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The Ultimate Book Test Act by Luca Volpe Review

Two book test books, one booklet of instructions, eight minutes of mentalism and $95 bucks. Is it gem or is it rubble? Stay tuned to find out.

Effect

Two spectators come on stage. A book is chosen (free choice of two books). Spectator 1 opens to any page and memorizes the last word on the page. Spectator 2 turns to any page and reads the first paragraph and finds a word that can be visualized (i.e., an object).

You read the second spectator's mind (because you're "having trouble" reading the first spectator's mind), and you draw a picture of what he's thinking. You are correct, and spectator 2 sits down.

Still struggling with the second spectator, you try an experiment with the audience to help "open your mind." Toss out four balled up pieces of paper to get four volunteers who stay in the audience. Give them the book. Have them each grab the book, turn to any page and think of the first word on that page. After all four have selected their own word, you then read each of their minds and have them sit down.

Lastly, with your "mind opened," you try again with the spectator on stage. You still can't read his mind, so you have him name his word. Then you remember that earlier that day you had a premonition of four random letters, and you wrote them down. You have the four spectators with the balls of paper un-crumple their papers. There is a letter on each paper. The letters spell out the word that the spectator number 1 was thinking.

That's the full routine. Also keep in mind that this final word isn't always the same word.

Method

The method is pretty much all self-contained in the books that come with the set. You get two books that the audience can choose from. Regardless of which book they choose, this effect will work. You have virtually nothing to remember to perform the effect. It's all self-contained and easy to do.

This is 100% performance. You need to be a good performer to pull this off. Other than that, it's within the grasp of all skill levels. Notice I said "skill levels" not "performance levels." Yes performance is a skill, but in this case, I'm referring to technical skill, not performance skill. There is no technical skill required, only performance skill.

The big claim from Luca Volpe as to what makes this different from other book tests is the "kicker" ending with the paper balls. In order to pull off the paper ball ending, you'll need these books which do all the work for you.

Ad Copy Integrity

The ad copy is solid. All the claims are legitimate. The only thing I would want to clarify is the "no force book test" claim. It depends on how you look at it. Let's take a totally unrelated concept to illustrate the point. Imagine I had a deck that contained 52 copies of the Seven of Spades. If I spread the deck in front of a spectator and told them to choose any card, is it a free selection? Or better put, is it a "no force selection?"

While it's true, the choice of which of the 52 cards they picked was not a force, the end result is the same: the Seven of Spades was forced on them. Those decks are called one-way forcing decks for a reason.

Just in case you're wondering, the books are not the same words on every single page, but some forcing is happening. However, the forcing is all done with a bunch of free choices. They choose which book and which page, and yet there is still a very subtle (and automatic) force happening.

For those in the "know" consider MOABT . . . is it a force? It could be considered a ranging force . . . one of twenty-four possible words. Yet everything about it is a free choice. You get the idea. I just wanted to clarify that "no force" claim - I think I may have un-clarified it.

The only other thing that was a little off was the claim that the instructions covered "all the little nuances that will make YOUR book test PERFORMANCE truly powerful and memorable." While I believe that the performance of this will be powerful and memorable, the instructions were pretty scarce. They covered everything you need to know to do the routine successfully, but I don't feel it covered any "little nuances." It describes the effect, covers the method (i.e., describes the gimmicked nature of the books), gives a script and offers two alternate ideas. That's it. No nuances.

Product Quality

The books are good looking and look legitimate except for one tiny issue. The paragraphs are all squished together with no indentation. I don't know how notice-able it is, but "real books" don't look like that. However, due to the way the books are used, it's probably not a big deal. The only other issue was that one of my books has a damaged corner on the spine, but I think it was a shipping problem. The instructions are found in a twelve page booklet that covers everything that you need to perform the effect as mentioned above in the "Ad Copy Integrity" section.

Final Thoughts

If you like book tests, this is a very good option. Everything's well made and well thought out. As I mentioned in the "Method" section, you'll need these books to pull off the "big ending" that Volpe claims separates this from other book tests. If you like the effect, you'll love this product for sure. So the question for you is whether or not it's worth $95 to do this effect.

Final Verdict:
4.5 Stars with a Stone Status of Gem.