Johannes Cabal: The Fear Institute
The Fear Institute
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4.8 • 4 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Johannes Cabal and his rather inexact powers of necromancy are back once more. This time, his talents are purchased by The Fear Institute as they hunt for the Phobic Animus - the embodiment of fear. The three Institute members, led by Cabal and his Silver Key, enter the Dreamlands and find themselves pursued by walking trees plagued with giant ticks, stone men that patrol the ruins of their castles, cats that feed on human flesh and phobias which torment and devastate. The intrepid explorers are killed off one by one as they traipse through this obfuscating and frustrating world, where history itself appears to alter. Cabal, annoyed that the quest is becoming increasingly heroic, finds himself alone with the Institute's only remaining survivor, and after a shockingly violent experiment, begins to suspect that not everything is quite as it seems...
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Having determined that the greatest impediment to human progress is fear, Messrs. Bose, Corde, and Shadrach of the Fear Institute seek the assistance of Johannes Cabal (first seen in Johannes Cabal the Necromancer and Johannes Cabal the Detective) in hunting down and eliminating the very spirit of fear, the Phobic Animus itself. They will seek it in the Dreamlands first written of by H.P. Lovecraft, where they must confront ghouls, terrifying wooden automata, devious slavers, and hungry cats, and Cabal's own arrogance will be sorely tested by the god Nyarlathotep. Howard's affectionate, witty homage to Lovecraft's dream stories, complete with early-20th-century setting and language, is an enjoyably macabre comic adventure, and his antihero Cabal is, for all his overweening self-confidence, an engaging protagonist whose heart is not quite as hard as he would like to pretend. Howard capably handles the confusing and mutable world of the Dreamlands and several intriguing twists in the plot, and the concluding cliffhanger makes it plain that he is far from finished with his sardonic wizard.
