Cabaret of Dread - Lily Childs - 5*

Cabaret of Dread

Lily Childs

*****

A terrifying collection of short horror stories by dark fiction author Lily Childs. These forty-three offerings comprise eleven long tales, including the previously unpublished.

Words spill from the babbling mouths of demons and murderers throughout Cabaret of Dread, combining fear and even humour as the reader encounters serial killers and ghosts, historical entities and psychopaths, not to mention a scuttling vampire or two.

Cabaret of Dread is extreme horror FOR ADULTS ONLY. Ethereal and spiritual elements battle with the visceral and the insane; lustful adoration dallies with laboured, lingering death. The Cabaret will shock, it may well offend. But it is beautiful – at least in the author’s mind – and that’s where the darkness lies.

Lily Childs is a descriptive Queen. A marvel of the writing world and incredibly underrated for how excellent her work is. Each story, whether it was a paragraph or several, was spun with gold from fingertips dripped in dark poison. The tales were grotesquely wonderful and darkly delightful.

Each story is brilliantly done, a piece of their own. A rich, woven world that we can only marvel in for the time we are there amongst the pages. Gory and descriptive, but alluring and magical, there isn’t a single tale in this compendium that is below par. Lily Childs is a force to be reckoned with and this is my first but not certainly my last purchase from her.