Cabaret in Flames

by Hache Pueyo

A riveting Latin American dark horror-fantasy about two survivors finding one another amidst monstrous creatures and a brutal political regime, perfect for fans of Silvia Moreno-Garcia and T. Kingfisher

Guls can be brutal. Few people know this better than Ariadne, who lost half her body to their appetites, but she finds their brutality a predictable constant amid the political chaos of Brazil. Now she treats them in the specialized clinic she inherited from Erik Yurkov—the mentor who rescued her from captivity as a child, trained her in medicine, built her prostheses, and then disappeared without a trace.

Ariadne’s routine is disturbed when a dapper gul covered in tattoos knocks on her door, introducing himself as Quaint and claiming to be Erik’s oldest friend. As unsettling as the presence of a healthy adult gul can be, there is something familiar—almost intimate—about him. Quaint suspects foul play in Erik’s disappearance, and his suspicion proves real when they discover Erik sought asylum at Cabaré, an infamous club in Rio de Janeiro frequented by the gul elite.

Together, Ariadne and Quaint will unravel the conspiracy behind their friend’s disappearance, navigate the labyrinthine world of Ariadne’s memories, and discover what Erik means to them—and what they are starting to mean to each other.

Genres: Horror, Fantasy, Vampires, Novella, Adult, Fiction, LGBT

176 pages, Hardcover

First published March 10, 2026

About the author

Hache Pueyo is the Argentine-Brazilian writer and translator of Cabaret in Flames, But Not Too Bold and A Study in Ugliness & Outras Histórias. She won an Otherwise Fellowship for her work with gender in speculative fiction, and her short stories have appeared as H. Pueyo in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, and The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, among others.

Reviews

[Zoë · Rating 4 out of 5]

this is the vampire weird lore I want thank you

[♥Milica♥ · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to love this sooo bad, but I was left a bit underwhelmed. The thing is, so much was going on, and the novella was packed with worldbuilding, so the bones were there, but I think I would've liked it much better as a longer read.

The pacing left some to be desired, the story jumped from one thing to another, the characters barely had any development, and I honestly didn't like the writing here as much as I did in the author's previous work (but it wasn't bad).

The book deals with some heavier subjects, so be aware of that going in, and it's a bit more romance focused than it should've been, in my opinion. But, I would still recommend giving it a try, you might like it more than I did.

2.5

[Zana · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars.

I absolutely loved the dark and creepy worldbuilding. You've got monster people eating human flesh and drinking human blood, creepy human experimentation, human and guls having sex, etc. Super gross and super cool.

But since this is a novella, it felt like too much worldbuilding for too little payoff.

I know it's totally unfair to say that the novella word count is too short, but I think that this story would definitely work so much better as a novel. There was so much going on—too much going on tbh—that the story begged for a much longer word count.

Also, I'm not an insta-love fan, so the romance didn't work for me. It felt like it came out of nowhere. I'm happy for the characters and all, but I wish there was more of a buildup. But then again, there's only so much you can do in a novella.

I'll take it for what it is. It was a dark read and exactly the type of thing I'm into, so I did enjoy it, despite all of my complaints. I really wish this was a duology because I would've loved to read more from this world and these characters. I wanted to revel in the dark fantasy and supernatural horror-ish vibes, but the story ended all too quickly.

Thank you to Tordotcom and NetGalley for this arc.

[Sadie Hartmann]

DNF
Title/Author: Cabaret in Flames
Format Read: digital ARC/netGalley
Pub date: March 10, 2026
Publisher: Tordotcom
Page Count: 160
Affiliate Link: https://bookshop.org/a/7576/978125037...
Recommended for readers who enjoy:
- Dark Fantasy/Horror/Translations/Romance
- Memories/Missing Persons/Mystery
- Creature-Features/Vampires
- Political themes
- Alternate histories/timelines *Brazil
- Mentors/Toxic relationships/Physicians
"Guls can be brutal. Few know this better than Ariadne, who lost half her body to their appetites. Now, she treats them in the specialized clinic she inherited from Erik Yurkov—the mentor who disappeared without a trace. Ariadne’s routine is disturbed when Quaint knocks on her door, claiming to be Erik’s oldest friend. Quaint suspects foul play in Erik’s disappearance, and they soon discover Erik sought asylum at Cabaré, an infamous club in Rio de Janeiro. Together, Ariadne and Quaint will unravel the conspiracy behind their friend’s disappearance, navigate the labyrinthine world of Ariadne’s memories, and discover what Erik means to them—and what they are starting to mean to each other."
__
Minor complaints:
- The storytelling style didn't appeal to me and it was the same for Not Too Bold but I thought I would try again

Final recommendation: I enjoyed the glam and dazzle of Rio de Janeiro, the mystery and suspense but I didn't enjoy the political threads of the story or the monster romance (which reminded me so much what I didn't like about But Not Too Bold). I guess this author's books just are not for me, and that's ok
Comps: The Fox and the Devil by Kiersten White (Gothic, Dark Fantasy, Physicians)

[Ana Dantas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read the original Portuguese version, and it was charming and impossible to put down. Can't wait for you all to meet Quaint, he's the sweetest ❤️

[Samantha (ladybug.books) · Rating 2 out of 5]

The pacing in this is a mess. It felt like chunks of the story had been cut out which often left me confused or unsatisfied. The ideas are cool but the focus is too narrow. This really does not work as a novella.

[Lukasz · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think I understand why people rave about Cabaret in Flames even if I didn’t fall for it quite as hard.

For me, it’s a solid 3/5.

A lot of it works, and when it works, it’s really good. The writing does the heavy lifting here. It’s moody, textured, and pulls you in. That dark, neo-noir vibe never lets up. Brazil feels gritty, and unstable. The gul society is predatory and elegant, and believable. The worldbuilding is top tier.

Ariadne makes a strong lead. She’s a quadruple amputee, survived a gul attack as a kid, now runs a clinic treating those same creatures. That push-and-pull (living with trauma, finding a way to coexist) hooked me. Her relationship with her body, her memories, just making it through the day, all of it comes across with real care.

Then Quaint shows up. Tattooed, ancient, and a gul who claims he’s Erik’s oldest friend. From there, the story splits: you get a slow-burn romance between Ariadne and Quaint, a grim thriller about Erik’s disappearance, political unrest bubbling up, a decadent cabaret where the gul elite party, and darker stuff - people getting taken for body parts.

The book jumps between romance, thriller, social drama, and gothic horror. Each part is solid, but when you piece them together, the mood gets choppy. I admired what the book tried to do more than I actually got lost in it.

Still, I should say: I’m in the minority. Most people seem to love this novella, and I totally see why. The prose is gorgeous. The way it handles trauma, survival, intimacy is intentional. The setting alone is worth a read.

So even if it didn’t quite win me over, I’d still tell people to check it out. Maybe I missed something obvious. Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been out of step with the crowd.

[Pennie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novella is a bold, boundary-breaking work—part mystery, part dark fantasy, part intimate character study—that refuses to fit neatly into any one genre. Within its lean page count, it grapples with some of the heaviest and most human themes: childhood sexual abuse, the long echo of trauma, disability and survival, the possibility of healing, and the complicated ways love can grow in the aftermath of devastation. It also doesn’t shy away from examining abuses of political power, systemic violence, and the fragile, chosen families people build to keep going.

The world itself is astonishingly vivid for a story under two hundred pages. Humans coexist with guls—creatures who resemble us only at a distance but possess inhuman speed, strength, and a hunger for flesh, blood, and bone. It’s a world that feels fully formed, brutal, and strangely beautiful. At the heart of it all is Ariadne, a woman who carries her trauma in both memory and body, her prosthetics a stark reminder of what was taken from her. When she teams up with Quaint, a gul whose ten sets of bone-splintering teeth are matched only by the unsettling pull she feels toward him, she is forced to confront the darkest corners of her past.

Their search for Erik—the man who rescued her long ago and rebuilt her broken body—pushes Ariadne into places she hoped she’d never revisit. Old wounds split open as she crosses paths with guls she once prayed to forget. Yet this time, she isn’t alone. Quaint walks beside her, a dangerous ally, a constant temptation. The deeper they go, the harder it becomes for Ariadne to understand whether her desire for him is a twisted echo of past horrors…or the beginning of something real and fiercely her own.

I’d recommend this book wholeheartedly to readers who don’t shy away from darkness, who want characters with edges, scars, and stories that demand to be felt. Although the novella incorporates supernatural and speculative elements, the true focus lies in the characters and the emotional gravity of their journeys. Readers who typically seek out creature-driven fantasy will find plenty to enjoy, while those who prefer human-centered narratives will discover a surprising amount of heart beneath the shadows.

There is violence and gore, but it is handled with restraint—enough to unsettle, never gratuitous.

I won this book through a Goodreads giveaway. That did not reflect my review at all.

[Dante Luiz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Will make a better review later, but I adore Ariadne and Quaint's dynamic so very much.

[Gretal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow, I honestly don't know what to say about this. Dark and thought-provoking, for sure. I definitely intend to keep reading works from Hache Pueyo.

[Tara · Rating 5 out of 5]

I feel like saying, 'what a fun romp into discovery and revenge' is out of place because the revenge part isn't right there but it's part of the discovery, also, with the content of this book 'fun' seems wild but you know what? *I* had fun.

This little novella is a sort of alternate Brazil where vampire-esque monsters (guls) have a hold on enough facets of the government to influence a curfew (that they are allowed out in) (mostly so they can eat people but for other reasons too), focusing on a human who's been wronged by these creatures before and yet after being saved as a child from a really dire place, learned to medically treat these same creatures. We meet her some time after her teacher/mentor/savior disappears, and a quiet man - gul - from his past appears. Together, they start unraveling the mystery of his disappearance, something that seeps as far as the government, and also, unravel their own connection. Also, cool future-tech prostheses that the main character has full control over how they are presented in exactly the ways she wants them to be.

Lots of contents warnings in a small package (mentions of the affects of CSA, violence, various mutilations), and this world was really rich even in a short 160 pages (it seems it started as a shorter story in Brazilian Portuguese and then was expanded into this novella! What a boon for us!) it was so easy to just get sucked in and stay very seated for the ride while also getting such a good feel for Ariadne's motivations and view of said world. I'd been meaning to read 'But Not Too Bold' for a while but you know how things get, so this was my first Hache Pueyo but definitely not my last??

Thank YOU to Tor (Tordotcom) for the eARC for the novella and NetGalley for hosting!

[Jamedi]

rtc

[Mimi Schweid · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely fantastic novella in a world I would happily take more from but I believe this is going to be a standalone novel.

Ariadne is a young woman living in a world with flesh-eating guls, a corrupt government and some trauma to unpack whether she wants to or not. This book is fast paced, gritty and the finest bit uplifting. I look forward to reading it again! And hopefully listening to an audiobook copy when it's out in March.

[Meg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ariadne isn't her name. Most of her body isn't hers either; she's had to reclaim the prosthetics made to replace the limbs consumed by the vampire-like guls who feast on human flesh. She's locked most of her past out of her mind. And yet she has followed in the footsteps of the man who rescued her and has become a gul-doctor. Her mentor/savior has vanished, though, and a new man comes knocking, a tattooed gul called Quaint. Quaint is strange, even for a gul, but it's in their best interest to locate Erik, even as it unwraps Ariadne's buried memories.

Weird short speculative fiction feeds my brain in the best way, and Hache Pueyo's brand of body horror delivers. My favorite speculative horror is atmospheric, setting a dark tone in a recognizable world. Set in an alternate-Brazil, Pueyo gives us the gritty underside and the glamorous nightlife of these horrifying creatures who live alongside humans. I'm not often one to gives comps for a book, but in this case, it evokes two favorite authors: Certain Dark Things by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Dr Greta Helsing by Vivian Shaw, with a darkness that is all Pueyo.

Thank you to Tordotcom for an eARC. Cabaret in Flames is out 3/10/2026.

[Sarah Blade · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked many aspects of this book. I think it did a lot of things right. The writing was beautiful and stylistically well-developed, some very serious themes were handled with care, the concept was unique and intriguing, and I think that the blend of genre elements like a central mystery, a romantic plotline, and the world-building characteristic of a fantasy was balanced well. I also think that the arc of this incredibly traumatized character being able to find love with someone who felt safe to her was done really well, and I really appreciate when a fantasy with romance is able to explore dark themes without letting issues with consent or the woman's safety bleed into their dynamic and make it into something toxic. It was a little fast, but I didn't mind it as much as I may have if their dynamic didn't feel so refreshing to me.

There were just a few parts of this novella that didn't quite land for me. I think the premise of guls that eat humans, yet live among them and are enabled to kill even human children due to government corruption, is a huge undertaking in terms of worldbuilding and in constructing the ethics of a society where that could happen. I don't think it was done poorly, but I almost feel like this novella could have done with being a short novel instead, because the characters directly initiated some conversations about how complicated their relationships with eachother are because of this biologically forced predator-prey dynamic, but I couldn't tell quite what the book wanted to say about it by the end. I feel like introducing "it's not even taboo that our species eat human children" and showing innocent humans being murdered in-scene several times, and then not bringing those really intense themes home to some sort of conclusion, even if nothing in the society truly changes, felt a little underdeveloped for me.

That said, I still really liked this novella, and I think for the right reader it would mean a lot to experience it because some of the heavier themes were navigated with such care and complexity. I think survivors of SA would particularly feel really seen and potentially uplifted by this story, and the author's vulnerability in the acknowledgements was something I really respected and appreciated. I think that honesty will help connect this book to the right readers. I really like tordotcom novellas in general because they're just so approachable to read, and this book was no exception.

Thank you to Tordotcom and Netgalley for this ARC.

[Hollowspine · Rating 4 out of 5]

A genre defying, nuanced mystery that discusses childhood sexual abuse and trauma, disability, healing and love, while also touching on abuses of political and other power structures, found families, and desire. All this within less than 200 pages and while developing a perfectly built world shared between humans and guls, beings who share a likeness with humans, but are capable of much greater strength and speed, and who subside on human flesh, blood and bones. Ariadne must watch herself and her heart when she teams up with Quaint, a gul in possession of ten sets of bone crushing, flesh slicing teeth, in order to find Erik, the man who pulled her from a pit of mutilated children and created prosthetics for the limbs taken from her. Ariadne faces flashbacks as she encounters guls from the past she'd rather forget, but her path seems to tread directly into that past trauma - this time she has Quaint by her side, but is her desire for him just another echo from the past she must overcome, or something else?

I'd highly recommend this for readers who don't shy away from the darkness, those who are looking for a story that will fully engage with complex and interesting characters. While the novella has elements of speculative fiction, the focus is more on the characters and plot than creatures and supernatural lore, both readers who love supernatural stories and those who don't will find something to grab their interest here. Gore and violence is described, but not in great detail on the page. Readers of Cassandra Khaw, Gretchen Felker-Martin, and Poppy Z. Brite will find similar elements of exploring sexual abuse, trauma, and healing within a dark storyline and often using speculative fiction elements.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

A complex adjacent world that is creatively different without needing pages of explanations and such, filled with fab characters, that underpin a fascinating narrative. I loved Ariadne and Quaint as a gul-cyborg couple, their histories and current realities were traumatic, violent (very), and full of the unique brand of love and caring that can only come from such terrifying pasts. And their pasts are borderline unspeakable. Pueyo doles things out in gradually increasing doses, and much of what we read is truly horror. Still, we stay, just ever so barely, on the side of non-gratuitousness, though there are passages most assuredly not for the kind at heart, or squeamish-like people. I loved all of it, tragic and visceral and harsh, but a thick strand of empowerment and strength and agency is always present. We are left with just enough for a continuation, but also more than enough for a satisfying send off. I, for one, would welcome more pages from these characters, in these places. Novellas are excruciatingly difficult to do, ratcheted up to quite hard to do well, and Pueyo does the latter of the two, and I am happier for it. Cheers.

[Denise · Rating 4 out of 5]

Set in Brazil in the midst of political turmoil, Cabaret In Flames is a portrayal of resilience, exploitation and darkest aspects of unfettered ambition. Creatures known as Guls-beings who appear mostly human, yet feast upon the flesh, blood and bones of humans-exist as shadows of their prey.

Ariadne is a “gul doctor” who tends to the afflicted following the disappearance of her mentor and rescuer Erik Yurkov years prior. The arrival of a charismatic gul named Quaint-who claims to be a friend of Erik’s-upends Ariadne’s existence and they join together to search for him.

Cabaret In Flames is a novella with intriguing world-building, a tense atmosphere and very bleak moments intertwined with smidgens of hope. The government turning a blind eye to powerful predators consuming the poorer populations, while also enacting complete control over them is unfortunately far from fictional.

The guls themselves are a spectrum in regard to their social standing-from existing in opulent night clubs to eking out a day’s work amidst other humans-and predatory nature. The absolute worst individuals are depicted, along with an elderly woman, yet the danger that they both can offer is never far from consideration.

Due to the novella’s length, I was left wanting more time and development of its characters. Ariadne, Quaint and Erik are distinct in their mindsets and motivations and their dynamics both separately and together are intriguing.

Although the subject matter is heartbreaking and dismal, I appreciated the author’s decision to depict Ariadne’s dark mindset following her rescue by Erik. There is generally a belief that a person should be grateful for surviving a harrowing experience and yet the trauma that follows it is not always addressed.

If you’ve conditioned yourself to expect the very worst and then are unexpectedly given a chance for something more, how do you adjust? How do you live in a world that continues to move forward while you have experienced the very worst thing imaginable?

Cabaret in Flames does not shy away from the uncomfortable aspects of Ariadne’s survival and recovery and you can’t help but feel sympathetic. Despite her suffering, she tries to find the purpose in her life and yet still fears being viewed as a victim. Her relationship with Quaint seems to move quickly, but the desire for companionship and to be truly seen by someone else is very relatable.

Erik as a character is a study in contradictions: generous and kind in his treatment of Ariadne and the creation of her prosthetics, selfish and conniving in his history with Quaint, which inevitably leads to terrible consequences.

Readers interested in a fast-paced story with some supernatural aspects that don’t detract from the humanity of its characters will enjoy Cabaret in Flames. However, they should also be aware of the novella’s very sensitive subject matter and determine if it is the best fit for them.

Thank you to Tor Publishing Group and NetGalley for providing this eARC. All opinions expressed are solely my own.

[Alix · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

A fascinating horror story with neo-noir vibes. What stood out most was how unique it felt, blending Brazilian folklore with high-tech elements like our main character’s synthetic limbs. Her tragic backstory was gripping and while the romance wasn’t super developed, it was still sweet. The overarching mystery kept me interested as well.

What didn’t work for me was the lack of world-building and how rushed the ending felt. This is such an intriguing world, but the dynamics between guls and humans, along with the political landscape, were only lightly sketched out. This really feels like a story that would have benefited from being a full-length novel rather than a novella, especially with so many genres and ideas in play. Overall, though, it was a really entertaining read with a lot of promise.

[Maria reads SFF · Rating 3 out of 5]

My thanks to Titan Books and NetGalley for a free DRC of "Cabaret in Flames" by Hache Pueyo.
A Horror Novella in an alternative Brazil where human-eating guls exist and have a powerful influence on the government.
We follow a disabled human that is a gul doctor. Her mentor and rescuer having been recently dissapeared, she meets an eccentric gul that claims to be an old friend of her mentor and that wants to help her finding him.
There were a lot of heavy topics handled well in this Novella.
The characters were well constructed and the world felt dangerous and vivid.
I also appreciated the prose.
A solid reading experience with only minor pacing issues.

[Ky · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cabaret in Flames is a horror novella that packs a lot of punch in a small package. We have human flesh consuming guls, propaganda fighting machines and a very traumatized main character trying to save victims of vampire maulings.

I think this novella had too much to offer in too short of time. It had some incredible potential to world build and develop the characters, but it couldn’t achieve that with the length. I thought it had great promise, but I got lost in the multiple storylines.

I enjoyed the ride, and I will absolutely read more from this author, but I don’t think this read was quite for me.

Thank you to Tor and NetGalley for the ARC!

[Rachel Shaw · Rating 5 out of 5]

Any book that has me looking up terms like “moral relativism” when trying to review it gets five stars. The ultimate goal for me when reading is to use my brain. This novella accomplished that aggressively.

Thank you so much Hache Pueyo, Tordotcom, and Nergalley for my advanced review copy. My opinions are my own.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Much like But Not Too Bold, this book is on that horror-border, kind of "erotic horror" in this case. I think this author is really great at setting a scene and building an interesting world. The protagonist is a woman who was rescued from a terrible situation as an adolescent and healed by a doctor who mentored her, and is now missing. She now follows in his work of ministering to guls, who are like vampires who also eat human flesh. I think this is a novella; it could have been stretched to a full novel and I would have still enjoyed it.

[Kelsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cabaret in Flames is a dark, complex, and utterly delicious novella set in an alternate-Brazil. It is immediately engaging, centered on Ariadne, a human doctor, and the charming Gul, Quaint, as they search for Ariadne's missing savior-parent-mentor-crush, Erik. I absolutely LOVE QUAINT and found all the characters to be fascinating. The Erik-Ariadne dynamic—a complicated relationship that suggests an almost-lover layer—is particularly compelling, reminiscent of a marginally more healthy version of Jinx-Silco in Arcane.

The book tackles heavy, powerful themes in its exploration of overcoming trauma. It handles difficult subjects like sexual assault, the threat of forced pregnancy, limb loss, and general lack of bodily autonomy with depth. This focus on deep trauma within a world of brutal Guls elevates the story significantly.

My only complaint is that I had sooo many questions left by the end—I genuinely want more from this universe! A spin-off about Quaint and Erik, or exploring Quaint's past, would be perfect. Read this for a thrilling and emotionally resonant dark fantasy.

[The Blog Without a Face · Rating 3 out of 5]

160 pages doing the work of 400

BWAF Score: 7/10

TL;DR: Hache Pueyo writes about monsters who eat people and people who survive being eaten, and she makes both sides feel unbearably real. Cabaret in Flames is sensory, savage, and surprisingly tender, a novella bursting at its seams with a novel’s worth of ambition. The prose alone is worth the price of admission.

There’s a moment early in Cabaret in Flames where Ariadne, a woman whose arms and legs were eaten off her body as a child, casually checks a drawer for a dose of carfentanil strong enough to drop an elephant. Not because she’s afraid. Because she’s practical. She’s alone with a creature twice her size who could kill her before she registered the movement, and her first instinct is to locate the nearest chemical advantage. That beat tells you everything about this book and the woman at its center: she is not asking for your sympathy, she is managing the situation, and she has been managing situations like this for a very long time.

Hache Pueyo‘s novella is set in an alternate Brazil under authoritarian curfew, where guls, a species of flesh-eating humanoids with rows of fangs and centuries of lifespan, coexist uneasily with people. Ariadne runs a medical clinic for guls inherited from Erik, the doctor who rescued her as a child, built her prosthetic limbs, and vanished. When Quaint, a tattooed, centuries-old charmer claiming to be Erik’s oldest friend, shows up at her door, they’re pulled into a search leading to Cabaré, a glittering elite club in Rio where gul power brokers gather and old sins fester.

The prose is goddamn gorgeous. Pueyo writes with a sensory density that makes you feel the humidity, the dried blood on an undershirt, the texture of synthetic skin being rolled over a prosthetic arm. She does brutality and tenderness in the same paragraph without tonal whiplash, which is harder than it looks. The whole book reads like it was written by someone who thinks in color and fabric and the weight of a ring on a finger, and that material attention grounds a world that could easily float into abstraction.

What Pueyo is really writing about, underneath the fangs, is the long non-linear aftermath of childhood sexual abuse. Ariadne was kept by a gul called Minotauro from an age so young she can’t remember life before him. Her escape attempts are narrated in a chapter that hit me like a freight train: climbing out a window at ten and being returned by a helpful neighbor, drugging her captor at eleven and reaching freedom only to realize she didn’t know a single street name. The book understands that survival doesn’t look heroic from the inside. It looks like dissociation, like craving touch from people who remind you of your abuser, like hating the man who saved you because he gave you a life you never asked for.

Pueyo is an Argentine-Brazilian writer and translator who’s been building a reputation in speculative fiction for nearly a decade, publishing short stories as H. Pueyo in F&SF, Clarkesworld, and Strange Horizons. She won an Otherwise Fellowship for her work with gender in speculative fiction, and her debut novella But Not Too Bold, a sapphic gothic monster romance from Tordotcom in 2025, earned a starred Publishers Weekly review comparing her to Carmen Maria Machado (it was also one of our favorites of 2025). Cabaret in Flames originated as a shorter piece in Brazilian Portuguese for Mafagafo Revista before expanding into this English-language edition, and in a recent interview with Ginger Nuts of Horror, Pueyo described the labyrinth as an organic way to conceptualize traumatic memory: intricate, circular, a structure you walk through endlessly before the path clears. That’s basically a thesis statement for this book. She knows exactly what stories she wants to tell and she’s getting sharper with every outing.

The characters are the engine. Ariadne is prickly, controlled, occasionally vicious in a way her history earns completely. Quaint could be insufferable in lesser hands, but Pueyo gives him real contradictions: the blood on his clothes after feeding, the failed marriage he discusses with genuine warmth, the alertness of someone who’s watched a lot of people die. Their dynamic works because neither is saving the other, and the book is honest about the ways their attraction is a little fucked up.

Where it stumbles: pacing. At around 160 pages, this novella is doing the heavy lifting of a novel. The worldbuilding is so rich and the political backdrop so compelling, with its curfews and death squads and a president whose death scrolls across the television in the final pages, that the compressed format leaves too many threads as sketches. The Cabaré itself goes by so fast you barely sit in its atmosphere. Secondary characters arrive, do their work, and recede before they breathe.

But the dread earns its keep on two frequencies. There’s the physical horror of guls, which Pueyo handles with restraint. Then there’s the psychological architecture: Ariadne’s memories of the yellow house surfacing in fragments, triggered by a word or the unbuckling of a belt, interrupting the present tense the way traumatic recall actually works. A scene where she mentally shoves memories into an imaginary trunk, knowing the blood will eventually leak, doesn’t feel like metaphor. It feels like a coping mechanism someone uses. And the scene where she begs Quaint to touch her because she refuses to let her abuser’s hands be the only ones her body remembers is one of the most devastating things I’ve read this year. Furious, tender, and it made me want to set the book down for a moment.

Cabaret in Flames is a gorgeous, ambitious, slightly overstuffed novella that needed either thirty fewer pages of worldbuilding or a hundred and fifty more of everything. But Pueyo writes with such ferocious precision about bodies and damage and the stubborn persistence of wanting to be alive that the flaws feel minor. I want to see what happens when she gets a full novel’s worth of room.

[TendaiisNarrative · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cabaret in Flames is deceptively dark and emotionally taxing, and I couldn't have asked for it to be any better. Don't even get me started on the drop-dead gorgeous cover. Thank you so much to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I read an interview by Publisher's Weekly with the author, where she states the main inspiration behind Ariadne's story was the "pervasive social idea that it’s better to die than to go through something extreme, which means that surviving particularly cruel violence comes with further isolation, dismissal, and stigma." This story is a beautifully haunting, tragic and gory exploration of this, and I loved every second of it.

Starting, this book is very vibey. It has a lot of prose, which I understand not everyone would love, but it worked so well with the story and writing style. For me, the vibes very much evoked The Age of Adeline (if anyone remembers that movie), not in theme or plot, but in the overall atmosphere and narration. At times, it could be a little difficult to catch up to what the characters had already figured out off-page, but it was never done in a way that felt frustrating or unintentional, trusting me as the reader to follow along. This is not a book you can rush through. You need to take your time to properly digest everything happening because the story and characters are easy to intake, but very heavy.

I loved the genesis of the world and how the guls exist within it. They are similar to other paranormal monsters like vampires or zombies in that they eat and drink human flesh and blood for sustenance, but they are also similar to humans in a way I personally haven't yet seen explored. Their diets have a direct impact on the health of their bodies, and they can develop conditions like diabetes and such due to the type of food (healthy/unhealthy humans) they consume. Their altered anatomy and physiology make them wholly different but similar enough that I could see them in reality.

I was obsessed with and devastated by Ariadne and Quaint. They are both very tortured soul and deeply hurting victims in their own right, each one trying to cope and come to grips with their pasts in their own way. Their experiences are very similar, both sharing traumas in which their bodily autonomy was completely robbed from them at the hands of those who supposedly loved them deeply. This understanding of each other's pain provides a level of depth and connection that is really appreciated. I'm usually all for explicitness in romance—and if it had been present here, I wouldn't have complained—but I really enjoyed how much was left unsaid, but understood. I like the easy domesticity that they bring to each other and how naturally and unhurriedly their relationship developed. For being such a short story, Pueyo did an amazing job of providing a wholly unique, completed and unhurried story that did the character's story and trauma justice. I can't wait to check out more by this author!

[emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

3½ ☆

hache pueyo’s novella cabaret in flames crawls through the dystopian streets of rio de janeiro in the not-so-distant future, painting a picture of a world infused with vampirism, human trafficking, and political corruption.

the novella introduces the reader to ariadne, a young woman working as a specialized doctor for guls (this world’s vampire analogues). after experiencing extreme trauma as a child, ariadne was rescued by the scientist and gul doctor erik yurkov, who carefully built her bionic prosthesis to replace her missing limbs and gave her a second chance at life. when erik disappears without a trace, leaving ariadne to fend for herself in an increasingly corrupt and dangerous city, she finds herself working alongside quaint, a gul and old friend of erik’s, to track down her missing mentor.

pueyo has an incredible ability to create atmosphere and tension in such a relatively short book. her writing is gritty and evocative, perfectly suited for the anachronistic mash-up of 1920s-era fashion and nightlife and sci-fi biotech. the world and its mythologies are introduced to the reader in very natural ways, allowing the first handful of pages to effectively enmesh the reader in ariadne’s life without relying on info-dumping or unnecessary asides.

but i never managed to fully buy into the story itself. there’s a romance here that comes out of left field, and feels almost poorly handled given some of ariadne’s sexual trauma and the way that it is still so deeply unresolved. the stakes also feel disproportionate, at once too big to handle in such a short story and too small to involve such high-profile characters. i would love to see a more complex novel set in this world and pulling from some of the same themes, but between the tension-less romance and rapid-fire conclusion (even just 20 more pages could have done so much!), parts of this missed the mark for me.

still a deeply evocative read with interesting, complex characters and a fascinating world and atmosphere. i would recommend for anyone looking for a quick novella that splices together body horror, vampirism, and south american sci-fi.

thank you to tordotcom and netgalley for an e-ARC of this novel in exchange for my honest review.

[Angustia⋆Cósmica · Rating 4 out of 5]

"It didn't matter; she was happy—she craved, desired happiness—maybe for the very first time."

It's been such a long time since I read something from a latam author; it's incredible how visible it is in the writing, the setting. It feels like home (Quite literally, the author is Argentine-Brazilian!)
I really enjoyed my time in this world. And got a little crush on Quaint because I'm not immune to vampire propaganda. Sue me.

Not the kind of story I normally venture into, but it was fun to do so still! We have horrors beyond my comprehension, tender bits of romance, the looming threat of corrupt politicians, the whole shebang.
Definitely recommend it.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this one. Pueyo seems to have a knack to build more of a world in shorter stories than some authors manage in a trilogy. But I think it helps that she tends to keep things small, even if this one had more cast than But Not Too Bold.

All in all I feel like I have found one more author I eagerly wait more from. I can't even explain why I don't want to give this 5 stars, really, but I just don't. Still enjoyed it a lot though.

[Vanessa · Rating 3 out of 5]

There was a really strong start to the novella, that in the end, probably needed a full novel to flesh out the characters, relationships and themes that Pueyo wanted to address.

There were characters and concepts here that I absolutely love, but they weren't developed enough for me to fully appreciate them.