I finished Johannes Cabal: The Necromancer by Jonathan L. Howard. It is eccentric, shameless, filled with references to books that inspired it and dark. Some parts were written with tongue planted firmly in cheek, I would say more like early Piers Anthony than Douglas Adams, but it is not a light-hearted story.
The protagonist is a self-centered, murderous, anti-social ass. That is not a spoiler. He’s an anti-hero and a jerk and it shows from the start. There is nothing to recommend this man as a decent human being. He leaves a wake of physical and spiritual devastation behind him with cold and cruel abandon. Why, then, did I read it? Well, it starts out with dark humor and I was curious as to how the plot would be resolved. By the time it got really nasty – no blood or gore, just evil – I wanted to see how it ended and it goes pretty quickly.
There are flaws – it’s too fast in places, not focusing on some plot points fully enough, and it lets a few threads get away and doesn’t let others develop fully. That could be the author or required editorial changes. Regardless, they weren’t catastrophic. To the author’s credit he managed to make a book with exceedingly dark themes and an unredeemable protagonist entertaining.
Definitely this was a book for October and Halloween.
And now, Bradbury.
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