Reviews | The Rambling Apostrophist

Category Archives: Reviews

Book Review: Welcome to the Underworld

Posted on 6 April 2012, 14:10 | Leave a comment

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 →

Book Review: Dexter of Pozzleby

Posted on 20 March 2012, 17:55 | Leave a comment

For a while now, I’ve been thinking about posting book reviews on my blog, and this seems as good a time to start as any, while I have a bit of momentum going on revitalizing my blog. 🙂

I’ve decided only to review books on my blog that I enjoyed and can recommend. If you want to see what books I haven’t enjoyed and wouldn’t recommend, you can hop over to Amazon.com and see my reviews there, both positive and negative. The books I will review here will all be books that I have given or would give between three and five stars to over on Amazon, usually four or five stars. All of these books, unless I state otherwise in the review, are ones I have read on my Kindle.

For my first review, I’ve chosen Dexter of Pozzelby, a YA fantasy set in a mythical kingdom on an earth-like world. Continue reading →