Jonathan L. Howard

'Johannes Cabal the Necromancer' was the first of my second-hand eBay novels to arrive and I fell upon it eagerly, delighted by a light, easy, and amusing read. No great level of concentration is required to follow the rollicking nonsense about a disagreeable local necromancer falling out with Satan. The setting is an uncertain postwar decade in twentieth century pseudo-Britain with black magic. The plot centres upon our protagonist Johannes attempting to win a bet with Satan by getting a hundred people to sign away their souls within a year. To spice things up, Satan provides an evil circus to help with this. Johannes also enlists his brother Horst, a remarkably forgiving man. Thanks to Johannes, Horst got turned into a vampire then trapped in a crypt for eight years. Much of the book is devoted to comedic silliness, including many throwaway references and an extended Molesworth pastiche. Characters communicate largely in witty quips, which are certainly amusing.

When events try to turn more serious towards the end, it didn't work as well for me. I was totally unconcerned about the prospect of bad things happening to Johannes, as he's such a pompous and amoral arsehole. Entertaining to read about, but certainly not someone I sympathised with. All of the byplay with Frank Barrow thus felt anticlimactic. The twist that Horst nicked one of the contracts months before because Johannes didn't count them was brilliant, though. Horst was by far the most appealing character and his sudden decision to kill himself was presumably due to realising he deserved better. The twist on the final page was also a disappointment. There had been absolutely no romance throughout the book. Barely any female characters either, but that didn't bother me. Then at the very end the reader learns that Johannes' entire motivation has been to bring a woman back from the dead. I assume she's his love interest, as that would be the most clichéd option. She is described as young and beautiful, so is unlikely to be his mother, and if she was his sister Horst would probably have mentioned her. I'd hoped for some more ridiculous and macabre plan, in keeping with the general tone. Bringing dinosaurs back to life, perhaps. If I was a necromancer, I'd definitely reanimate a giant ground sloth.

While the depictions of hell and about two-thirds of the plot are a lot of fun, when the final third dials back the silliness it undermines what made the whole thing worth reading in the first place. Overall, a diverting dark supernatural comedy that doesn't quite stick the landing. I largely enjoyed it but am unlikely to read the sequel.… (more)

Based on the description and the rec I received, I was expecting this to nearly be a comedy about a necromancer collecting souls to save his own hide. And it kinda is...but not really. I think we're only really with Cabal while he collects 5 souls and the rest is more of less off-screen. Really, this book is about a necromancer that doeabt get along with his vampire brother (or anybody else for that matter) and his eventual 'redemption'

In the meantime, there are constant cutaways to other people who traded their souls for something but the writing for those sections is such a shift from when we're with Cabal that every time you cutaway, it jars you out of the story.

In all honesty, I should have DNFd this back in the first few chapters when I realized Howard's writing wasnt working for me.… (more)