Strong Magic by Darwin Ortiz - Book

A wonderful book that will get you to appreciate why magical effects can be better and worse. It's obvious that Mr. Ortiz is more than just a clever showman, as he draws on a broad base of general knowledge in his explanations. For the serious magician, the principles he explains here can help us bring more pleasure to our audiences and more satisfaction for ourselves. I emphasize "serious" here because the book examines magic in a level detail and at a length that goes beyond what the casual hobbyist is likely to care about.I give the book 4 stars instead of 5 for two reasons. First, the large majority of the examples in the book are card tricks, so those not very familiar with cards aren't helped much by them. He could have reached farther to include coins, cups and balls and familiar stage illusions. Second, the book has a strongly self-promotional quality, as he makes regular references to his other instructional books and DVDs, their titles printed in strong boldface type that screams "Buy me too" from the page.

I'm not a magician but this book was recommended to me on how to improve performance in speaking and presentations. I found this book completely exceeded my expectations. I love the way Darwin Oritz writes. His words are smart, helpful, and entertaining. This book is practical for the non-magician who wants to create performance magic in a presentation, pitch, or talk.

Had this a long time ago. Good to have it again. Excellent approach to magic performance.

If you happen to be an amateur magician and are seriously thinking about making a living performing close-up magic, then you really owe it to yourself to purchase this book. Darwin Ortiz will forever change how you look at your magic, especially when it comes to structuring your own personal routine of magic effects. Everything that you are either aware or unaware of some pit falls each amateur magician makes is spelled out beautifully, and all in a manner which is easy to understand and read. Which is tremendously helpful because you can immediately take little bits of information that you might not think makes a difference, until you apply them and realize you just improved how you both practice and perform your magic.Another book by Darwin Ortiz titled, Designing Miracles, is another must have book for the serious student in magic. Where Strong Magic helps you get a firm understanding on the correct ways to perform your magic, the Designing Miracles book takes it another step further and teaches you not only how to create magic effects, but also the logical ways a laymen perceives each effect you perform. Thus, you can be way ahead of when the magic happens and you can rest assured that it will look much closer to real magic as humanly possible.Purchase both Strong Magic and Designing Miracles and Darwin Ortiz will forever change how you perceive your magic as well as to make it as strong and believable, thus making you unforgettable.

Reading this book completely made me rethink my live action and stage presentation style. I really got a lot out of what the author had to say on show structure, choice of tricks, and organic integration of different elements in to a strong performance and have been using his concepts to build a new routine. The messages were so broad that I actually think that dancers, comedians, and other live performers other than magicians would benefit from it too.As a heads up, the author does talk a lot about card magic (which I'm personally not in to) but it was easy enough to skim it, get the point he was making with the example, and move on. Highly recommended and preferred to his other book "Designing Miracles."