The previous reviewer missed the entire point of the book. It is not for magicians – that is stated at the beginning. The intended audience for volume 1 is the average person who knows little to nothing about cards, and wants to have fun with some classic card effects without investing a lot of time and effort. If you want something more technical and with more sleight of hand, check out volumes 2 and especially volume 3. These three books together are one of the best card trick collections you will find. If you want training to become a card magician, obviously there are more well-suited books.

Ok... Where do I begin? I liked the idea of this book. A reference text of easy, self-working, semi-automatic, interesting, and entertaining card effects, cool, this should be a decent read. The book is also very reasonably priced and high quality at that. Nice hardback, cloth cover, thick paper, kudos on a product very well made.

When I first opened the book, I was greeted with a detailed general knowledge introduction and saw the seemingly well-thought-out reference table with various categories for quickly finding specific effects. I was optimistic.

But then I saw the first effect... the 21 Card Trick. Uh oh... But wait, no, come on now, I shouldn't just judge it on that alone. After all, I'm not a beginner, and it's an immensely popular and method simple effect. I shouldn't write it off just for including this effect, despite how tired and well-circulated it already is.

But, oh wait, it's also one of the longest explanations in the book at over a page?... Oh no... That's when I flipped through and realized the effect descriptions are all super brief and the explanations are stripped to the absolute most bare-bones brief, to the point of leaving so much to be desired. Nothing is longer than a page.

One of the biggest put-offs for me was how the author refers to the participant as the "victim" in literally every effect... Yikes. I understand it's presented as a reference text, but I often cringed reading that, it sounds like such a Dennis the Menace mindset of magic. It's just such a weirdly antagonistic way to view the relationship between performer and participant. It reads as very juvenile.

Speaking of reading, the book is also a serious chore to read despite the brevity of each effect. The cringiness, lack of quality content, lack of context or framing for effects, frequent variations and reskins of the same effects all make this feel like a real slog. How can I describe this? If Magic was one of the sections of the SAT, this is how I imagine a cheap prep guide on card magic for that section might read.

Would I recommend this for an amateur hobbyist looking to beef up their repertoire? No, not really. It's not a very inviting book and it isn't full of much material you'll perform in walk-around or regular performance. Check out one of the staples instead, like Card College (or Card College Lighter) or the Royal Road.

Would I recommend this for experienced performers looking for a good reference text for their library? Eh, not really, it's not an enjoyable read and doesn't have the kind of material you'll want. Again, better to stick to the other staple card magic readings.

Would I recommend this for a beach house bookshelf? ... I mean, I guess so? Maybe, in the sense that if you were a bored layperson staying in an AirBNB beach house and saw this on the shelf, you could open to a random page and try out an effect fairly easily, and you may have a laugh for a trick or two, but it will get old super quick and the book has absolutely 0 charm to keep you reading.

The whole thing is a solid meh. My expectations were quite low for the price, but this still fell short. There are few worthwhile effects in here, but they are so few and far between and lost in the forest of shrug-worthy effects and multiple variations of the same effect. I'm not upset because the price doesn't hurt at all, but this one is unimpressive.

Better to leave this one at the beach house.