Johannes Cabal the Necromancer by Jonathan L. Howard

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This is another book that I found searching various horror book lists. I really liked the cover and thought it sounded interesting so I gave it a shot. For those of you who don't know what a Necromancer is I took the liberty of looking up the exact definition. Necromancer: a person who practices Necromancy; a Wizard or Magician. To further explain what I felt wasn't really explained all that well in the book; Necromancy is the conjuration of the spirits of the dead for the purposes of magically revealing the future or influencing the course of events. 

There, now that we have gotten the lesson portion of this review out of the way here is what this book is all about. Johannes Cabal wants to learn all he can about being a Necromancer so he strikes up a deal and walks into Hell to study and learn. One of the things I really got a kick out of in this book is that the fist torment of hell is none other than paper work. In order for Johannes to get into Hell he had to fill out mountains of paper work. One such document was 15,497 questions alone. I get it, paper work is hell and we have to deal with it every day in our own lives. Paper work on steroids is a great idea Jonathan Howard had to describe Hell. After awhile Cabal feels like he's had enough of Hell want wants his soul back so he can return to the world and continue his work here. Now, I'm not a very religious man but I would think, if you give you soul to Satan he's going to want a cookie to go with it. Wait, maybe that's if you give a mouse a cookie; anyway I'm pretty sure Satan isn't just going to hand it back and say that you for visiting we hope you return soon. 

You guessed it, Satan wasn't to happy to just hand back his soul. In exchange for one soul willingly given he wanted 100 souls to replace it. He even graciously gave Cabal a carnival/freak show to help him collect these souls. This book has a surprisingly lighthearted approach ti taking people's souls and sending them to Hell. There were a few instances that I just really had a problem with but for the most part the people they got to sign their lives away were people already on the road to Hell on their own. 

I started out very invested in this book and looked forward to every new chapter. A little over half way through I either lost that interest or things slowed down to much causing me to drift way from the story. By the time the book was over I was just happy that I could move on to something else. This is another one of those books that I didn't love or hate. I am very much in the middle of the road on this one. I see this is a series of books and I am interested in seeing what is next for Johannes Cabal but unless I can find the next book at my library I won't try all that hard to fins it. I give this book 3 out of 5 stars. 

I'm still loving the R.I.P. challenge and I'm very happy to add this to the review site. I have to say that I have read some great reviews from others in this challenge so I would urge you to check out some of the reviews that have been submitted for this challenge. 

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