(3.5 stars)

I liked this book, but parts of it drag on or are very dry. The story is interesting and the storytelling is unique. I will read the next book in the series but I’d really like to read something else by the author first.

This book is like “a week in the life of a necromancer” rather than a story with a set beginning, middle, and ending. Because of that, it is slightly anti-climactic, but only because it carries the same energy throughout the book. ( )

Johannes Cabal: The Detective is a rather enjoyable book. With a nice little surprise at the end. As a reader I enjoyed this book considerably more than the first one in the series. The Detective is put together and more cohesive than the first. After reading volume two the reader is able to fully appreciate Cabal for the jerk that he is. He is practical, unpredictable and deceptively cunning. The Detective finds Cabal hitching a ride on an airship while trying to evade the authorities from a slightly skewed, militant country full of people with little or no common sense. What ensues is Agatha Christie meets H.P. Lovecraft. The characters in this story are well stitched together, the story is considerably more adult than the first and at the end of the book we get a surprise from the author that I am sure most readers would have liked to seen continue. I can only guess this was an experiment or a left over from the author that alludes to his Lovecraft work. The humor is great and we are introduced to a slew of characters that we can actually see and do not seem as contrived as the first novel. The relationship between Leonie and Cabal is very well done. As a reader I like her and the subliminal attraction to Cabal. Something I do not believe that either of them are aware of. The end is chaotic and action packed with some nice attention to detail. This book is highly recommended and fun. ( )

A slow start gradually turns into a multiple murder mystery on an airship. A bit different from the first novel in the series and I think that's why it took me a while to fully get into this book. ( )

Not quite as good as the first book, but still very enjoyable. Love the humor and the description of the world. I didn't realize how different it is supposed to be from 'ours' in part one. ( )

This book is comprised of two stories. One being the main novel which is described in the books synopsis the other is a short story at the end of the book. The main story of the novel is - how do I put this - so so. It basically is a mashup of Sherlock Holmes and steam punk genres. It is NOTHING like the previous novel which is very unfortunate. The second story is wonderful. Here we get to see Cabal back to his old self. I hope that the next outing for Cabal is not a detective story with a "Dr Watsonesqe" partner but one where Cabal embraces his old self - Necromancer! ( )

After escaping his execution, Cabal ends up on an airship where, after being attacked, he is determined to find the mysterious killer who is offing people left and right. Cabal is such a great character and so remote from any normal reactions that he is almost always unintentionally funny and highly inappropriate whenever he opens his mouth. I enjoyed the previous book a little bit more, mainly because of Horst, but this one has to its advantage that the storyline is much straighter and it's easier to follow. Loving all the over-the-top action and am absolutely picking up the next in the series as soon as possible. ( )

Even though political machinations (especially thoseof the over-zealous right-wing military type) are not my favourite driving force in novels, they are the perfect backdrop for eeryone's favourite necromancer, Johannes Cabal. Cabal may pretend not to care about the world as a whole, but by unwittingly throwing him into the path of Marechal (a military nut-case if I've ever seen one) and his war schemes Cabal takes a personal interest. Sure, he might be driven by revenge rather than civic duty, but this lays the emotional groundwork for lots of future adventures - especially those involving Ms Leonie Barrow, whom Cabal seems to have developed something of a soft spot for. ( )

I miss Horst. if this series becomes a thing where an enjoyably terrible man is REDEEMED by the love of a GOOD WOMAN, I will be so angry. ( )

A slow start gradually turns into a multiple murder mystery on an airship. A bit different from the first novel in the series and I think that's why it took me a while to fully get into this book. ( )

Omg, this is a breath of fresh air. Or at least, it's a perfectly welcome respite from the normal books I've been reading. Either way, I'm delighted. :)

The first Johannes Cabal novel made me constantly wonder who were the good guys and who were the bad, a Faustian tale of beating the devil, carnival antics, and our favorite smart-as-hell necromancer. I remember being hesitant about continuing after I had finished it, but either enough time has passed or I was totally tripping, because after starting THIS novel, I fell totally in love.

This one is a cozy armchair mystery AND necromantic patriotic spy-fiction AND steampunk.

I always WANTED to love steampunk stuff but generally never did, BUT this one is a clear exception to the rule. :) I did genuinely love this airship murder mystery. :) A total Agatha Christie with necromantic elements, a totally fictitious Europe-not-Europe during Empire, and new and fantastic Ultimate Enemies by way of business as usual...

All thanks to Cabal's winning personality.

And all said, I had a grand ole time. Never a single complaint. I do believe I'm going to fly into the rest of these novels very soon. :) ( )

I enjoyed the first book (the necromancer), but this was OK. Johannes Cabal larping as a detective was somewhat boring. On top of that, the big reveal that at the end was not very satisfying (due to its abruptness). However, I have faith that the other books of the series will be better and back to business as usual. ( )

Not quite as good as the original -- I think I expected more forward motion in the arcing story, but this book is again focused on a small incident (series of incidents) within his life. Still a good read, still fun language, and the unexpected return of another character from the first novel made me smile. ( )

No big surprise that this book opens with Johannes Cabal locked in some deep, dark dungeon awaiting his death. Even Cabal doesn't seem surprised of that. Nor is he surprised when he's taken out of his dungeon and forced to reanimate the dead leader of a small country so they can incite a war with their neighbors. Cabal's trickery and wit enable him to escape and then the real fun begins.

Impersonating a low-level bureaucrat, he stows away on an airship and somehow ends up in the center of a classic locked-room mystery and embroiled in politics. And he isn't alone, Leonie Barrows, the woman who so challenged him in [b:Johannes Cabal the Necromancer|5750628|Johannes Cabal the Necromancer|Jonathan L. Howard|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1255984649s/5750628.jpg|3565583] is onboard ship and insisting upon turning him over to the authorities at the earliest possible time.

He's still the same old pompous Cabal we love to hate but for some reason, one even he doesn't understand, he keeps coming back to save the day. ( )

I read the first book in this series with great delight and not a little sadness when my favorite character died in it. But I hold out hope (feh, I know he comes back in subsequent books, for which I am glad). Horst is a necessary leven to Johannes Cabal, and I felt his absence in this second book of the series.

It took me an abysmally long time to read this relatively short book, and part of that was, despite the dark humor and interesting observations that were sprinkled in, the central concept of the novel was a sort of Christie mystery -- passengers on a ship when one is mysteriously discovered to have committed suicide -- or maybe not. The ship board mystery portion of the book was a bit draggy and lost my interest.

But Howard is a capable author, so when I resolved to finish this book before embarking on the next, I had hope things would get more interesting. And, they did! A little chemistry, a little necromancy, a lot of skulking around, and another glimpse into the distant event that set Cabal upon his path to conquer death. So, it was worth reading, even if it seems to be a divergence from the overall arc set up in the first book. ( )

I love this series! The writing is wonderful - beautifully constructed sentences, fabulous vocabulary, excellently formed characters.
In this second book, Cabal attempts to steal a book, making yet another enemy, gets entangled in odd circumstances aboard an 'aeroship', all the while (mostly) keeping his cool.

Two of many fabulous quotes:

"Pure brute logic overruled any silly murder shenanigans by pointing out the suicide note, the locked room, and then proceeded to wave Ockham's razor around in a threatening manner." p.122

"Furthermore, she is a member of the Mirkarvian gentry, and they seem very political creatures. I'm sure they read Machiavelli in the nursery, and practise by setting their dolls against one another." ( )

I really can't stress enough that the dry humor, sarcasm, and just overall sort of way of describing things that JLH employs when he writes the Cabal books is wonderful and superb. Just as much of that in this one as in the first one.

Also, some recurring characters! I loved seeing Leonie Barrow again, especially since her part was much larger this time and that allowed us to really get an idea of who she is as a person because we got to see more of her and we got to see her interacting with Cabal more often and the way that they played off one another and interacted was just marvelous. I loved every second of it.

I loved this book's big bad. He, and they, were certainly interesting and good at being villains.

The majority of the book is set up like a parlor game murder mystery, except the murders are real. Death, intrigue, conspiracies, zombies, and a locked room mystery. We get so much awesome out of this book it's difficult to put down for too long a time period.

I will say, though, that there are parts that I found to be really tedious and boring, and those would be the technical bits about the aeroships and entomopters, and where things got too bogged down in second-by-second detail. At those points it was a little difficult for me to keep focused, but I think that while those parts weren't my cup of tea they would certainly be another type of reader's favorite parts of the book. So, don't let that stop you from reading it, especially since even though I admit there were some boring areas the overall book was a page-turner.

I think my favorite part is the last bit, the end where JLH explains Cabal's journey home through the point of view of a new character he met along the way named Enright.

Definitely fun to be had by all and worth every penny, and every second of time spent reading it. ( )

Necromancers can be detectives too. Of course if the necromancer in question is a certain Johannes Cabal, I suspect there are any number of things he could be. Metallurgist? Horologist? Alchemist? I rather like all these ideas. Now if only his creator, the unstoppable Jonathan Howard, would take note.

In any event, this time Cabal is trying to escape the authorities of some uptight country called Senza. Why? Because he's stolen a priceless and much-guarded book from its national library. To seal his escape, he dons the identity of one of its civil servants, and proceeds to board the Princess Hortense. This vessel, however, is not a ship, but an aeroship...it even comes with its own delightfully detailed diagram. It's a kind of zeppelin-meets-hot air balloon, and it is here that Cabal runs into some serious trouble. As though impersonating a somewhat-sociable civil servant weren't hard enough, now he has to contend with someone trying to off him by pushing him off the Hortense!

Leonie Barrow from the previous novel, Johannes Cabal the Necromancer, is a prominent character here too. The author does try to explain Cabal's and Leonie's antecedents, but readers who haven't read Necromancer might end up feeling a bit foggy. The rest of the cast though is brand new, and no one has any trouble being memorable. The format is classic old-world evening-dress and chit-chat laden, with the quintessential 'suicide or murder' question being presented early in the voyage of the Hortense. Cabal with his relentlessly probing brain notices things about the 'suicide'; very soon after he begins investigating comes the attempt on his life and then he really starts to play detective.

Read full review at: https://devikamenon.blogspot.com/2016/09/readings-johannes-cabal-detective.html ( )

It is interesting how different this is from the 1st book, the first was dark and bent on the occult, the second is a steampunk murder mistery. Johannes Cabal goes Agatha Christie this time. Both are witty and imaginative, main drawback for me are some inconsistancies in the storyline.

( )

fun and slightly sarcastic throughout; a tale of political plotting and murder on an airship in distant (vaguely middle Russian sounding) countries... It kept reminding me of The Ambassador with Mitchell & Webb - diplomatic tensions in Tazbekistan - which is no bad thing. I hadn't realised that this was book 2 when I picked it up, and will get around to book 1 on the strength of this. ( )

This is the second book in the Johannes Cabal series, and it's quite a bit different from the first installment. Though the humor is as detached and macabre as ever, the atmosphere is jarringly divergent, to the point where it almost feels like it is set in a different world. The Necromancer was centered around a carnival, and felt very dark and grim. This one is a steampunk mystery novel set on an airship, so it feels very different and it took me awhile to settle in.

After I recovered a bit from the change of scenery, however, I found myself enjoying The Detective just as much as the previous book. It's an intentionally stereotypical mystery, to the point where the cast is introduced to the reader over dinner and the murder happens directly afterward, in a locked room. That is sort of the point, and it doesn't matter anyway because if you are reading this book you are reading it for Cabal as a character, and I'm happy to say he is on point once again.

I loved it, and I'm already looking forward to reading the next book sometime in the future. ( )

Not as good as the first in the series, but the sheer cleverness of the writing is a winner! I was bogged down a bit in the steampunk aspect of this one. I think the aspects of the murders were a little more complicated than they needed to be and hindered the story. I found myself skimming, but the action and resolution at the end was satisfying.

Recommended ( )

I haven't read the first nor the third book but I find this one very exciting! Cabal is a very likeable character because he is smart, witty and definitely charming when he wants to be. He also retains much humanity in him even though he's a necromancer. He's an antihero, really.(and I like antiheroes) I think Howard had done a superb job writing this book and I'd definitely want to read the other two. Recommending this everyone! ( )

Murder on the Orient Airship. ( )

Oh, Johannes Cabal, you snarky, cynical, sarcastic ne’er do well, you are one amazing character to follow. Whether you are getting your soul back from the Devil, as you did in Book One, or out to solve a murder mystery, as you do in Book Two, you are nothing but pure and unadulterated fun.

It has been some months since infamous necromancer Cabal won his soul back in a daring battle of wits with Satan, but, lo and behold, he is back in trouble again. This time, he is under arrest for attempting to steal a rare text from a library in the small, revolutionary-hungry Mikravia. When the country’s emperor dies suddenly, Johannes is called upon to reanimate him… long enough for the late ruler to stoke the fires of revolution. But when that doesn’t go quite as the Mikravian government planned, Johannes goes on the run, fleeing the country aboard a new aeroship with a stolen bureaucrat identity in hand. And just when Johannes thinks he’s safe, a fellow passenger aboard the aeroship goes missing, and an attempt is made on Cabal’s life. Well, that is inconvenient. So with a sense of curiosity born from boredom, Cabal sets out to solve the mystery. Did the missing passenger really commit suicide? Was he murdered? And if it really was a suicide, why did somebody try to kill Cabal?

Yep, it’s all fun and games until Johannes runs into a former enemy – the delightful Leonie Barrow – whose interest in criminology means an unwilling partnership with the necromancer to solve the aeroship mystery.

Sparks fly. Barbs fly. Aeroships fly. This is one flying high novel with the love-to-hate-him Johannes continuing his unique brand of sarcastic and cynical humor as he gets to the bottom of the mystery. The Detective doesn’t have as much of the supernatural as The Necromancer – no devilish carnivals, ghosts, or trips to Hell in this one – but it still sings with the wit of the first novel, and is a respectable second in the series.

On to Book Three! ( )

While not as good as the first book, Johannes Cabal the Necromancer, I was still rather pleasantly surprised to see how Howard is able to write a black comedy full of biting wit and sarcasm and then turn around in this next book and provide readers with a rather good 'locked room' mystery. Cabal is still the unfeeling, self-serving erudite cad he was in book one, but we are now starting to see tiny chinks in his otherwise impenetrable facade. This man just may be capable of feeling something after all! Even better, and what made this story a delight to read, is Howard brings a character from book one to this story to act as both verbal foil for Cabal and to provide some assistance when Cabal, somewhat reluctantly, starts to poke around in the details of the mystery. An reluctant detective more interesting in preserving their own neck then in solving the case is always a fun character to throw into a mystery story, IMO, and Cabal plays that role perfectly. The mystery itself is a somewhat implausible one based on the method that is revealed, but I was more interesting in seeing Cabal's character development so I was focused on the mystery part of the story. The audiobook I listened to is not narrated by the same reader as the first one was, but one my ears adjusted to the new voice of Cabal, it was clear sailing from there.

Two very different books where the only consistency is in our lead character, the witty repartee Cabal engages in and the knowledge that something is bound to go wrong at some point in the story. If mysteries are more your thing and if you were put off by the premise for Johannes Cabal the Necromancer because you don't like black comedies or the idea of reading a book where Satan and the underworld are key players, you may be happy to learn that these books can be read as stand-alone novels, so feel free to bypass book one and dive directly into book two.

I am now super curious to find out where Howard takes the story in book three, Johannes Cabal the Fear Institute and what kind of mess Cabal manages to find himself in. ( )