The memoirs of a man who finds God, (is “saved”), then after many years as a journalist in the “religion beat”, joins the heathen fold of atheists.

I’m not in the habit of reading books about atheism, due to the fact that my own disbelief has matured to the level of not requiring external sources of argument or anecdote for the purpose of bolstering my faithless confidence. I decided to read this book with the false assumption that it would have information regarding the politics of religion in the American state.

However, my less-than-perfect rating for this book is not due to my disappointment in that assumption.

When first starting the book, I immediately decided that Lobdell’s writing was sub-par. However, as I continued to read, I realized that he’s not a bad writer; it’s simply that his writing style is ill-suited to the medium of a full-length book. I feel that his writing style is best suited for newspaper articles, and he should stick with that in the future.

The story itself was not entirely a waste, there were some interesting facts scattered here and there. I do feel, however, that it was an insufficient tale with less drama than is deserving of its own book. Basically, he found God, but lost his faith when he started to see extreme examples of “bad things happening to good people”.

Although I think this argument against God is a sufficient one, it’s nothing new and nothing to run home to mom about. Every atheist is aware of this argument, and every theist “knows” it’s crap. The fact that this was enough to make him lose his faith, without much else affecting it, makes me think his faith wasn’t really there in the first place, making the whole pivotal climax of the story less than climactic.

As a former Mormon, I could relate to the chapter about ex-Mormons, and appreciated his observation that they were victims. I think, though, that some of his “facts” and statistics were inaccurate. (I could be wrong, but for example, I’m pretty sure it’s far more than 40% of Mormon men who serve missions, and I don’t remember ever being taught or reading that the Earth would be turned into crystal…)

I disagree with some of the conclusions he came to, not because of the conclusions themselves, but because of the way in which he came to them. For example, he chose not to tell his younger children about his lack of belief, and allowed them to continue to believe he was Christian, not to mention to believe in Santa Clause. I’m all for allowing children to come to their own conclusions, but he said he didn’t feel right telling children that their own father didn’t believe in God. Hello! It’s as if he still believed it was wrong to be an atheist!

I have to say I’m also disappointed with the fact that he didn’t really spend any time exploring other options. I mean, I suppose he may have left out his investigations into Buddhism, Muslim, Raelianism, Satanism, or any other manner of religion, but it seemed to me that he just abandoned Christianity and said “There’s no Christianity so there’s no God or spirituality of any kind at all!” To me that’s not a very informed decision. Granted, for the most part I agree with that conclusion, but an un-educated conclusion that’s correct is no better than a downright wrong one.

Anyway, I wasn’t very impressed with this book, but as a fellow heathen I could relate with enough of it to make it mildly entertaining and just barely worth the time I spent reading.

“Johannes Cabal the Necromancer” is a light and humorous Faustian tale, involving a man named Johannes Cabal who decides that trading his soul to Satan years prior had been a mistake. He confronts Satan, striking a deal with him to get his soul back by convincing one hundred other people to sign their souls over to the devil. Satan “helps” Cabal by giving him a carnival and an allotment of Satanic power to raise the dead or place hexes on inanimate objects.

I have never read any other stories based on the original Faustian tale, so I cannot compare this to others. By itself, however, this book is an entertaining read. I wouldn’t call it hilarious, but more of a “chuckler”, as I call it. There were, however, several points when I did laugh out loud while reading it.

My main criticisms are related to the “believability” of the story. Now I know, this wasn’t meant to be realistic, but I was disappointed with the lack of logic used. For example, Cabal is apparently free to use any and all means of getting people to sign the contracts. As it was explained in the book, all he really had to do was tell a hundred kids that if they signed the form they would get a free piece of candy, and he’d be done. Due to the lack of restraints, it should have been extremely easy for him to accomplish his goal, yet he went about it the hard way. Illogical, in my opinion, and a blight on the story.

Another criticism I have is related to the lack of philosophical dialogue regarding the idea of selling one’s soul to the devil in return for knowledge. This is a personal criticism, which would not bother very many people. I guess the book was meant to be more of an humorous narrative than a philosophical discussion, but I was disappointed not to find any reference to the implications of the Faustian plot line.

The main character, Johannes Cabal, I found to be a very interesting and intriguing character. He’s sarcastic in nearly everything he says, and calm and cool in nearly every situation. I enjoyed his character extremely, and wish we could have learned more about him.

Which brings me to the final criticism. I think this book should have been twice as long as it is. There seemed to be a great deal of things which were not talked about which I think should have been. Granted, there were certain aspects of the history left out for “intrigue” purposes, which is fine, but I feel like this book was rushed and that we didn’t learn enough about…well, everything, as we should have.

All that being said, though, between the humour and the interesting personality of Cabal himself, I found this book well worth reading.