Away With Words by Luke Jonas Review

Hi, my name is Steve Faulkner. Welcome to Real Magic Review. And today I'm going to be reviewing Away With Words by Luke Jonas. Before I perform this review, please like and subscribe. Check out cardmagiccourse.com. It's good, really good, proper, the proper business. That's what it is. And it's mine. I made it. So have a look at it. Don't take my word for it. Go on cardmagiccourse.com, read the testimonials. Why don't you just try it out? It's less than a coffee a week, isn't it? And you've got all those videos and everything. For a silver membership, that is. And we will find out more there. Right. And tell your friends about this as well. It's good when you get more subscribers, it makes you feel special. So Away With Words, a mentalism book, short book, which was good. I like getting a short book. I'm still getting through some longer books. They're taking me forever. So this was a nice respite. And it's the well, I'm going to I'm going to read out what this says at the beginning. Away With Words is a collection of mentalism and mind reading effects using nothing but the unprecedented and yet underestimated power of words, be that spoken or written. OK, you technically may need some smaller items such as pivots, et cetera. But the basic methods set out before you are based around methods and concepts that can be achieved with words, language and linguistics. The majority of this book is more focused on the reveal for each effect and the presentation. Right. So this is basically looking at revelations. And I know in 1914, is it not? Yeah, 1914 did a did a download of revelations. There's a lot. There's a lot being done about this, of course, about how you don't waste that opportunity at that moment when you reveal a word. Is there a ways to do to make it more entertaining or more unexpected or more magical or whether that is? And Luke is basically supplying us with some ways of revealing words that are a bit different. So I'll go through this quickly. There's been other reviews on this. David from Magic Orthodoxy has been through this whole book as well, as have other people. So I'm not going to dwell on each effect. If you do watch their reviews, they're great and you'll get with them. But I will say I have read this and sat and poured over and got familiar with it. There's an intro by Peter Nardy at the beginning, which is great, just saying how much you love. But a lot of people like this book. There's a lot of love for this book. The first one is The Art of Missing. It's a couple of essays and it's very short essays. So The Art of Missing is just about the kind of the thing about, you know, having some misses and making it more realistic, which is a terrible way of putting it. That's not how he puts it. That's how I just put it. But, you know, I mean, mirror image is a way of using a type of word to to make it look like you've had a miss and then show that you haven't by I don't give it away. But I think I think it's OK. I think David mentioned it, but but by the word being backwards. So that's now. But it's got obviously a routine with that. That's not just the idea. The and the way of he's got a lot of stuff in there about remembering the mnemonics about how if you've got remember, like if you are 25 things or whatever, here's a way of doing it that help you a lot. And that that was really helpful. There's some really good stuff on that Hangman's reveals. Interested where you show you show that you get the word you're playing, playing a game of hangman and you're writing the letters you're guessing and the letters that you're guessing wrong. You don't get any of the letters at all. And then you show that you actually have got it, but in a very different and unexpected way. I really like that. I thought it was very sweet, very cute. And we'll we'll always get a nice response, I think. The word that never was never. I always do that. The word that never was the word that never was. This is a routine where you I'm not going to give away all the revelations because the point of the book is that you find yourself and you go, that's a nice way of doing it. But it's a nice way of revealing word again, getting it wrong and going, oh, actually, if you look at it this way, I've got it right. And again, really, really nice. There's a book test that you can make yourself. And there is a a couple of essays at the end, one by Wayne Goodman about silence, which I totally agree with. You know, the power of kind of not feeling like you've got to fill every space, you know, less is more. And actually a lot of the effect will be about the space you put around there. And he gives an example of something he does with a coin and a sharpie and making that more magical. And I and I thought that was a really important thing for people to know. And there is a whole thing about how to improve your memory and use mnemonics, memory method, methodology. I was saying that to myself and practicing it. I kept getting it wrong about Ben Cardinal. And he gives you a few ways of remembering things and mnemonic processes of visualization and things like that, which are, again, really useful. He says, you know, you think you can only learn between seven and nine pieces of information of the classic George Miller essay says, which he references. But here's a way in the next few minutes I'm going to allow you to learn much more than that. And it kind of works. It's a great thing to do. OK, so that's a good stuff. I do have some issues with the book, especially in what more than one it claims. And I think you've got to be careful, careful with with sometimes with this. So go back to what I said at the beginning. Collective mentalism, mind reading effects, using nothing but the unprecedented and underestimated power words be that spoken or written. Now, unprecedented and underestimated implies that there hasn't been much written about this. And there has been a lot of this going back to Kenton Nepper and Luke Jemay. You know everything. Like I said, the 1914 guys have done a lot on this. And I can't. Sorry, I'm having a mental block. Louis Deval, isn't it? It's having so sorry. I'm having a mental block, but did a whole thing on this and, you know, loads of hours on on revealing stuff. You know, I remember sitting, listening to the Kenton Nepper stuff was whole effect, just using words, nothing else. And again, like you said, maybe bits of paper. Joshua Quinn, you know, has some great stuff on Equivoke. Of course, Equivoke is using words, loads of stuff, even in Bob Cassidy's books at Annaman, just about how you emphasize certain words. So there has been a lot on this. And I think what I felt is when I read this, it kind of was telling me I was going to get something very new and a new look on this. And don't get me wrong. The roots, the way you reveal them is there is some new stuff in here. The hangman stuff I really like. So it's not I'm not saying it's terrible, but I think it's a big claim to make saying it's unprecedented, meaning, you know, not really been thought about much and looked into. And it really, really has. The other issue I had a little bit was the some of the routines felt to me as if they were kind of ways of getting to the reveal to demonstrate the reveal, which is fine. You know, he does say that the emphasis is on the reveal. But to me, a lot of the routines were way too easy to reverse engineer. So the the the hangman stuff. Great. You've got to be careful that I think. But that's but that's the same with everything. Mirror image again. That's that was fine. But I have seen similar things before. I'm all about the routines. A word that never was, I think, way too easy to to reverse engineer. I think it would need to be done very differently than he says on it. You know, it uses cards and numbers on cards and things like that. And I think, you know, when you get the reveal, it's not going to take too much to work out how you got to that reveal. And I just felt that in the book test, you know, it talks about printing and making your own book test and using this this way of putting numbers into words, which, again, is really, really nice. But would it would it justify if you're going to make your own book test, get it printed up? There's a lot more you could add to that. And I'm sure he is very aware of that. So it's just something to think about. For me, it was it was some decent stuff in it, but nothing routine wise that I would really go wrong. I'm going to go and do that. And it makes some some pretty big claims. But a lot of people like this book, and it's only one opinion. And, you know, anybody that, you know, put some work into putting their own book out and, you know, giving something to the community. And it isn't like a super. It's not one of these people that have gone, I'm going to write a book and charge 100 quid for it. There's only four of them available. You know, it's it's got some some stuff in it that if you're coming into mentalism would be really helpful. My feeling is that you if you're an established mentalist, there's not going to be that much new there that you haven't thought about before. But, you know, even to the Wayne Goodman silence, but all that stuff is going to be really important if you're just coming into mentalism. And it's very, very clear and understandable. So that's away with words by Luke Jonas. All the links will be below. Thank you, Luke, for sending that to me. And and have a good one. Like subscribe, check out card magic course. Any comments, questions, disagreements, disagree with me if you want. I'd love to know what you think. Do send them to me and have a great one. See you later. Bye.