Shin Lim's 'Evolushin Of Magic' -- A Newbie's Review
Like the title says, I'm not a professional magician. I'm not even an amateur magician. The closes I've ever come to performing magic is rolling a d20 for my halfling wizard in my weekly D&D campaign. Which means, technically, that I'm the intended audience for Shin Lim's 'Evolushin Of Magic' magic kit (and full disclosure, I'm deducting one point from the score for that terrible, terrible pun). I'm not going to be able to speak authoritatively about how this kit stacks up against other kits, or how a pro might be able to use this kit for their own purposes. No, I'm here to give you the complete Noob's opinion, to see how this kit for beginners actually works for a true beginner in the magic world.
Let's get started.
So right out of the box, I admit I'm a little intimidated by this kit. There's a deck of cards, five or so prop-looking things that my magician buddy tells me are known as 'utilites', and a bunch of pre-packaged 'gimmick' tricks. I've seen the basic magic trick kits sold elsewhere, and I can tell right off the bat that this is nothing like those kits. Other kits contain well-known tricks, usually cheap plastic toys, which I could figure out how to operate just by looking at them for a couple minutes. I don't recognize any of the tricks, there are no rings, no cups and balls, no flags on a string, and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to figure out what to do with anything here without the instructions included in the Kit.
Fortunately, instructions are included in the kit. There's a full-color booklet full of 100 card tricks -- which isn't technically true, as the first 8 'tricks' are actually descriptions of different ways of 'forcing' a card; getting the card to turn up at the place you want it to. But since each of these 'force' manuevers are necessary for the other tricks in the book, I won't get too nitpicky on them. I tried out several of the tricks Lim describes, and had mixed success. My hands aren't dextrous enough to be able to perform some of the force manuevers right away -- and having a bandaged thumb due to a recent construction accident isn't helping at all -- but the instructions are clear enough and the illustrations helpful enough that I know I COULD perform them if I put in the practice. But not all of the card tricks in the booklet require forcing a card, and a couple of them were so simple (specifically no. 72 "is this your card") that first I laughed at how stupidly easy it was, and then I laughed when I was able to perform it and get the 'How did you do that!?' look from my audience. I totally get why magicians love performing this stuff now.
But the card tricks are really just the icing on the substantial cake of the utility items and gimmicks, and the instructions for those tricks are all hosted on the Murphy's Magic website in the form of an over-two-hour video tutorial staring Shin Lim himself. I love that Lim takes the time to explain the tricks to me like I'm sitting at his feet in his living room, although I dearly wish that he had broken his video down into sections rather than making it a single long two-and-a-half hour production. It makes searching for specific tricks a little difficult. Not a deal-breaker, but I feel like it's a bit of a missed opportunity.
But little niggles aside, the teaching videos are superb. Shin Lim comes across as a likeable every-day kind of guy, the kind of guy I could see getting a beer with at the end of a long day. He's likeable, personable, and most importantly really knows how to teach magic. And, in perhaps one of the most genius moves I've seen in an instructional video, he invites his wife Casey Cathleen (I hope I'm spelling that right) to act as the 'student' in his video. So instead of just standing in one place walking us through the magic, he's actually teaching his wife the trick and we're watching and learning along with her. It's a really excellent method of showing us what actually makes the magic, and makes me personally feel like I'm in his classroom rather than just watching a video on the internet.
The tricks Lim teaches range from really advanced -- the dude spends the first 30 minutes of the instructional video teaching us how to set up and use the Svengali Deck of cards that come with the box. It's very involved and somewhat time-consuming, but it leads to some tricks that I know I could perform myself if I put in the time and practice.
All in all, I think this kit is superb. I'm not a magician, I probably never will be a professional magician, but even I can see the obvious time and effort Lim and Murphy's put into this kit. At $50, it's not exactly cheap, but that's because there's nothing cheap about this kit. I know that if I ever did decide to pick up magic as a hobby, Shin Lim's 'Evolushin Of Magic' would not only be my first investment, it would be an investment that would continue paying off long into my pursuit of the hobby. If you're thinking of picking up the hobby yourself, I'm pretty sure purchasing Lim's kit would be the best $50 you could spend in your pursuits.
By:
Josh Werner