Was going through my Google Drive cleaning up large files to make space. I pay for 100gbs and I'm nearly at that. While perusing my files I came across this screenshot of my review S. Ben Qayin's "Book of Smokeless Fire" back in 2013 on the Evocation Magic forum (it later became Studio Arcanis but as of 2024 has been offline). Some of you may remember me mentioning this review but I could never find it when going through the forum via the Wayback Machine when I'd check during livestreams. Turns out I had a screenshot of it the whole time! Haha. You can see even in 2013 I had a distaste for the New Age, calling the ritual aspect of the text "hokum" (thank you "Big Bang Theory"!).
You can also see others on the forum, many of which were well respected (such as Provenant, BaiLung and Pablo) chime in and offer their perspectives. Unfortunately I believe Frank Redd's response (he's the owner of Nephilim Press, the book's publisher, and since many prominent authors were members of Evocation Magic/Studio Arcanis, so too were a few publishers) is on page 2 or 3 and therefore not in this screenshot. And the Wayback Machine won't let you see any pages other than the first one in a thread (this can be verified by checking the exact same thread here: http://studioarcanis.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=12369 ) Check out my review and get a bit of insight into how I thought in 2013!