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The 9 Review Institute
Nov. 1st, 2013 03:21 pmHey,
Plowed through a couple more books this week. One was great and one was charming.
Let's start with the great. The long-awaited (seriously, this has been a good month for long-awaited sequels) is Johannes Cabal: The Fear Institute by Jonathan L Howard. This is the third book featuring Johannes Cabal, a pragmatic and acerbic necromancer who's on a great quest to end Death. For those of you who remember my old D&D game logs, this was the big inspiration for my wizard Adjo (although Mr. Cabal greatly disdains wizards -- he is a man of forbidden SCIENCE! thank you very much).
For this outing, Johannes is approached by the titular Fear Institute, a group dedicated to wiping out fear. To get at it, they will be entering the Dreamlands to track down the embodiment of fear. Yes, it's a Lovecraftian pastiche and, as befits a necromancer, ghouls play no small part in the story. Luckily, Cabal treats the Dreamlands and the dread Mythos gods as just one more irritating obstacle on his path to forbidden knowledge. So Cabal and his fellow travelers wander about through the Dreamlands trying to track down fear.
As always a very fun character who's a lot of fun to read. The book ends on an odious cliffhanger, however, and will be docked points accordingly. Considering how long it took to get this book out and there are no indications of a fourth book, my annoyance faintly mirror's Cabal's own...at just about everything.
Still, a long-awaited book and a great read.
Next, I zipped through the short but sweet Nine Goblins by T. Kingfisher. This is a comedic fantasy book. The goblins in the story are part of a larger goblin army that's at war with the humans and elves for disrupting their territory. During a major battle, these goblins rush a wizard to tries to teleport away at the last second but carries them along.
This translocation takes them deep, deep behind enemy lines into an elven forest. Resigned to a long hike back, they encounter a kindly elven veterinarian (first described shoulder-deep up a unicorn's backside) and then a mysterious disaster.
Like I say, it's a sweet charming book and a lot of fun to read. It has some original skewers for standard fantasy tropes and it pulls you right along to the end. Good filler reading between weighter material.
later
Tom
Plowed through a couple more books this week. One was great and one was charming.
Let's start with the great. The long-awaited (seriously, this has been a good month for long-awaited sequels) is Johannes Cabal: The Fear Institute by Jonathan L Howard. This is the third book featuring Johannes Cabal, a pragmatic and acerbic necromancer who's on a great quest to end Death. For those of you who remember my old D&D game logs, this was the big inspiration for my wizard Adjo (although Mr. Cabal greatly disdains wizards -- he is a man of forbidden SCIENCE! thank you very much).
For this outing, Johannes is approached by the titular Fear Institute, a group dedicated to wiping out fear. To get at it, they will be entering the Dreamlands to track down the embodiment of fear. Yes, it's a Lovecraftian pastiche and, as befits a necromancer, ghouls play no small part in the story. Luckily, Cabal treats the Dreamlands and the dread Mythos gods as just one more irritating obstacle on his path to forbidden knowledge. So Cabal and his fellow travelers wander about through the Dreamlands trying to track down fear.
As always a very fun character who's a lot of fun to read. The book ends on an odious cliffhanger, however, and will be docked points accordingly. Considering how long it took to get this book out and there are no indications of a fourth book, my annoyance faintly mirror's Cabal's own...at just about everything.
Still, a long-awaited book and a great read.
Next, I zipped through the short but sweet Nine Goblins by T. Kingfisher. This is a comedic fantasy book. The goblins in the story are part of a larger goblin army that's at war with the humans and elves for disrupting their territory. During a major battle, these goblins rush a wizard to tries to teleport away at the last second but carries them along.
This translocation takes them deep, deep behind enemy lines into an elven forest. Resigned to a long hike back, they encounter a kindly elven veterinarian (first described shoulder-deep up a unicorn's backside) and then a mysterious disaster.
Like I say, it's a sweet charming book and a lot of fun to read. It has some original skewers for standard fantasy tropes and it pulls you right along to the end. Good filler reading between weighter material.
later
Tom
