Lilith – Paul Kidd
Kitsune Press, 2007
312 pages
RRP: US$22.50
ISBN: 978-1-84753-166-7

Reviewed by Nicolee Baxter

The first couple of chapters of this novel hint at a deliciously, dark little plot. There is attempted murder, drug overdose, and suicide. The reader can only helplessly observe as the characters slip towards destruction. Disappointingly, by the third chapter the story starts to lose its gritty blackness and becomes more of a melodrama.

Lilith is a succubus who flees an attack from her own kind in the dream world and manifests in the human world in the body of a recently drug overdosed 16 year old girl, Carol. She stumbles upon a very depressed human, David Miller, and prevents him from committing suicide. Suffering from memory loss and unsure of who or what she is, she imposes on David’s hospitality. Suddenly David’s depression is non-existent as he becomes infatuated with Lilith/Carol. It was at this point in the book that I realised that David was a 30 year old hanging out with what he thinks is a 16 year old girl. That seemed sort of creepy.

Later we meet Morgana – another succubus. She steps into the body of Felicity, another teenager committing suicide in the family bathtub. Unlike the death of Carol, Felicity’s suicide (viewed through Morgana’s perspective) is treated with contempt. Fortunately for Morgana, Felicity was a slim, attractive girl with fashionably gothic taste.

I found the scenes involving Lilith and Morgana’s dream world quite imaginative. These scenes are so dense with imagery I had to read them several times to absorb all the information they contained. However, when the fantasy characters are taken out of their natural environment and placed in a modern realist setting, it is difficult to see them as plausible. There were some instances in the book that made me cringe in the way Anne Rice describing The Vampire Lestat as a rock star made me cringe.

To his credit, Paul has let nothing stop him from getting his books in print. He self-publishes his books, which are printed on demand through Lulu.com.