Blood Circus by Camila Victoire: A Fierce, Thought-Provoking Dystopia

Set in an early 22nd-century wasteland where human civilization has retreated to tiny, tense towns, Blood Circus introduces Ava, a sixteen-year-old with a mysterious past raised in Red River. Humanity has rediscovered a feral species called Klujns-once hidden in the wild-now hunted for meat and prized crystal claws. Ava ends up among hostages taken to the Klujns’ annual Blood Race, a brutal spectacle that forces teens into fight-or-flight choices. The novel blends survival-game action, moon-worship ritual, and an urgent environmental backdrop as it interrogates what it means to be human in a world that keeps trying to define others as less than human.

My Review

I picked up Blood Circus looking for a tense adventure and came away with a story that stuck in my head for days. Camila Victoire builds a vivid ruined world-cold river towns, the hush of banned languages, and the constant, muffled threat of the wilderness-and she puts Ava right in the center of it. I loved how the book asks the hard questions through Ava’s eyes: who deserves compassion, and what lines do we cross when survival is at stake?

What to expect is high-stakes action wrapped around real moral gnawing. If you like Hunger Games-style competitions, you’ll get the thrills here, but the book also slows down enough to show trauma, identity, and grief in honest ways. I was pulled in by Victoire’s worldbuilding-details like the Klujn culture and the social rules of Red River felt both strange and painfully plausible-and by Ava’s stubborn curiosity. The plotting kept me turning pages (that Blood Race sequence is unrelenting), and the quieter moments-Ava learning small truths about herself from the people who raised her-gave the whole story a surprising emotional backbone.

Why I enjoyed it: the novel balances pulse-pounding scenes with reflective beats so the stakes feel lived-in, not just spectacle. Victoire’s questions about humanity linger after you close the book, which is the kind of bookish ache I always want more of.

You’ll finish this one buzzing with adrenaline and quietly unsettled, thinking about which parts of ourselves we’d fight to keep-and which we might lose.

You can get a copy of Blood Circus by Camila Victoire on Amazon or Bookshop.

If this has you intrigued, read an excerpt from Blood Circus below.

Excerpt Preview

My eyelids drift open. As the dream fades, an ache in my body sets in. The forest floor is cold beneath me, and I sit up slowly, gingerly, blink- ing the sleep crust from my eyes.

The darkness is thick, but there’s a luminosity in the air. As my eyes adjust, I realize that the glow comes from the night sky, which is filled with thousands and thousands of glimmering stars. Stars? I haven’t seen stars in months, not since spring, before the burning season. Even then, they are never this bright. There’s always pollution in the air from the Greenhouses and factories and power plants. But here, the sky is drip- ping in them. Fat, shimmering stars and planets, like someone threw glitter into the heavens and it never rained back down.

I can see the Milky Way, a dreamy purple-gray, but the moon is hiding behind silver clouds. I turn my gaze to my surroundings. Under the chan- delier of outer space, the colors of the night become more pronounced. There are towering pines teeming with green needles and rich brown trunks so thick you’d need at least four people with outstretched arms to wrap all the way around. Other trees have white trunks and bright crim- son crowns. I see smaller trees, too, bent by the wind, curled around one another like drunken acrobats. At my ankles are small purple bushes that look more like coral than plants. Little glow-in-the-dark flowers dot the ground like resting dragonflies. Everything looks enchanted—and alive.

I do a double take. Observe the diversity of the trees, the brightness of the stars, the fact that nothing is black and uniform like the woods by my house. Then, the possibility of my surroundings begins to creep in, filling me with a deep, unsettling feeling. Am I in the Deeper Woods? Klujn territory?

But it can’t be. Who would bring me here . . . and why?

I reach for my pendant and am relieved to find it still around my neck. The crystal is cold, but its presence is reassuring. Then, a puzzling thought—whoever brought me here didn’t steal it. So it wasn’t Coll and his thugs? Was it Mr. Mogel, or his sister? Why wouldn’t they take such a valuable thing?

I look around and my eyes settle on a nearby path. A small road, overgrown with weeds. Its entrance is blocked by a garland of some- thing that looks awfully like . . . dried intestines. They connect two tall sticks that are planted in the earth, a skull perched atop each one. A silent warning that screams: Go no farther.

It’s a secret trail.

No. No. No! The word pounds through my brain like a second heartbeat. It’s impossible. Was defending a wolf so wrong that it war- ranted banishment or death? Couldn’t Diana stop whoever did this to me? And who shot me? I rack my brain, trying to fill in the blanks, but it’s all a blur.

I stand up, stretch my stiff body, and shake blood into my sleeping legs. When the feeling in them begins to return, I set off in the oppo- site direction, wanting to put as much distance as I can between myself and that secret trail.

As I walk, my eyes dart around, taking in every unfamiliar detail. I can barely see more than a few feet in front of me, but with time and lots of squinting, more colors and details begin to emerge. The leaves of the trees contain an artist’s palette’s worth of hues: everything from light yellow to burgundy to mauve. The soil is rich and brown, not at all like dirt, but healthy and crawling with insects. There are mushrooms and moss-covered rocks and a smell that hangs in the air, like wet earth, like rain, but without rain’s chemical edge.

My surroundings are beautiful—enchanted, almost—but I know that I cannot trust any of it. Everything is but a tantalizing illusion, like poisoned candy. One misstep could be deadly. Not to mention the ani- mals that live here. Is anything watching me right now?

I shiver. It’s a few degrees colder than Red River, and I’m under- dressed. The chill pierces straight through my sweater, my stockings, and makes a nest in my bones. I look around for signs of human life—foot- prints, litter, barbed wire, anything. There is nothing around, nothing man-made, anyway. How far am I from the fence? Surely whoever brought me here didn’t venture out too deep. It would be dangerous for them, too.

I notice a tree with lots of branches that reaches into the sky, above all others. Maybe I could climb it, I think, high enough to get a decent view. Find my way back to the fence. Then I remember my last Klujnol- ogy class—Reesa and her chilling words: “The black trees in the Deeper Woods that eat humans alive.”

Carnifloras.

I gulp. Is that a Carniflora? The tree might be raven or ebony, but aren’t those all just shades of black? I don’t feel like taking any chances. Instead, I stick to the middle of the path, watching my feet, careful not to step on any exposed roots. It’s difficult, because the ground is covered in a mulch of leaves. I continue and the path narrows until the purple coral-bushes on either side lick my calves.

I suppress the urge to cry, or to yell out in anger at whoever did this to me. Whoever put me here, without giving me the chance to explain myself, defend myself. I have no idea where I am or where I am going. I have no point of reference, no map, no compass, no supplies.

What am I supposed to do now? My eyes fill with tears and this time, there’s no holding them back. They trickle down my cheeks and distort my vision until I can hardly see. I’m lost, I realize. Lost in the Deeper Woods.

It feels like a dream, as if I’ll wake up in my warm bed, safe, with Fall Break ahead of me. A week where I can rock in the hammock on the back balcony listening to the wind, or help Diana in the greenhouse when she needs me. Suddenly, the prospect of spending the next seven

days alone with Diana as she schools me about the many benefits of compost doesn’t seem like such a punishment after all.

The path I’m on forks into two. The one on the right looks more unkempt, and there are too many suspicious roots, so I opt for the left. Keep walking. I think for a minute about the fact that perhaps I could use the stars as a guide—after all, the Boreal is north of Red River, and everything else for that matter. But the foliage is so thick that the night sky has disappeared from view. There’s no telling which direction I’m walking. I could be going farther in.

I’m so preoccupied with my thoughts that I lose focus on where I’m going. I step forward, and my right foot sinks into a concealed hollow. A crunch echoes in the dark—the sound of metal on flesh. I look down, and see that the sharp teeth of an animal trap have sunken into my boot. The pain is delayed by a few seconds, like thunder after lightning. But when it comes, it’s worse than death.

I scream so loud that it rattles the branches above my head and birds fly out of the trees. The pain is intense, but shock and adrenaline quickly flood me, making it perhaps not as bad as it should be.

The front of my boot is shredded, and blood pours slowly from the holes. The orange pumpkin-leather stains a dark red. I didn’t think I was squeamish, but there’s so much blood—my blood—and my head spins. Don’t pass out, I think. Whatever set the trap may be watching.

I need to be pragmatic, although all I want to do is wail. I inspect the trap: it’s attached to a heavy chain that’s anchored into the soft ground. I try to pry it open, but its jaws are clenched tight, like a tena- cious beast unwilling to give up its catch. I pull at the trap again, but it won’t budge. My toes are sealed in its unrelenting mouth.

And the pain! There’s so much pain. I feel lightheaded. I blink rapidly several times and shake my head, trying to keep it clear so I can focus. There’s a vibration deep in the earth, like a buried storm. Sound follows: a swoosh, a rustle. The crunch of footfall on leaves. Judging by the rhythm, there isn’t only one set of feet, but many. Lantern light shimmers on the trees, gilding the leaves. My breath quickens, and I feel even dizzier, but I need to know, to see.

A thrown shadow—the silhouette of a tall, monstrous thing. A voice speaks in an unintelligible language. Raspy, rough, but oddly melodic. Other voices join in. There are bits of English, I think, although I no longer feel sure of anything. What Territory is that from? I wonder.

“I heard a scream,” a voice says, definitely in English now but with a thick accent. “I think it was human.”

A surge of panic floods through me. I freeze, placing my hand over my mouth because I can’t trust my lips to keep the sound in. The footsteps grow louder. The group is getting closer. Their lanterns move toward me like floating orbs of light. I glimpse a flash of purpley-blue. The sweep of a cloak. Only a few trees separate us now.

I notice the corpse of a tree lying across the forest floor. Its trunk should be big enough to hide behind. I pull at the chain of the trap with everything I have and slowly, begrudgingly, it begins to slide. I scream in silence as the sharp metal teeth bite deeper into my foot, threatening to touch the bone. But it’s either temporary agony or sticking around and waiting for the group to reach me, and the latter option doesn’t hold much appeal.

I make it to the tree in time. The chain reaches its full extension, and my leg is still exposed. I brush dead leaves over it—could do better, but there isn’t any time. The group comes closer. And closer.

And then they break into the clearing.

I see a group of human hostages, all in their teens, in rows of two. They are dirty and disheveled, cuffed to each other with manacles that look like some kind of twisted vine. Their faces are hard to make out, but I see that they are mostly girls, all in different states of trauma. Some cry, while others are silent. Some murmur prayers under their breaths while others simply appear out of sorts.

My eyes move to the guards. Five of them, surrounding the group, distinguishable by their long hooded cloaks. The cloaks are a metallic indigo. Some of the guards hold weapons—spiky bats, crystal daggers, and other brutal objects I don’t recognize.

At the head of the solemn processional, the leader keeps the pace, his steps as consistent as a metronome. He is male, I presume, judging by his size, and his eyes stay glued to the path ahead. The hood of his cloak casts his face in shadow, making it hard for me to read his features. Behind him, a male dwarf speaks to a female of equal height. “Fe- males-only,” he singsongs, drawing from a glass pipe that emits a strange green smoke. “There’s another trap around here, Poppet, I’m sure of it. I can smell her from here.”

“You’ve been smoking too much of that Klandestine,” answers the female, the one he called Poppet. She carries a tall wooden scythe with a rusty nail sticking out of the end. Nothing about her is as sweet-sounding as her name. “It’s got you smellin’ things. Plus, we’ve already got four- teen. The king said that’s all the performers we need, Oak. Thirteen, with an extra for the opening ceremony.”

The head guard turns around—irritated, impatient. Lantern light illuminates his face. That’s when I see it. His eyes. They’re violet.

This can’t be happening.

Excerpted from Blood Circus by Camila Victoire. Copyright © 2025 by Camila Victoire. Reprinted by permission of Blackstone Publishing, Inc.

Ready for More?

If you’re into gritty survival stories that also ask big ethical questions, grab your copy of Blood Circus and dive in. When you’ve finished, come back and tell me in the comments-did you root for Ava, or did the Klujn perspective change how you saw the race?

You can get a copy of Blood Circus by Camila Victoire on Amazon or Bookshop.