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Redemption by Red Nist
This small pamphlet is a quick read with unique magic, and the layout and design is great. Three out of the five tricks rely on a cull. I think it’s important to point this out because it’s one of those moves that you’ve either got, or you haven’t. If you don’t have a convincing cull in your arsenal, I can’t recommend it enough. It is such a versatile move as you’ll see in the first three tricks below.
Pure Ambition - A one phase ambitious card. The deck is spread and a card is freely named. That card is put in the middle of the deck in the spectator’s hands. They turn over the top card of the deck and it’s now their chosen card.
This is a simple take on the ambitious card that takes away all of the fluff and gets right to the meat of the trick: a card appearing on top of the deck. It’s a unique take on the trick that doesn’t require any double lifts. The book teases the trick with stories of well-known magicians that were completely fooled by this which I found a little odd because it uses a move they all know, but I guess the psychology of WHEN the move happens is probably what fooled them.
Jokers Love Sandwiches - A card is selected and lost in the deck. Two jokers are put face-up on the deck and vanish one at a time. The deck is spread and the face-up jokers are surrounding one face-down card. It’s the selected card. For the kicker, the spectator examines the three cards which are then placed on top of the deck. When they are spread, there are now four cards between the jokers–the selected card and its three mates.
This has a couple of nice visual vanishes of the jokers. Again, the psychology of when the cull is done–right after they examine the three cards–is part of what makes it effective. It’s a routine that “feels” nice and has great visuals.
The Mystery of Mime - An invisible deck routine with a normal deck. The spectator removes an invisible card from the deck and gets the choice of what card they “removed.” The performer tells them they are holding the card too hard and bending it and they should relax. The magician then spreads the deck faceup and asks the spectator to put their invisible card back into the deck facedown between any two cards. The deck is closed, and when it’s respread faceup, there’s one facedown card right where they put their invisible card. When they remove the facedown card, they see that it’s their named card and it’s even a little bent like the magician said.
This is the last trick in the book that uses the cull. The subtlety of the bent card is a nice playful touch that is easily achieved. I don’t love the routine as a whole, but that’s just a personal preference. It requires a couple of moves that I feel happen at the wrong time, but it’s a good thing to keep in your mind if you want an impromptu invisible deck routine.
Invisible Dice - A pair of imaginary dice are introduced. The spectator rolls the dice and adds the numbers together. The number they get is counted to and that card is their selected card.
This can be used as a revelation or a force. It is a reliable way to force a card and the unique counting methods allow them to name a number between 6 and 11 which is a great margin. (The book actually doesn’t mention how to account for the number 6, but it’s pretty logical.) I think this is a pretty solid method, and if you like the idea of using invisible dice to find a card, I do think this method works and is fooling. I like that they always add up the numbers they roll and that’s it. There’s no equivoque or changing the numbers or anything like that.
Totally Psychedelic - A card is freely selected and cleanly lost in the deck. The performer begins dealing the cards into four piles and has the spectator stop him wherever they’d like. Once they call stop, they turn over the top card of each of the four packets and add those values together. The deck is reassembled and they count to that number to find their thought-of-card.
This isn’t my favorite routine. I’m not a huge fan of the “adding values to find a card” plot, and I feel like this is a pretty heavy handed method. The control of the card is nice (because there isn’t one) but the rest is basically just manhandling the deck to get the card at the appropriate number as they add the values. I think it will fool people, and the method is sound, it just doesn’t necessarily speak to me.
The Devil is Under the Table - The spectator removes a packet of fifteen or so cards from the deck and takes them under the table. They remove any card from their packet, look at it, remember it, and cut it into the packet several times. With the cards still under the table, they spread through their cards and remove one from the middle and put it on the table face down. They do this again. And again. They continue to “discard” cards onto the middle of the table. As they go, the performer slides three of these discarded cards off to the side. Once they are out of cards, they take the three cards the performer pushed aside and hold them under the table eventually eliminating two of them. The last card they hold is their selected card.
I have to be totally honest, I had a hard time following this trick. I don’t really understand the plot. They call the cards on the table the “discard” pile, but those are the cards the performer is removing options from. I don’t fully grasp what the effect is supposed to be: the magician finding the card, the spectator finding their own card, or some mix of both. It has some clever ideas, I just wish the plot was a little clearer. The way the effect reads in the book is “the participant blindly discards the cards one at a time, until only one remains in their hands…they manage to find their selected card.” That’s not really how the effect plays out though.
Overall, the tricks in the book are good, but not great, and I don’t see myself using any of them. They aren’t bad, they just don’t excite me. For €40, I would expect a little more.
If you DO like the sound of the material, you can get it at the link below for €5 off if you use the code MAGICREVIEW at checkout.
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