Just as my essay on Ed Marlo finished off my Take Two column, my last essay, “Interpreting Magic, From Beyond,” capped my collection my book reviews written for Magicana.
Using the links below, you can visit the entire collection—or use the cross-index lists, searching by author and title—at your own pace. The collection also includes a few additional essays.
Since 2016, I’ve reviewed thirty-one books and I consider all of those titles to have been somewhere between very good and excellent. While print runs are shorter today than in the Eighties and Nineties, the output of high-quality books has if anything improved. Even as I write this, I am in the midst of reading the newly released Second Thoughts by Ramón Riobóo from Hermetic Press; Principia by Harapan Ong, which I obtained only recently and so I never had the chance to review. I am also, along with many, looking forward to the imminent release of Steve Forte’s new tome, Gambling Sleight of Hand.
Magic publishing is healthy and strong—a turn of events I am very pleased to report, even if I will, yet again, be stepping aside from reviewing. Perhaps temporarily, quite possibly indefinitely.
So, until we next meet, I say, as ever: Thanks for reading.
—JAMY IAN SWISS
Lyons Den Collection
