Johannes Cabal the Necromancer — Review by Chris

Johannes Cabal isn't your typical necromancer, if such a thing exists. First of all, he's a little unconventional (and the opening chapter will give you a clue). Second, he doesn't give a damn about what Satan thinks, wants or expects. Third, he'll get his soul back at any cost — no matter what's thrown at him.

In the spirit of Christopher Moore, Jonathan L. Howard crafted a clever, funny and unique book about life, death and everything else in between, courtesy of Johannes Cabal the Necromancer.

In this debut novel, Cabal has taken a road less traveled. He's become a necromancer, not a typical career choice in England (or anywhere else on the planet). He's taken the additional step of trying to ensure his success by selling his soul to Satan to succeed at this endeavor.

Alas, he's learned that lacking a soul throws a necromancer's experiments off just enough to mess up the works. Like a stomping baker, everything Johannes attempts falls flat.

He isn't going to take this lying down. He makes a wager with the Big Guy (Down Under): he will bring Satan 100 souls in a year's time or he loses his soul. Forever. Again. In nasty ways.

Knowing Satan doesn't make a bet he can't win, Johannes takes the wager and finds himself saddled with a traveling carnival. In a word, "Eeeeew." If you were skeeved by human carnies, the folks on this train will keep you awake at night — but in a humorous way.

This book could have been dark and foreboding, brooding and wicked. Instead, it careens toward the dark, nicks just enough to make it interesting, then puts a different spin on the story.

Take Horst. He's Cabal's brother, but he's so much more. He's a vampire, but he's not without some morals. He knows his brother (better than one imagines) and has, as brothers are wont to do, seen his brother at his worst and best. Horst is brought on because (a) he will play along and (2) he knows what people want. And he does, to an extent — he can recognize a damned soul from a hundred paces, and he knows what attracts them. But does he play along, really? What does it take, and what would it cost?

Horst is not alone. Johannes is surrounded by an interesting collection of creatures who know their roles and their positions. They know their jobs and they perform them well. The characters Johannes meets along the way make the tale intriguing in surprising ways.

Can Johannes collect a hundred souls with a ragtag carnival inconceivable to the Prince of Darkness himself? Can he do it without losing any more of what makes him a man? Can he use his talent to gain his talent? Can anyone beat Satan at his own game?

With wit and surprises, laughs and truly incredible moments, Howard crafts a compelling and entertaining story. I was captured by the first scene and riveted before I reached the end of the first chapter. I cared: about Horst, Cabal, Bones, the Laytex Lady — even the criminally insane escapees. The story unfolded with grace and precision, and I enjoyed it greatly. The carnival was reminiscent of (but nowhere near as dark and evil as) Ray Bradbury's classic Something Wicked This Way Comes, whom Howard credits in the book's acknowledgements.

Rumor has it that there is a sequel planned. I'm glad, in part because I really need the end explained to me — and a second book is a lovely way to do it.

Pick up this book, and thank Emily at Borders for the recommendation. (I already did.)

Virginia Festival of the Book — Dracula vs. Frankenstein: A Monster Mash of Fact and Fiction

Do you have a collection? An interest? An obsession? If you are, you are very much like two of the presenters at the Virginia Festival of the Book: Susan Tyler Hitchcock, a Frankenstein expert (among many things), and Paul Bibeau, a fan of vampires.

Bibeau was literally scared into his obsession, with a tormenting older sister who knew her brother’s Achilles heel and popped out of dresser drawers and from behind doors wearing glow-in-the-dark fangs. Years later, his new wife would find herself spending her honeymoon in Romania looking for Vlad the Impaler’s castle (which Bibeau knew was not in Transylvania). His obsession led to his book Sundays with Vlad: From Pennsylvania to Transylvania, One Man's Quest to Live in the World of the Undead.

Hitchcock was a fan of Mary Shelley’s creation since her youth. Not only did she collect all things Frankenstein, she became the expert who could teach “Technology in Literature” to engineering majors and knew from research the 1818 novel by the then-teenager was the first novel that featured machinery and technology. Among her books is Frankenstein: A Cultural History.

The two authors were pitted “against” each other in the discussion “Dracula vs. Frankenstein,” which was rollicking good fun and a treat for the mind as well as the funny bone. These two very knowledgeable and passionate authors discussed the origins and paths of their very famous subjects.

These two legends present vastly different characters: one recognized as evil and one ambiguous in his intentions. Mary Shelley never villainized her creature, nor did subsequent tellings of the tale, plays and stories based on this unfortunate creation. In fact, Hitchcock agreed with Carole that the created human being was more a creature to be pitied. It was instead his creator, Victor Frankenstein, who rejected his creation at the moment of his birth, that caused the creature feel disconnected and unloved, and to lash out in response.

While we loosely use the word “monster” to describe him, Hitchcock noted that he was not an evil creature. Unlike Dracula, whom even Bram Stoker identified with the Devil, Frankenstein “allows us the hope of goodness. He was not made bad.” In fact, she said Sara Karloff, daughter of the man whose performance in the first movie defined the character for generations to come, noted that her father never called hima “monster,” just “the creature.”

“To know [Frankenstein] is to know ourselves,” Hitchcock noted.

Bibeau, in contrast, noted the “deep-down” evil in the myth of Dracula. Whether Stoker was familiar with the legend of Vlad the Impaler is up to debate or just used the name as his inspiration, Americans have made him their own. “Americans are always looking for the legend beneath the story,” Bibeau noted. “Why couldn’t the Romanians take the legend of Vlad the Impaler and make money on it? Because he belongs to us.”

Interestingly enough, the two creatures, though created nearly a century apart, have been almost inseparable from the beginning. At the time Shelley wrote her “ghost story,” a fellow storyteller conceived The Vampire. In the mid- and late 19th century theater, these two stores were paired in performances.

Stoker’s Dracula was a novel very much based in the fears of the time, Bibeau noted, and was very much a treatise on immigration. At the turn of the 20th century, it was said “the sun never set on the British Empire.” While this put English culture in every country, it also allowed for other cultures to affect England.

“In 1897, when Stoker’s book came out, it was the story of immigration and the slipperiness of culture, and fears if tainting Anglo culture.” Think about it, he noted: the foreigner Dracula had a library full of English books and was planning to purchase land in the middle of London. Though he respected and valued this culture, his presence and ownership diluted the “purity” of Anglicanism.

Stoker equated Dracula with the Christian Devil, Bibeau noted. "In his notes, he wrote 'Dracula 'equals' Devil," he said, and an author can't really get more specific than that.

What fear did Frankenstein stoke? “The fear of possible negative consequences of doing something beyond our [capabilities],” Hitchcock noted. The fear remains in a world where sometimes science gets ahead of humanity; choose your poison.

Myself, I love “scary” stories with inexplicable creatures that incite fear. I have loved and feared both of these characters since my childhood and I was thrilled to hear these two authors discussing them in such an enlightened and joyful manner. It was one of my favorite events and I look forward to reading their books.

My friend Collin has an obsession with zombies, and I can’t wait to see how far he will take it. In fact, Carole, didn't he mention Max Brooks?

Book of Lost Things — Book Discussion Summary by Carole

I find the premise on which The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly is based just heartbreaking—a young boy’s mother dies, despite all of the elaborate rituals and routines that he performs in an obsessive-compulsive way. No matter what David does, he cannot save her. Gone is the mother who read to him when he was young and read with him as he grew up--wonderful fairy tales and adventures yarns and exciting quests. When she dies, he feels these books are all he has left of her. He feels like he has lost the best part of himself.

His father quickly remarries and has another child, which creates a fissure in his relationship with David. They move to the new wife’s country home that has been in her family for years. They leave London to avoid the Nazi bombing raids. The father’s work in cryptology keeps him away from home. The mounting uncertainty over how the war will affect their lives, David’s ongoing grief over his mother’s death, his rocky relationship with his stepmother, his disdain and jealousy over his baby half-brother, and his feeling of anger toward his father create an incredible amount of pressure and anxiety in David. He begins to have blackouts. He turns to his books more and more. He also is drawn to the even older stories that belonged to another boy in the family many years ago. These books begin to speak to David, and he begins to get glimpses of another world.

His father seeks psychiatric help for David, but it doesn’t really do him any good, because David knows that if he reveals what he is hearing and seeing, he will “be sent away.” After a particularly ugly argument with his stepmother, David hears the voice of his dead mother calling him. He heads out into the garden in time to see a Nazi plane spinning out of control heading right for him!

As he attempts to evade the plane, he hides in a hollow tree stump and suddenly finds himself in the fairy tale world he has envisioned.

But this is no Disney fairy tale. This is the true stuff of childhood nightmares.

The Group

Chris and I read this book along with the men in our lives and my teenage children. Everyone was captivated by the premise and found they were unable to put the book down. The conversation was lively, and it was not always easy to get a word in. Perhaps we need to set up a protocol for such things, but this is not a shy crow, and everyone had a great time. This was the first time that all concerned were able to finish the book, even if one of our party had to stay in the car for a few extra minutes to wrap it up. I call that dedication.

Chris originally thought of recommending this book to my son, but she hesitated because the sadness of the boy losing his mother was so pervasive as to be disturbing. I picked it up and read it. My daughter then became intrigued by it, read it, and proclaimed it an amazing story. Then the guys in our house each read it in preparation for this discussion. Alas, none of Chris’ fears materialized. These kids today are a hardy breed—things that leave me sobbing find them unmoved. They often sit patiently waiting for my hiccups to subside, the tears to stop flowing, and my sniffles to abate. I’m often good naturedly teased for my crying at the drop of a hat.

Back to our discussion—we all agreed that the Crooked Man was one of the creepiest antagonists that we had encountered in literature. His propensity to prey on weak children by appealing to their baser, cowardly impulses to preserve his own life, coupled with the fact that he has been doing this as long as there have been stories, makes him truly repugnant. Connolly’s description of David’s visit to the Crooked Man’s lair gave all of us the heebies and the jeebies.

As David travels through this strange land, he encounters people who help him, but time and again, he ends up alone to find his own way. Connolly’s depiction of David’s journey reflects David’s struggles to grow up without a mother and with a father who he sees as abandoning him. Our hearts went out to this boy, but we admired his resiliency. We lamented his losses—and we all agreed that they are many for this young boy—but we cheered his victories.

The ending of the book led to an interesting discussion as to the identity of the woman to whom David returns at the end of the book. In an interview, Connolly admits that he deliberately wrote an ambiguous ending, and he has been surprised at some readers’ interpretations. See what you think and let us know.

Our next book discussion will be World War Z by Max Brooks. We move from the stuff of children’s nightmares to that of adult horror.