A bunch of great reviews delivered quickly is a publisher’s dream. And that’s just what we’ve been blessed with for Consulting Spirit: A Doctor’s Experience with Practical Mediumship by Dr. Ian Rubenstein. Journalist and author of Randi’s Prize Robert McLuhan found Consulting Spirit to be “an excellent book.” His review over at Paranormalia states: “I found [Ian Rubenstein’s] detailed descriptions of the inner process [of mediumship] quite useful. I also resonated with the way the author dealt with his new experiences. The tone is well judged: he is properly sceptical, in the sense of examining and questioning them, but he doesn’t let this get in the way of his curiosity. He doesn’t panic or try to suppress his intuitions. Nor does he agonise about what people might think when he develops his mediumship. He just gets on with it. In fact it surprised me how enthusiastically he embraced his new calling, while continuing his professional work…The book is breezy like a novel, written largely in dialogue, which makes it an easy and entertaining read. As I say, it’s informative about the process of becoming a medium, and I really recommend it. But more than that, it’s also an important book. Rubenstein has shown how it is possible for an ordinary non-psychic member of society, someone who in his professional work is embedded in rationalist thinking, not merely to adjust to psychic intuition when it arrives unbidden, but to learn how to use it for the benefit of others.” Be sure to read the extensive comments following the review, where Rubenstein replies to reader questions.

In his review of the book, Tom Ruffles at the Society for Psychical Research writes: ” …this is an extremely readable book. Its author comes across as completely honest, with no position to defend, but taking the reader where he sees the evidence leading him. As a person he seems very nice, sociable, and much more open about himself with patients than the doctors I have come across. There is a sense that his willingness to try new things provides a flexibility which can assist him to integrate his spiritual life into his everyday one more easily than would be the case with a person more mentally rigid…Those willing to entertain the possibility that something really is going on here will find Consulting Spirit (a great punning title) an unusual but very useful case study.”

And finally, novelist Michael Prescott has some keen insights into Rubenstein’s book as well. At Michael Prescott’s Blog he writes: “To me, books like this are in some ways more valuable than scientific studies involving control groups, double-blind test conditions, and statistical analysis. I’m not sure that any amount of laboratory data will persuade people of the reality of mediumship, but a sober, common-sense account like Dr. Rubenstein’s may succeed where tables, charts, and graphs are likely to fail. Reading his story, I couldn’t help feeling that if I were in his shoes, I would have had many of the same questions and considered many of the same non-paranormal explanations. Nothing in his book struck me as exaggerated or embellished; if anything, the author’s tendency seems to be to play down the more dramatic elements of his story. His sense of humor keeps him—and the reader—firmly grounded, no matter how apparently outlandish some of the developments in his narrative may seem…Rubenstein presents an array of supernatural phenomena in a calm, sober voice, laced with humor and occasional self-doubt. I found his story very appealing, and I think you will too.”