John Guastaferro is a name synonymous with card magic that's commercial, clever, thoughtfully structured, surprising, and engaging. 14 years after the release of his bestselling book One Degree, John has followed it up with The Nth Degree: a similarly-sized volume of card effects and essays that manages to match the quality of that previous book and, in some ways, surpass it.

Produced by Vanishing Inc in their usual exceptional style, The Nth Degree falls just shy of 160 pages in a well-produced, cloth-covered hardbound volume with a sleek dust jacket. The book is designed to aesthetically match up with One Degree so both volumes will look nice paired together on your shelf.

Of course, it's what inside that counts, and The Nth Degree manages a collection of 26 card tricks that - in my opinion - finds even more originality as far as plot and effect than John's material in One Degree. It's truly hard to pick only a few standouts in this collection, but nonetheless, I'll highlight some entries that particularly struck my fancy.

PERCEPTION PLUS
This packet effect pulls lots of visual magic out of a small handful of cards. A packet of blank cards changes into four Jacks, then to four Aces, then back to blank again; all while accompanied by an ambigram that reads 'Jacks' when oriented one way and 'Aces' when rotated the other way. What an incredibly clever hook for an effect that, typical of John's material, is not very difficult to do.

BLANK SLATE
Following in the footsteps of Truth in Advertising from his book One Degree, John's beautiful opener takes a fully blank deck of cards and visually transforms it into a printed deck of cards; one that's completely ordinary and ready to do other magic with. This effect's biggest asset is that there are no deck switches, and the sneaky stuff required to turn the blank deck into a printed one is hidden in plain sight and removed from the deck in a way that's motivated and entirely unsuspicious. What a banger.

SELF CHECK-OUT
Effects in which a spectator locates a four of a kind with the deck in their own hands are always strong, and Self Check-Out is very worth your consideration. After a shuffling sequence that feels like it truly randomizes the deck in the spectator's hands, they're walked through numerous ways of cutting the deck into portions. This ends with four piles of cards on the table, generated entirely without the magician touching the cards. Nonetheless, the spectator has managed to locate the four Aces. As you can imagine, this is more or less self-working and as long as your spectator can follow some extremely simple instructions, you're home free.

STRANGER SANDWICH
John's name has become synonymous with an approach to magic that favours making minute adjustments to an effect that produce maximum impact. Stranger Sandwich is a terrific example of this approach: an otherwise fairly standard two-phase Sandwich effect where the second phase involves a visual production of the selected card that I haven't seen elsewhere before. It's an eye-popper, and the structure allows the option for a kicker ending where the selected card's back can change colour if the magician desires.

ASSEMBLY LINE
I think Ace Assemblies are so ****ing boring, but I could see myself doing John's. He manages to take this tired plot and blow it up to something that engages multiple participants at once and could easily play to a parlour audience; everything happens off the table and in the hands of the spectators, with minimal sleight of hand. So, so good.

TAILSPIN TWIST
It's almost unbelievable that so many moments of magic can be created out of so few cards and fairly simple handling, but Tailspin Twist manages it as well as any packet effect I've ever seen. Four Jacks magically turn over one by one, then it's revealed that they actually didn't turn over: they simply hid their faces, with each card now displaying a back on both sides. To 'erase the evidence' of this secret, each card is rubbed on the table and the faces turn blank. Finally, those blank cards are printed into an even better bunch than the Jacks: the four Aces. So much clever, visual magic in one tiny packet of cards. A marvel.

WHISPER MENTAL
Four free selections are lost in the deck, and the magician is able to read each spectator's mind, reveal their thought-of card, and then produce that card in a startling way that's different for each selection. The silky smooth flow of this sequence is a real treat: each production of a selection is both setting you up for the next revelation and sneakily feeding you information about each subsequent selection.

BOOK OF CLUES
Another card effect that can readily play in a stand-up or parlour setting, where a card is selected by one spectator and three other spectators cut to different places in the deck to retrieve three seemingly random cards that will give clues on the selection's colour, suit, and value. Each clue proves to be a perfect match for each attribute of the selection. Then, as a finale, it's revealed that the cards the three spectators cut to are, improbably, the three mates of the first spectator's selection. A great way to get multiple people involved in a really engaging effect with a great, unexpected climax.

MYSTERY WAND
What a brilliant, clever piece of magic. This inventive version of the Mystery Card plot sees a card selected and signed, then lost in the deck. To find the card, the magician reveals their secret weapon: a Ziploc baggie that contains a playing card with a mystical design on its back alongside two white Chapstick caps. The card is rolled into a tube and the Chapstick caps are placed on the ends, turning the items into a tiny, makeshift magic wand. The wand is waved over the deck in an attempt to find the selection, but the effort fails; that is, until the wand is disassembled and the shaft of it is revealed to have impossibly turned into the signed selection. A true worker that elevates a rather cerebral card plot into something more playful and entertaining.

I could go on and on about the effects in this book; only a handful weren't to my taste. John's effect Bermuda, for instance, features an intriguing original premise but doesn't really align with my own aesthetics and interests as a performer. Double Vision is a bit-by-bit, visual deck vanish that's extremely angle-sensitive, and is something I'd reserve for an on-camera performance (though I have no doubt that John uses this live successfully). Changemaker, while effectively structured, didn't do much for me from an effect perspective.

That said, even the pieces that aren't my vibe are sure to be someone else's, and they're no less thoughtful than the rest of John's material in The Nth Degree. If you value card magic that's wholly useable in the real world, creative in plot, and cleverly structured in method, this book could not be more highly recommended.

Get it at Vanishing Inc: https://www.vanishingincmagic.com/magic-......taferro/

Michael, thank you for that very thorough and thoughtful review.

John G