Johannes Cabal the Necromancer

This book/ series is awesome, it hits so many of my weird inclinations. It reminds me a bit of Chuck Palahniuk. Very fun read, very unique take. Scientist necromancer Johannes Cabal who disdains human interaction challenges Satan to a bet. He must get 100 people to sign their souls over in a year by running a train carnival fueled by Satan's blood and staffed with his own creations/ minions.

Lovecraft meets Bradbury in the novel debut of Johannes Cabal, a Necromancer of some little infamy, who has decided that when he sold his soul to the devil for insight into the Necromantic arts that he got the short end of the stick. The story begins with the titular character (hero he is not) soullessly marching passed the queues of Hell to speak to the man in charge himself with such acidic animosity even the demons look twice. Eventually a deal is struck, as the Devil is prone to do, that Cabal can earn his soul back in return for one hundred more souls within a year. The Devil gives him a vehicle for such a large order by means of a demonic carnival to lure in the souls. And as far as deals goes it's not a bad one, that is unless you happen to be a soulless scientist who does not understand why anyone would go to the carnival to begin with let alone one that is run by demonic entities. So he enlists an old companion that he wronged to help him in his endeavor. This is the most basic of the basic build up to a delightful and immensely entertaining book and a fabulous beginning to a series about the most endearing anti-hero I've encountered in a very long time. The prose consists of a sort of series of vignettes at each stop on the carnival route as the hourglass drains before one "Hell" of an ending. Jonathan L. Howard is a master at crafting the most delightfully snarky and somber Cabal and his world with the richest vocabulary. I cannot recommend this book enough. It's outstandingly funny, it's dramatic, it's devastating, but overall it is the gateway to one of the greatest series of books I've ever had the pleasure to happen upon.