WOW! My friends noticed my improvement immediately! By cleverly combining several magic principles and card handling techniques, Sylvain's suggested routines have turned "tricks" into performance pieces. The card mysteries he presents have wonderful audience interaction built into them, so now I try to have my entire audience involved in each mystery I present... a la Sylvain Juzan. If this is Sylvain's debut book, I can't wait for the next one!

I will try to be as thorough as possible.

Overall impression : this book is packed with strong and relatively easy card magic; no doubt about that.

This book is structured as follows :
_ Foreword, by Michael Close.
_ Introduction. It contains interesting elements of reflexion; you can clearly feel Juzan knows what he is talking about.
_ Every Card You Take. A Triumph-like effect with five selected cards. Juzan teaches two ways of doing it, whether you want to use some gaff cards or not. I could totally see myself use it as a closer or an “encore”.
_ Color Correction. A thought-of card changes color. Really clever.
_ Bilis Extraction Move. A card move attributed to Bernard Bilis, which allows you to extract a card from the pack while replacing the deck in the case. Not so hard to do. Opens the door to many applications.
_ Reverse Biddle I. Great follow-up routine to the standard Biddle trick, using the previously taught Bilis Extraction Move.
_ Reverse Biddle II. Same effect, using gaff cards for a different handling.
_ Tantalean Punishments. Juzan’s take on the standard Tantalizer automatic trick; using four selections and a bit of jazzing.
_ Mimic Me If You Can. A do-as-I-do effect combining two decks (one prepared, one not so much…), Gilbreath principle, and a lot of audience management.
_ The Convcing Glimpse. Juzan’s handling of Marlo Convincing Control, not from a technical point of view but from a rather logical approach. It made me smile while reading the description; totally the kind of devious things I enjoy.
_ The Winning Triplets. A spelling effect combining several principles.
_ Tricky Question. A card travels where the spectator tells you. Requires gaff cards.
_ Touchdown Prophecy. Recreating with two decks of cards the Calais Campbell’s intuition when he correctly predicted the outcome of a football game. I had never heard about this story before.
_ Double Stop. Great mentalism effect with two thought-of cards and no question asked.
_ Dynamite. Based on Tamariz’TNT but with more selections and a totally different ending.
_ Fogbow. Juzan’s approach to the standard Rainbow deck. Clever and meaningful.
_ Spelling Business. Reflexions and applications of the Ramasee principle.
_ Acknowledgments.

Okay let’s go into more details:

What you should know:
_ even though this book is clearly not hard from a technical point of view, you must have solid knowledge of basic techniques. Juzan will write something like “control the card on top without disturbing the rest of the deck” or “perform a false shuffle” without explaining these moves in great details. You should be able to control one or more cards, to false-shuffle and false-cut, and to Faro shuffle a deck.
_ while some effects can clearly be presented as impromptu miracles, some require a much more elaborated advance preparation. Will this prevent you from performing them? Only you have the answer! I personally think that an effect like “Color Correction” is strong enough to find a way to add a double backer to the deck at any time before. Similarly, a simple deck switch is an affordable price to pay for closing your show on “Fogbow” and leave your audience KO.

What I loved :
_ When you read the descriptions of the effects, it becomes clear that Juzan has only one goal in mind: fooling his audience, no matter what it takes to get there: gaff cards, stacks, and so on. And sure enough, the effects will have devastating impact on a lay audience. Some pieces here will also fool your magician friends (“Double Stop” is hard to backtrack, “Color Correction” has an unexpected element of surprise, “Tricky Question” is something you do not see a lot, for instance)
_ the “Notes & Credits” sections are well documented and credit is given where credit is due.
_ priced at $45, it makes it a nice bargain. After all, it is only $3 per trick or move, and we all have paid much more for single-trick downloads…

What I would have loved:
_ more pictures.
_ an epilogue section. I do not like when it jumps directly from the last effect to the acknowledgements.

To conclude:
Am I happy with this book, and do I recommend it? Yes
Will I use some of the material here? Yes.

I got this book and I must say : all the effects are truly baffling (at least to a so-called lay audience!)

I can totally see myself perform several tricks from this book. My favorite one is "ECYT", the very first trick. It is a brilliant way to end a show.

Even if some pieces require an advance set-up or some "special" cards (double backers, double facers, blank cards), and cannot therefore be performed right on the spot, they are well built and always focus on fooling your audience. There is something to learn from almost every trick in this book, even from the ones with special cards. I am pretty sure I will never perform "Touchdown Prophecy" the exact way it is described in the book; but reading it is in no way a waste of time. To quote Michael Close in his foreword : "I like the way Sylvain Juzan thinks" I know understand better why.

And the Bernard Bilis move is so devious and not too hard to master. Playing with it for a while will make you understand there are so many possibilities.

So, as an overall impression, I would say there is some solid and strong card magic here.
Just be aware that :
_ it only deals with cards. Okay, the title suggested it anyway !
_ there are precisely 13 effects and 2 moves.
_ some effects need preparation, so you might have to think ahead on how to incorporate them into your act : deck switch? opening effect? pretending you "forgot" a card in the case? etc. One effect for instance (TNT) requires the deck to be split in reds and blacks; so my first question was "how am I going to arrive at this situation in the course of a previous effect, so I can carry on with TNT?" A bit of thinking won't hurt, and is actually fun to do. Similarly "Color Correction" is both fun and powerful; it is well-worth carrying an extra double-backer and secretly adding it to the deck in between two tricks.

I thought I'd finally but another book to dig into for some new effects. I was very disappointed with this one. There is not one trick In this book that does not require at least a few gaff cards or a substantial stacking of the deck. I don't mind sometimes using a gaff card or preordering a few cards but all of the effects in this book require more than that. I will never be using any of the effects from this book. To me magic is more impromptu. I should be able to be handed a deck of cards and be able to entertain, not tell everyone, "OK, just give me a minute and I'll be right back." while I'm setting up the deck for a single effect. If the kind of magic you perform relies on stacked decks and gaff cards then I would highly recommend this book, otherwise avoid at all cost. I can honestly say that I will never use this book.