 Hey everybody, welcome back to magic orthodoxy. My name is David and this is a magic review. Hey, today we're going to look at the traveling trickster book from Mel Mellors. Who is Mel Mellors? He is a very popular comedy magician, travels all around the world, has a signature hat, carries a little briefcase and he does like practical magic, stage magic, parlor magic. It's all kind of very tongue-in-cheek. I don't want to say it's insult magic, but he's kind of, he's got little, he's so funny like sarcastically, he's kind of a little dark. It's a great book full of a lot of his wonderful magic tricks and so let's get on into it. I think you'll be a bit heavy, but we'll try. Watch the cards get smaller and smaller. What do you do for a living? When you're living, what do you do? Oh, a telecoms manager. Telecoms. I'm sorry, it's just nice to keep someone from the telecoms waiting. You don't seem to understand, I have your money. All right, so Mel Mellors. If you don't know who he is, he is a leading magician out in the UK. He did undiscovered wonder. He did twists and turns. This book is published by Magic Scene Magazine and if you want to learn more about Mel, you can find a lot of his material on YouTube. So basically the book is a comedy and magic book. I think the target audience for this are people that work the way Mel does is that you're doing parlor magic on a larger scale. You're doing stage magic on a larger scale and you are able to do the same routines over and over again for new audiences. That is a classification of magician, the traveling magician that goes around from port to port, city to city, doing his set and he has the same set that he always does and he has a scripted routine that he does with his audience and that's definitely kind of Mel Mellors target audience. His target audience really is the working professional. I would argue that if that's not you, the only other way I could see you using this book would be perhaps if you are in that kind of setting sometimes where you're either performing for children or performing for adults in still like a party type setting or a corporate setting where people are sitting down and watching you and not so much moving around and milling because a lot of Mel's retaining his scripting is his humor and so what this book really is is taking a lot of those standard tricks that we've seen and then learning Mel's take on them and his scripting. These tricks are written down very matter-of-factly for you. In fact, some of these tricks don't even take up much more than a page or a two-page spread and that's all the information he's giving you so a little nuanced stuff. He's not a baby feeding you those things. He's saying this is the script, this is how I do the trick and if you're not familiar this is the secret really quick but he's giving you tons of information in these kind of like easy to assess bite-sized pieces and then the rest of the book whether it's not tricks per se then he's packing this full of tons of jokes and I would say right away that his jokes aren't they're not highbrow okay it's more slapstick humor it's almost more like insult comedy where you're kind of you're not insulting well you are you're insulting the audience and so yeah it's kind of the insult party humor but the book still has theory in it it still has all his tips and the things that he's learned being a traveling magician and of course you know his magic is hilarious filled with jokes filled with funny scripting filled with routine I mean it's this book is Mel's career you know this is his career this is the material that he has made money on his entire life this is the stuff that has made him famous and so I think anytime you have a magician that's willing to part with that and then give you that information I think it's very valuable you can't put a price tag on it I think you know if you if you were to ask me is this worth your money it's $65 this this is Mel's working routine you know this is how he makes his living this is not just some trick that he's thrown together to make a couple of bucks this is this is his life's work and so I think anytime you get a magician that is able to do that it's an instant classic you you buy that book and you put it on your shelf and you glean from it year after year after year I think there's a lot here to take in I think any fans of parlor or stage they're going to love this edition in their bookshelf what's the overall quality and production value of the book it's beautiful it's a softbound flip through book but there's it's full color on every single page you don't see that in magic books that much anymore I mean anytime maybe your you know chapter headings are in color but not every single page every single photograph every single blurb it's color color color all throughout this is a great book beautifully put together beautifully laid out it's the kind of book that you can just sit down and read page after page after page laughing with mel all the way through so if I were to say if there's any negative to this book at all and you know I'm a big fan of books I love books but if I was gonna say if there's any negative again this is for the working professional which is not a negative per se but you just you just need to know your just style you know you need to know your style and you need to ask yourself is mel style my style okay and so it understand that and that it's also sort of a put down comedy persona okay and I would think that a lot of the humor and jokes that he's offering in this book are that style and so if that's not your style you might glean other things from the book but I don't think you'll be able to take all of it in you know does that make sense I think that's what he's offering you and so I think you just you just really need to be in tune with your character as a magician and you to ask yourself if mel's um advice and tips are going to work for you who would like this people that like parlor people that like stage people that are working professionals people who go on the road people who do event and corporate magic I think would love the traveling trickster from mel mellers all right so that is my review for the traveling trickster from mel mellers and magic scene magazine and as always I want to thank Murphy's magic for providing this book for me so that I could review it for you and if you want to buy your own you can find it at your favorite Murphy's magic retailer thanks bye