Product description : A booktest is a tool quite known among magicians and mentalists, they have used it for the past 50 years and nowadays, there are a lot of modern versions, with a comic book, some with crosswords, a dictionary but this is something else, something new. It’s a book with the first 10 000 decimals of Pi, you will be able to reveal numbers people are thinking about in a very cool and nice multi phases routine. But is this worth the price and is this still strong ? Let’s find out !
Price and where to buy it : This is sold at $44.95 and you can find it in nearly every Murphy's magic « partner » shop !
What you get : You only get the book, which contains the link for the downloadable pdf online, with all the explanations on it. The pdf is well made and very clear, which is a nice thing because the method is not easy to explain. The method is quite straight forward but you will have to do quite a lot of memory work in order to perform this trick, it’s worth it but still, you have to provide some work. The book is really well printed and looks like a real book you could buy online and or in a library. There is even a small passage at the beginning which explains why the book has been published so it adds a little bit more realness to the whole thing. Overall, I’m pretty happy with what I received, there is work to do, but the effects look nice !
The pros and the cons : Here is the core of my review, let's begin with the cons, as I will usually be doing, I prefer to keep the good things for the end.
THE CONS :
[if !supportLists]– [endif]Again, I repeat but it’s very important you understand this is not a self working trick, there is memory work which is not “easy” (if you know a stack, there are some “stacks” version of it).
[if !supportLists]– [endif]It may not be as impactful as a real book but still, strange enough, people seems to like this !
THE PROS :
[if !supportLists]– [endif]It’s something different from the usual stuff you do, it’s even quite different from the booktest routine, here, you can do some number reveal which couldn’t be done before.
[if !supportLists]– [endif]The size of the book is perfect for close up and parlour work, small enough to be carried around but still big to be seen from a long distance.
[if !supportLists]– [endif]Vincent also have published a “regular” version of this book, on Amazon so if you’re audience try to look for the book online, they will end on the Amazon page which is a very good thing.
[if !supportLists]– [endif]There is a phase with the birthdate of your spectator which is very strong in my opinion because you connect with the personal information of the spectator and emotionally, it’s more impactful.
[if !supportLists]– [endif]The book can completely be inspected by the audience, they won’t find anything about it, all the pages are just number so it’s very hard for them to find a repetition or anything gimmicked at all !
[if !supportLists]– [endif]This can have a lot of presentations, whether it’s a mind reading routine or you can say that you have memorized all the book so it’s up to you !
[if !supportLists]– [endif]If you do the mind reading presentation, you can have a small pad with a cheat sheet so it’s easier for you to do the routine instead of memorizing all the formula.
Overall rating : I do like the cleverness of the book and the fact that it is something very unique, and will fry the spectators, but I do have some booktest and I can’t see myself using the Pi book, I couldn’t justify it, it wouldn’t fit my performance style, 3/4 hearts.
As for the difficulty level, there is some memory work, you’ll have to remember quite a few things, this is not easy, I would say 4/5 stars.
Similar products : Booktests are something very known on the market, the best one, in French, are the Close Up Book Test by Yves Doumergues and The Abyss by Maxime Schucht and Sylvain Vip.