Novella Readathon #19: Cabaret in Flames

Last year one of my favorite reads was Pueyo’s debut novel But Not Too Bold, which was a delightfully gothic monster romance – with an emphasis on monster. Cabaret in Flames was one of my most anticipated releases of the year, and I’m mostly disappointed in it. As with some of my other three star novella reviews, I still think it’s worth a look for readers who are excited about the specific premise and tone of Cabaret in Flames, but not for a more general audience. 

Elevator Pitch:
Ariadne is a doctor, and her patients are Guls, creatures with unnaturally long lives who can feed only on human flesh and blood. When a strang Gul comes looking for her 5-years vanished mentor, she is forced to confront her dark past that Erik saved her from. This Gul, Quaint, wants to find Erik and asks for Ariadne’s help as they travel to a Rio De Janerio club that serves Guls almost exclusively. 

What Worked for Me
Cabaret in Flames does its best to balance a few different tones. Obviously strong horror and romance components, though both take a bit more of a backseat than I was expecting. A heavier emphasis was placed on the psychological intensity of Ariadne processing her trauma, as well as some mystery elements as she searches for Erik. Plus, political unrest in Brazil hangs over the story like a baby mobile. Unlike some other books that jumped around quite a bit, I thought this one actually had a really good sense of scope. Yes Pueyo is mashing together a bunch of different elements while also exploring multiple locations and plot points, but I never felt like the pacing suffered because of that. Even Ariadne’s physical disabilities – she is a quadruple amputee by the hands of the same men who raped her repeatedly as a child – were handled excellently, a constant presence in her life even though Pueyo chose to not make this disability central to the story.

Pueyo’s worldbuilding around Guls was interesting. We see several different personalities, and the novella avoids painting them as a monolith. As with her previous novella, Pueyo provides us with a story where their monstrous nature isn’t actually the scary part – a romantic plotline would be hard to weave together without this. The real cruelty comes from the ones who choose to do horrible things, not simply that they eat other humans. There were some light worldbuilding elements about how many Guls consumed their human friends who had reached the end of thei natural life, and I generally would have loved to see more of Gul culture.

What Didn’t Work for Me
Pueyo’s prose kept me hooked in But Not Too Bold despite monster romances not really being my thing. It’s a book that I shouldn’t have liked, but which captivated me because of her skill with language. Cabaret in Flames did not have the same page-turner intensity, the jewel-toned language, or the deft skill with dialogue that is both convincingly realistic and cinematically dynamic. Instead, the whole story feels like a foggy day. Everything seems a little muted. Ariadne’s psychological struggles covered some really dark content, but I never felt the emotional intensity that I assume Pueyo was going for. The Guls are not inherently evil, but I thought that the level of gore in this story was far more restrained than it should have been, especially when I read this book so close to The Salt Grows Heavy. 

There’s just nothing that I can grab in this book and lift above my head to say, this was great, and I wish more authors wrote like this. I can’t even blame loss of meaning between Portugese and English, because Pueyo translated both of her novellas on her own – which, major kudos for that. Everything just felt a little tepid in this book, like Pueyo was afraid of going bigger and bolder with the story. This just barely avoided being a book I didn’t finish, and only because Pueyo is an author whose previous work I enjoyed. I was hopeful that she would become an auto-buy author for me, but now I’ll probably only pick up her next work, a full length novel, if it gets good reviews. 

Conclusion: an underwhelming second novel. Only recommended if you like dark romance whose characters have intense trauma. Even in that specific niche, I’m sure there are better examples out there.