Review by Jamy Ian Swiss

While swimming in a small sea of outstanding and timeless magic volumes produced by creators with distinct and original voices, I am compelled to add that The Workers Series by Michael Close is every bit as important a contribution to the literature of magic as is The Books of Wonder, and would have readily been recognized as such had the entirety been issued all at once in substantially produced volumes like The Books of Wonder, rather than over a period of years in five comb-bound instalments.

The Workers books are loaded with useful close-up material, both card and non-card, and serve as extraordinary teaching manuals of how to select good effects, sound methods, and smart construction, accompanied by creative presentations that are delightfully and sufficiently eccentric as to serve as good teaching examples but that won’t readily fit most other performers – an excellent state of affairs from which to learn how to become one’s own unique artist. And beyond all of this, the Workers books are probably the best examples in the entire literature of close-up magic of the art of routining magic – of building entertaining multi-phase and multi-faceted routines out of individual, integrated effects. This is the kind of magic that entertains audiences, holds their attention, and from which you can build a magic show – not merely a quick shock or a stunt, or a reality TV spot.