Welcome to the Underworld by I.F. Rowan
Welcome to the Underworld is set in a fantasy-version of Ancient China. The book consists of a series of stories — one short story and three novellas — and together, they can be read almost as a short novel.
In “Looking for Goats, Finding Monkeys,” we meet Dao Shi, a historian-turned-conman who discovers that he really is an exorcist, and not merely a charlatan, when he runs across a nasty demon in the course of his quotidian fakery. He nonetheless continues with his usual manner of making a living, occasionally being called upon to genuinely exorcise a demon, when, in “The Turning of the Tiles,” he finds himself caught up in political intrigue that is beyond his ken and more dangerous to him than any of the demons he has met. Continue reading