Johannes Cabal: the Fear Institute
Beyond the wall of sleep lie the Dreamlands, a whole world formed by dreams, but not a dream itself. For countless millennia, it has been explored only by those with a certain detachment from the mundane realities of our own world, its strange seas navigated, and its vast mountains climbed by philosophers, and mystics, and poets.
Well, those halcyon days are over, beatniks.
Johannes Cabal is coming.
Cabal is employed by the mysterious Fear Institute to lead an expedition into the Dreamlands, an expedition whose goal is nothing less than to hunt and destroy the dread Phobic Animus, the font of terrors, the very source of all the world's fear. They will enter exotic lands where magic is common and monsters abound, see wonders, and suffer dreadful hardships. Cabal will encounter witches, vile abominations, and far too many zebras.
And, when they finally come close to their goal, Cabal will have to face his own nightmares, but for a man who communes easily with devils and the dead, surely there is nothing left to fear..
Published 2011
Howard's characters, relentless imagination, twisting plotlines, and use of language make the Johannes Cabal series a real pleasure to read, and The Fear Institute is the best Cabal yet.
Richard Kadrey, author of the Sandman Slim series
Every word of every page is carefully crafted and utterly precise and the whole thing is beautiful to read but, above all, it's so very, very funny. Jonathan L. Howard is a supremely talented writer and the Johannes Cabal series makes for superb reading. It would be easy at this point to say if you like Rankin or Fforde or Pratchett or Holt then you will love these books, but while it may well be true it would be doing Howard a disservice.
Sci-Fi-London
The spot-on work of a talented writer.
The Denver Post
A delightfully wicked and inventive story.
Keith Donohue, author of The Stolen Child
Howard's writing shines, sketching out a personality both fascinating and heartbreaking, on an adventure that reverberates from Dreamlands to the waking world, with a future that every reader must hope involves many more stories to come.
Bookgeeks
