Jennie’s Review: Johannes Cabal: the Necromancer, by Jonathan L. Howard
Johannes Cabal is a necromancer, as the title of the first book by Jonathan L. Howard, (and the character himself) proudly proclaim. He is also arrogant, intelligent, sporadically empathetic, a master of a variety of modern and ancient languages, socially inept, and, oh yes, missing his soul (after trading it to Satan for further necromantic knowledge). He, and the book he inhabits, are also a great deal of fun.
Johannes Cabal: the Necromancer, begins with a disappointment. Cabal, it turns out, has forgotten the dread rod when he summons a demon to lead him into Hell, but the dread rod, and most of the trappings of Satan and his world, are mere distractions and theatre, and Cabal knows where the truth lies: Satan is bored and wants a new way to torment others and entertain himself. Luckily for Cabal, that gives him the opening to bargain for a chance to retrieve his soul—at the price of one hundred others.
Howard’s version of Hell is an administrative nightmare ruled over by a bureaucracy that requires thousands of forms to enter Hell—let alone leave. Enter Cabal, determined to win his soul back without losing any of his abilities as a necromancer. He bullies his way through to an audience with Satan and manages to entice Satan into a bet: Cabal has a year to get one hundred souls signed over to eternal damnation and, in return, he will win his own soul back. The price for failure is steep, however, his death and eternal damnation, and Cabal risks more than his own life with the wager.
Cabal is not alone in his search for one hundred new souls for Satan: he has been given some bait – a Carnival of Discord and all of its crew. Cabal has also managed to add a few of the newly dead as his (slowly decomposing) assistants. Rags, bones, and hanks of hair (and a bit of a zap from Satan himself) create the rest of the carnival attractions and workers, but Cabal still needs someone with a sense of charisma and showmanship. Enter Horst Cabal, Johannes’ brother (and recent victim of Johannes’ need to learn the secrets of the dead). Horst quickly pulls the attractions together and creates a carnival meant to tempt people to eternal servitude in Hell.
Pulled by a disturbing and frightening train, the Cabal Brother’s Carnival is now ready to go collecting the souls Johannes needs. The rest of the novel follows Johannes as he skirts the line between acting as Satan’s minion and trying to make sure those souls he collects are already on their way to Hell. The carnival grows more and more terrifying and tempting with each town it visits, and the tightrope that Johannes’ walks becomes stretched and thin. As the year wears on, and both Satan and Johannes begin to plan their strategies for a final meeting.
This first novel is populated with some of the most creative, and odd, characters to be found in fantasy. Johannes is strangely endearing for a man searching for souls to send to eternal torment, and his social ineptitude and carefully buried emotions make him more than just a vehicle for jokes about the bureaucracy of Hell and the minions of Satan. The rest of the cast, including Satan himself, are both hysterical and fascinating, and the novel manages to make both the comedy and the pathos of Johannes’ situation feel real. In fact, the only place where the book feels out of joint is in the setting. The carnival itself feels real and and compelling, but the lands it travels through are a bit vague. At times, it is difficult to tell whether it takes place in a different country, and different world, or a different universe than the one the reader inhabits. This is a small problem, though, and both the carnival and the characters would be well worth following to a sequel and beyond.
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2 Comments on Jennie’s Review: Johannes Cabal: the Necromancer, by Jonathan L. Howard
I wasn’t sure whether to put this book on my list or not. But your review convinced me that this is a book for me. Due to space problems I only buy paperbacks. So I have to wait for a while.
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