David Katzman's Reviews > Johannes Cabal the Necromancer

Sometimes while I'm reading, descriptive phrases or concepts that I will use in my review will burst into my head (it’s not that I’m formulating my final opinion but that critical thoughts are sparked as I go along, both positive and negative) and soon after I had begun reading The Necromancer, I thought … this book is constructed like a video game. It starts with a quest for the main character. Turns out our anti-hero surrendered his soul to Satan, and the book starts out with him tricking his way back into Hell in order to demand it back. (Side note: Uhm? Really? And he thinks it likely because Satan is … a standup guy? So, he starts out behaving like a moron even though he’s supposed to be intelligent if rather clueless about common-sense matters.) Satan tells him, okay—if you get this dark soul-stealing carnival up and running and can steal me 100 souls in 1 year, then I’ll give you your soul back. Quest: check! His first mission: Get the carnival up and running. His second mission, figure out how the different elements of the circus will help him succeed at his mission. Each soul is a sub-mission. There are side-quests, etc. He seeks help from other characters (those played by the computer). Blah-blah-blah. Totally like a video game storyline. So then I was using my blow dryer on the book. (I’ll pause. I spilled water all over it, and I was planning to take it to the charity resale shop--Howard Brown, which raises funds for the healthcare needs of poor LGBT folks--that is next to the gay nightclub, which is next to my condo building, but I obviously couldn’t donate the book soaking wet.) And while I was blow drying it, the author page blew open, and I read thereon that the author of this book was a video game designer and scriptwriter.