"Mantis is an elegant and deceptive piece of prop-less mentalism. Fraser has created a system that feels not only impossibly clean but also mechanically solid. This is fantastic work and a must read for anyone passionate about this art form."
- Alex Ward
"Fraser has done it again! Achieving what we all thought was impossible. A super, super streamlined process to read minds. Mantis could well be the holy grail! An elegantly simple way to reveal practically any word anyone can think of! Incredible!"
- Marc Paul
"Mantis is so clean, compressed and efficient. It feels like your thinking is at full force. I couldn't believe it was possible when you first showed it to me.
This surpasses your previous work Progeny on all levels!
It has that rare quality where method, presentation, and spectator experience no longer feel like separate pieces. Everything has been compressed, sharpened, and made elegant in a way that feels impossible. It doesn't feel like any other solution to the same plot.
Genuinely, it feels like the moment the idea finally becomes itself. I can hardly believe you've done it again!
You deserve praise beyond words but that's the best I can do."
- Rado Sheytanoff
"First off, Mantis is the best birthday present ever! Your brain must have alien DNA in it. The book is out of this world! It's going to be a mind F when it hits the market! Thank you for sharing."
- Harrison Kaplan
So, here’s the deal: I genuinely didn't think it was feasible to top my previous work in the prop-less word guess and what has become the billet-less mental peek. I mean, that felt like a final answer at the time—compact, elegant, reliable, and neatly tied to presentation.
But somehow, Mantis kicks things up a notch, pushing boundaries further than you’d think possible, and without relying on key words (because who needs them?).
This isn’t some boring refinement of old tricks or a rehash of past ideas. No, it’s an entirely fresh take, deserving its own spotlight. It builds on the same wild premise but from a different angle, playing with the alphabet and distilling it down into something far more subtle and deceptive.
The outcome? A method so minimal it feels like it shouldn’t even be a method at all. It’s the strange beauty of it. You won’t find your standard method or typical compromise here. This is a complete, holistic system that feels almost self-working, using the very structure and patterns woven into the presentation itself.
Picture this: the spectator thinks of a word and visualises three letters hovering between you. As they navigate this brief daydream, one casual cue, courtesy of a single line of natural scripting, gives you just enough info to take a wild stab at one of those letters. And here’s the kicker: that guess isn’t even directly connected to the letters in their thought-of word. Whether you hit or miss (and you’ll get it right two-thirds of the time), you’ll be primed to reveal the word they’ve been secretly mulling over.
It’s as if you've plucked the information out of thin air. No billets, no writing, no awkward fishing for answers. The spectator can keep schtum, and for one presentation, they don’t even have to say anything aloud. Everything’s justified by their visualisation process.
The method and presentation are so interwoven that there’s not a seam in sight. It doesn't feel like you’re dressing up a system as mind reading; it’s more like the absence of one altogether.
In just a few seconds, with hardly any procedure aside from the visualisation and you checking your impressions, you essentially pull off a billet-less mental peek—an unobtrusive glimpse of the info you need to reveal the spectator's thought-of word.
And let’s be real, it’s also a handy tool for any time you need to extract info in a clean, sneaky way.
What’s changed isn’t the goal, but the approach. The supporting principles are still powerful and familiar, but the way you snag that all-important first piece of info has been completely revamped, allowing you to dive straight into a single letter. This makes the effect feel more natural, theatrically justified, direct, and impossible.
It’s hard to overstate how significant a breakthrough this method is, or to explain its power without giving too much away. There are no key words or naming impressions, yet it still pulls off the effortless mind reading trick with just language and presentation. You’ll be able to carry this mental peek with you, ready to dive into the mind of your spectator and know what’s brewing in their thoughts.
The impossible has been pushed even further, and the limits of what seemed achievable have shifted once more.
Designed primarily for the English language and alphabet (because let’s not complicate things), that’s how it’s taught in the book. A smidge of memory work is involved, but it’s laid out in a way that’s easy to digest in just a few hours.
Mantis is a stunning oversized, proofread, 194-page softcover book, produced in Crown Quarto format at 7.44 x 9.68 inches / 189 x 246 mm, featuring black-and-white printing on premium 118 gsm white coated paper and finished with an elegant matte softcover.
