The FAO Schwarz Magic Set Manual is a comprehensive guide intended to assist users in learning and performing various magic tricks. It is available in PDF format, making it easily accessible and convenient for beginners and seasoned magicians alike. The manual provides step-by-step instructions, detailed explanations, and helpful tips to help users master each trick. With clear diagrams and illustrations, it ensures that users can easily follow along and understand the intricacies of the tricks. The manual covers a wide range of magic tricks, including card tricks, coin tricks, and illusions. Moreover, it emphasizes the importance of practice and presentation to enhance the overall impact of the tricks.
Much more interesting is this idea of one’s own creation being the very thing that causes you this kind of pain. She is Frankenstein to her monster, Allemas. She brilliantly merges a Greek tragedy with that of original sin. Here we have Maere overstepping her mandate to create worlds by wanting to be God through mimicking God’s ability to create a soul. This takes on the biblical idea of being image bearers of God where we’re called to glorify him through our reflected capabilities but twists that by desiring to be God himself. It is so well done here when she tried to push beyond that boundary as she creates this warped creature. I love the grace that’s given to her, there are consequences to the action but that ultimately, she is allowed to, at least temporarily, take on a mortal mantle and procreate in a more mundane manner with a hint of then moving back into the celestial row.
This is a whole new series unrelated to The Paper Magician series whose protagonist is a full woman it turns out that shes centuries old , not a teen. Maire then becomes obsessed with trying to figure out who she is, but soon after this encounter, we have another plot twist marauders attack Maire s village and she is sold into slavery.
Moreover, it emphasizes the importance of practice and presentation to enhance the overall impact of the tricks. Whether you are interested in learning magic as a hobby or looking to perform professionally, the FAO Schwarz Magic Set Manual is a valuable resource that will help you develop and refine your skills..
Book Review – Magic Bitter, Magic Sweet
FTC Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley. All opinions are my own.
Goodreads Synopsis:
Maire is a baker with an extraordinary gift: she can infuse her treats with emotions and abilities, which are then passed on to those who eat them. She doesn’t know why she can do this and remembers nothing of who she is or where she came from.
When marauders raid her town, Maire is captured and sold to the eccentric Allemas, who enslaves her and demands that she produce sinister confections, including a witch’s gingerbread cottage, a living cookie boy, and size-altering cakes.
During her captivity, Maire is visited by Fyel, a ghostly being who is reluctant to reveal his connection to her. The more often they meet, the more her memories return, and she begins to piece together who and what she really is—as well as past mistakes that yield cosmic consequences.
From the author of The Paper Magician series comes a haunting and otherworldly tale of folly and consequence, forgiveness and redemption.
My Review:
Charlie N. Holmberg’s Magic Bitter, Magic Sweet was a much darker story than I was expecting. I think maybe that pretty cover fooled me into thinking I was heading into a light, fluffy, and whimsical read. While I did find the read to be whimsical, instead of the light and fluffy, however, I found myself immersed in a tale full of weighty themes and relevant life lessons, the dominant one being that you have to take responsibility for choices that you make because actions have consequences.
Maire is a young woman who learns this lesson the hard way. When the story opens, Holmberg grabs the reader’s attention immediately as she begins to describe Maire. Maire is working as a baker and, curiously enough, has the ability to infuse her baked goods with qualities such as hope, strength, generosity, love – basically whatever qualities she chooses. Those qualities are then passed on to those who eat the baked goods. What makes Maire even more interesting is that she has lost her memory – she has no idea who she is, where she came from, and no memories at all prior to the moment that a woman named Arrice found her in the forest a few years earlier and brought her to her own home to live. Although Maire is somewhat curious about who she is and where she came from, overall she is content with the life she is living and so doesn’t dwell on her true identity too much. Right away I found Maire to be an endearing protagonist, both because of her magic, which she seems to use only to help people, and because the memory loss gives her a human and vulnerable quality. I found myself immediately in her corner, cheering her on, as the real action of the story began.
Holmberg then begins to deftly weave in a few plot twists, the first of which being Fyel. Maire is outside one day when she encounters Fyel, a translucent man all dressed in white, who also has wings of some sort. He tells Maire that he is not from this world, but that he knows who she is and that she must try to remember as well. Many of his remarks are cryptic and he refuses to tell her much more because he says she won’t believe his far-fetched tale and that if she denies the truth, she will be lost to his world forever. He says she must piece the story together herself so that she will believe it.
Maire then becomes obsessed with trying to figure out who she is, but soon after this encounter, we have another plot twist – marauders attack Maire’s village and she is sold into slavery. Strangely enough, her new master Allemas seems to already know who she is and even acts as though he has been searching for her, even though Maire is pretty sure they’ve never met.
The story takes a dark turn at this point because Allemas is a cruel and unpredictable master and Maire does not fare well working for him, especially once he realizes that Fyel has also found Maire. By this point, Maire is desperately trying to figure out who she is, what her connection to Allemas is, and especially what her connection to Fyel is. The second half of the book primarily follows Maire on her journey as she discovers her true identity, how she ended up where she is, and most importantly, as she realized that what happened to her was a direct consequence of choices she made in her other life. Maire’s journey is particularly fascinating in the sense that with each new memory she has about her past, her body undergoes a change as she slowly starts to transform back into what she was before she lost her memory and ended up here.
I did notice a few plot holes here and there as I was reading — things that happen that seem a little too coincidental or even the fact that Maire doesn’t seem to think it’s at all strange that she has this unusual magical baking ability, but I still thought overall this was a great read. While, like the magical baking itself, I’m not sure they really added much to the plot of Magic Bitter, Magic Sweet, I thought Holmberg’s whimsical touches, such as weaving various fairy tales such as Alice in Wonderland, Hansel and Gretel, and The Gingerbread Man into her story, made the story an immensely fun read. What I really liked though were the darker threads that ran through it. Offsetting those whimsical fairy tales as Maire discovers her true identity, is a dark tale that is reminiscent of both Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and the Book of Genesis in the Bible. I loved the added weight those elements gave to the overall story.
For me, the main weakness of the story was the ending. I felt like there was this huge build up to the reveal of Maire’s identity and then a rush to wrap things up, with years tacked on in an epilogue. I would have liked a little more explanation as to what specifically happened from Maire’s return home to what we see in the epilogue. That part just felt too abrupt for me. Other than that though, I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Magic Bitter, Magic Sweet is a book I would recommend to anyone who enjoys fantasy. I probably wouldn’t recommend it to children, because even though it has those fun shout outs to familiar fairy tales, I think the darker parts of the story, particularly some things that happen to Maire along the way, would make it too violent and frightening for younger readers.
Thanks so much to Netgalley, 47North, and to Charlie N. Holmberg for allowing me the opportunity to preview this book.
Rating: 3.5 stars
About Charlie N. Holmberg
Charlie Nicholes Holmberg was born in Salt Lake City, Utah to two parents who sacrificed a great deal to give their very lazy daughter a good education. As a result, Charlie learned to hate uniforms, memorized all English prepositions in alphabetical order, and mastered the art of Reed-Kellogg diagramming a sentence at age seven. She entered several writing contests in her elementary years and never placed.
Being a nerd, Charlie started writing fan-fiction as a teenager in between episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. She became a full-fledged band geek with mediocre talent in high school, where she met her husband. While she strove to win his attention by baking him cookies and throwing ramen noodles at his house, he didn’t actually ask her out until six years later.
Charlie began taking writing seriously during her undergrad at Brigham Young University, where she majored in English and minored in editing. She finally won a few writing contests. She graduated with her BA in 2010 and got hitched three months later. Shortly afterwards, her darling husband dragged her to Moscow, Idaho, where he subsequently impregnated her.
In summer 2013, after collecting many rejection letters and making a quilt out of them, Charlie sold her ninth novel, The Paper Magician, and its sequel to 47North with the help of her wonderful agent, Marlene Stringer. She currently lives with her family in Utah. Someday she will own a dog.
(Did she mention her third book, The Master Magician, totally made the WSJ bestseller list? Because it totally made the WSJ bestseller list.)
Imagine taking a Greek tragedy (and the related pantheon of gods), merge into it the story of the Fall and Original Sin and twirl in a mixture of fairy tales; never mind being able to “bake in inspiration”. That’s Magic Bitter, Magic Sweet. It’s one thing to have a brilliant premise, it’s another to execute that well. Ms. Holmberg delivers in spades. She takes us along Maire’s painful journey of discovery of her own story. It’s a challenging world into which she has fallen, much like medieval Europe, full of might-makes-right and enslavement, as well as love, hope, and friendship. Maire’s “owner” is clearly not quite right. Not only is he devoid of a moral compass, he’s even devoid of common sense. So, he looks to the world around him to give him some clue of how to be in it. Given that sends him mixed messages, he’s not quite sure what that to do. As abusive and disgusting as he can be, he’s also an intriguing character of conflicting and foreign makeup. He is not only not normal, but he is “other”. He is not of this world. So even while you despise him, there is some empathy towards his plight. It’s a little like despising a snake that bites you. He cannot be other than he is. He cannot reflect and grow into something more even as he does learn to “fake it” better. He is limited by his very nature in an even more profound way than humans are.
.
Reviews for "Taking your magic to the next level with the FAO Schwarz magic set"
1. Sarah - 2/5 stars - I was really excited to try out the Fao Schwarz Magic Set, but I was ultimately disappointed with the manual. The instructions were confusing and poorly written. It was hard to understand the steps and I found myself constantly having to refer back to previous sections. Additionally, the illustrations were not clear and did not provide enough detail. Overall, I was frustrated and couldn't enjoy the magic tricks because of the difficulty I had with the manual.
2. John - 1/5 stars - I regret purchasing the Fao Schwarz Magic Set mainly because of the manual. It was incredibly complicated and hard to follow. I consider myself a beginner in magic tricks, but the instructions assumed a certain level of knowledge that I just didn't have. The manual lacked clear explanations and the tricks were too advanced for someone like me. I ended up giving up after a few attempts because I couldn't figure out how to perform any of the tricks properly.
3. Emily - 2/5 stars - The Fao Schwarz Magic Set fell short for me due to the poor quality of the manual. The instructions were very brief and lacked important details. I found myself having to search online for more thorough explanations of the tricks. Additionally, the manual didn't offer any troubleshooting tips for when things went wrong, which was frustrating when I encountered difficulties. Overall, I was disappointed with the lack of clarity and guidance provided by the manual.
4. Michael - 2/5 stars - The Fao Schwarz Magic Set had great potential, but the manual left much to be desired. The instructions were vague and difficult to understand at times. The illustrations were not helpful in guiding me through the steps of the tricks, and I often had to resort to trial and error to figure things out. It would have been much more enjoyable if the manual was better written and provided more clear and concise directions. I wouldn't recommend this magic set to beginners looking for a user-friendly manual.