since each chapter comes with a complete bibliography section (it also has numbers placed apparently randomly throughout the text which I assumed to be references, but the books in the bibliographies are all in alphabetical order and the numbers are all placed numerically and not even at points relating to references so I am very confused by this. If anyone can shed any light as to what they are I would be grateful!)
The only reason I have given it only a middling rating is that i know many people are going to be put off by the number of gimmicks and setups that are needed and the lack of any spur of the moment effects.

Personally I love this book, but yes it does rely heavily on a memorized deck.

If I can put the effort into learning the Aronson stack, then the results will be amazing!

Piers.