This book was just what I needed after coming out of my Mockingjay funk. Mockingjay was brilliant, don’t get me wrong, but it also sucked my will to live in 7 loaded hours. I was in a daze for, like, two days. I think I could only move on to other books because my mom started reading it after I finished, preventing me from a re-read, and I got to meet up with my best friend to discuss and have group therapy over our very similar, life-ending experiences.

So yes, dry British humor was what I need More...

Jonathan L. Howard's writing is rich, wry, and creepy as fuck.

Admittedly, I had trouble getting into this book. I don't really understand why, honestly.
Purgatory as a bureaucratic nightmare? A vampiric crypt-dwelling brother? A carnival of death, chaos, and latex ladies? Totally my style. So, the story inevitably grabbed me, especially as Cabal started collecting souls to exchange with Satan for his own lost soul, and Howard's imagination was given the chance to shine. An abusive boyfriend is More...

So... Johannes Cabal, The Necromancer... what to say about this book?

Let me put it like this, when I started I was expecting an enjoyable read, when I finished I was absolutely in love with this, its characters, its concept, its writing style, its universe... everything!


This book, for a start, is marvellously well written; it manages to be funny, dark, clever (very), sad and surprising, every scene hitting exactly the emotion it is aiming at. That is no small feat.
I found myself laughing out la More...

I tried. Oh how I tried. The premise for this book had me at hello. The audiobook starts out very charming and engaging with a winsome scene of Hell's bureaucracy. The dialogue is crisp, witty and very British. Narrator Christopher Cazenove reminded me of Alan Rickman, which is made of win for me.

Then there's the confrontation with Lucifer that's just as delightful and intriguing. Johannes Cabal is a Necromancer who traded his soul to the Devil. But now he needs it back. However, known neither More...

Did Goethe have a sense of humor?
A fantastic Faustian tale.

First of all, kudos to Jonathan L. Howard for giving us a protagonist prick. Definitely refreshing to read an anti-hero who has so few moral compunctions. The moral turpitude sways and rocks now and again, but the essence is there. All for none and Me for Me.
Also, just as refreshing, to read the English language written so well. Mr. Howard gives us our Johannes Cabal as an incredible wordsmith and he is a joy to read.

A Necromancer attem More...

A bunch of things annoyed me about this book. Most egregious is that it tried too hard to be funny... then it would get all serious and try to be moral... then it would go back to funny. Some of the humor wasn't bad, but the scenes in hell were especially grating. Just trying too hard for a Good Omens sort of dynamic--which, obviously, has been done. I'm a bit tired of whimsical hell stories, to be honest.

Secondly, actual carnies didn't/don't use the term "barker." And I'm pedantic enough to let More...

For me, this book was the perfect example of how important it is to read a book at the right time -- the last time I tried reading it, I distinctly remember thinking it was kind of . . . dull. I was so disappointed that it wasn't nearly as good as I thought it would be, and I put it down, not really sure I'd try it again in future.

At the urging of a GR friend, I decided to give it another try -- and it was like reading an entirely different book. I'm not really sure why I found it so dull last t More...

It can be very refreshing when the main character is a bit of a douchebag. The haughty, cold-hearted Johannes Cabal has sold his soul to the Devil in return for knowledge in necromancy. However, not having a soul, is throwing a wrench in occult studies, so he wagers with the Devil to get his soul back. He only has one year to sign over 100 souls to Hell or else forfeit his life and his soul forever. The Devil throws in a fiendish carnival to make things interesting. To call this book unusual see More...

The sort of book Tim Burton would write, if he wanted to write a book about a necromancer who's bet his soul on a wager with the devil and then travels the country side with a hellish fair. So, really, Burton should adapt this book.

Reclusive scientist Johannes Cabal wants his soul back. He travels to Hell, where a bored Satan proposes a wager: Cabal has a year to persuade one hundred people to sign over their souls. If he fails, he'll lose his own soul forever.

Cabal raises a crew of dead, enlists his own undead brother to help out, and proceeds to seek his hundred signatures. He has not expected to be doing so while running a travelling carnival, but that's the way things work out, and the weirdness of the Cabal Brothers' More...

Johannes Cabal is a necromancer, a cynic, and a bit of a prig (well, quite a bit, really). In this wildly--and intelligently--funny novel, Cabal's goal is to beat the Devil at his own game.

I'm not going to describe the plot because I don't want to spoil one second of the tremendous fun you'll have reading this book. I will simply say that the book, like Johannes himself, is by turns maddening, hilarious, frightening, gruesome, and touching. Sometimes all in the same paragraph. I almost wish I ha More...

This book was recommended to me by a friend, and I can't thank her enough for having fantastic taste in literature and everything else. It's so darkly whimsical and charming. And, at the same time, it tells a legitimately moving story about one man's wish to be slightly redeemed.

Johannes Cabal is a necromancer, and if you're a fan of fantasy and horror lit, then you should know what that is. Simply for the sake of accessibility, I'll tell you anyway. Johannes Cabal has magical power over the de More...

If I start off saying “one of the best things—” I will never say anything else, so instead I'm going to begin with a key factor in the novel: its sense of humour. Some might call it 'dry', and others might describe it as 'British', but I consider it 'dark'. The perspective is limited mostly to the titular character and Cabal's opinions on the world would put the most bitter and cynical teenagers to shame. To put it simply, if you, as a reader, are not drawn to at least sympathise with a highly i More...

Aie! Ftagn! Ftagn! Cthulhu
Cosmic horror coming to you,
The Old Ones are back now with a view to
Sucking out your brains!

A rollicking chorus from a song sung by Rufus Maleficarus “and his army of the mad” in one of the less edifying episodes in the career of Johannes Cabal (and if you are anything like me, quite enough to whet your appetite for hearing about the rest of that career, or at least the year covered by this novel.)
Johannes is not a nice person. His garden is “a remand home for criminal More...

I enjoyed Johannes Cabal the Necromancer so much that I didn't want it to end. I would stop reading and sigh at the realization that the number of remaining pages was slowly shrinking. Usually these pauses occurred after laughing uproariously at Cabal's adventures.

This is a wicked little book in the best sense of the word. Cabal (the necromancer) discovers to his annoyance that he shouldn't have traded his soul to Satan because he needs it after all and goes back to Hell to get it. Satan propose More...

Johannes Cabal: The Necromancer centers around the main character, Johannes Cabal, who is ( you guessed it!) a Necromancer. Cabal must obtain 100 souls, all obtained with the help of a carnival within a year, in order to reclaim his soul. Here we wonder, why does the seemingly immoral Cabal need his soul? Although Cabal himself says he needs it in order to continue his experiments in Necromancy, this seems like a vague answer and one that is never made entirely clear.
Obviously Cabals supposed More...

I enjoyed the use of language and imagery, for the most part. I think I liked the ideas a bit better than the execution, and wish the story was a bit more compelling. This wasn't a novel that I absolutely had to stay up all night reading just to know what would happen next.

Basically, Johannes Cabal is a necromancer who makes a deal with the devil to win back his soul, given up to learn mastery over death. He must garner one hundred souls over the course of a year, with only a beat-up old carniva More...

This book drew me in from about ten feet away on the shelf. The whole thing is beautiful and feels old in your hand. The story of Johannes Cabal’s fight with the devil takes place in a demonic fair ground, where he is charged with stealing away 100 people’s souls in a year in order to exchange it for his own (which he carelessly sold to the devil a few years back). The fair ground staff work for him but are, in the end, loyal to Satan, making for an interesting dynamic between Johannes and his c More...

Bought it at HPB this afternoon and finished it this evening. This was a fun read!

Johannes Cabal is a necromancer, mostly merciless and disdainful of common people. He's nearly fearless, too, which is good because he's made a few deals with the Devil.

The first is his soul for the secrets of the necromancer. But the second is where the story really starts. Johannes wants his soul back.

He and the Devil make a wager: He has one year to contract 100 souls for Satan or he sacrifices not only his so More...

An update on the standard Faustian tale, Johannes Cabal starts out strong and then gradually peters out over the remainder of its run. The problem with retelling an old tale -- Faust's -- is that the audience knows the basic contour because we've heard versions on it for so long. This is a fun book with some great parts but it doesn't do quite enough to elevate itself out of the murk it intentionally places itself in. In my opinion this is because it spends so little time on its characters. Inst More...

Johannes Cabal has a problem, to become a Necromancer he had to sell his soul to Satan but much to his chagrin he’s discovered that without that fundamental piece of himself, his success in bringing the dead back to life is nil. What to do? Johannes marches down into Hell, bypassing the endless line of souls awaiting entrance but stymied by the bureaucratic red tape required, and makes a bargain with the Devil himself. Given one year and the use of a decrepit and sinister (you expected anything More...

Somehow, I'd gathered the impression that Johannes Cabal the Necromancer was a serious novel. My mistake... and one that was corrected quite quickly, in fact, just as soon as Cabal has his first encounter with a demon.

This is a funny book, a wacky situation comedy of a book... Johannes Cabal is a great character, utterly serious himself, and that contrast between his sober determination and the situations he finds himself in is what makes this book as funny as it is. Well, that, and the sort of More...

Johannes Cabal tritt den unangenehmen Weg in die Hölle an, nein nicht tot, sondern quicklebendig und unangenehm sind eigentlich nur dir Formulare, die er am Eingang ausfüllen soll. Er hat eine Verabredung mit Satan, den der hat etwas, was Johannes wiederhaben möchte: seine Seele. Nicht da Johannes seine Seele wirklich fehlen würde, jahrelang kam er prima ohne sie zurecht. Das Problem ist einfach, dass sie oder besser das Fehler der Seele, seine Messergebnisse versaut, denn Johannes ist Nekromant More...

I got this book on loan from a friend. It sounded right up my alley, a darkly humorous book about a necromancer. It was a wonderful book; creative and intriguing, with just the right touch of dark humor combined with thoughtfulness to give it a darkly ironic, yet meaningful feel.

Johannes Cabal sold his soul to Satan in return for the knowledge of Necromancy. Now he finds that not having a soul is causing problems with his research and he wants his soul back. He makes a deal with Satan...if he ca More...

Cabal is another one of those difficult books to review. On the one hand it’s any interesting concept piece…where does an evil carnival come from (thank you Bradbury for the idea….Something Wicked This Way Comes)…but on the other it lacks all the components of a compelling read.

First a little about the narrative. This is your basic quest narrative…a necromancer sets off to win his soul back from Satan by finding one hundred souls/people to damn in his place. The vehicle for this ‘damnation game’ More...

Awful, worthless shit.

Cabal wins the award for most unrealistic and stupidly one-dimensional character, hands down; he blunders through the half-realized Goethe-via-Christopher Paolini landscapes like a retarded tax collector, blindly following instructions without voicing his opinions or even doing so much as to emote at all. However, Meursault he is not; the apathy and neutrality are replaced by obliviousness and irrationality. The rest of the characters, while not as offputting as the hero, a More...

This book was a joy to read. Aside from one criticism I would highly recommend Johannes Cabal to anyone interested in the macabre. Jonathan Howard brings to the page the tenor of Something Wicked This Way Comes and the wit of Christopher Moore, with a healthy dose of the endearing antics of John Constantine. Tragic and funny this romp through the world of infernal carnies did nothing less than make me scramble to read the next installment, Johannes Cabal: the Detective. Well written with a hint More...