First published back in September of 2025, David Owain Hughes’ limited edition chapbook ‘Dacchas’ was released by Black Hill Books for the annual Guy N Smith Fan Convention 2025, as a story inspired by Guy N Smith’s novel ‘Cannibals’ (1986).
Only one-hundred copies of the chapbook were published, each numbered on the cover and signed by the three contributors on the inside page. The chapbook contains a foreword by DLS Reviews’ own Chris Hall, as well as artwork by Guy N Smith’s daughter Tara E. Smith.
The story itself was first published within the ‘Hell Of A Guy’ (2016) anthology and later reprinted within Chris Elphick’s ‘GNS2’ (2025) fanzine.
Devouring The Flesh – A Foreword By Chris Hall – 5 Pages
Opening up the chapbook is a foreword by DLS Reviews’ reviewer – Chris Hall – who provides a gushing introduction in which Hughes is subjected to both praise and rich banter of honesty. The foreword points at Hughes’ worrying affiliation with cannibals, the story’s history and its inspiration. That’s a textbook foreword right there!
Dacchas – David Owain Hughes – 38 Pages
Ever since their nightmarish ordeal at Invercurie, Phil Drake had kept in contact with Frank Halsey - and then after Frank’s death to cancer - his daughter Vickie. Over the following years Vickie and Phil had grown close. But something still ate away at the ex-police officer. He was convinced the cannibalistic inbreds that had inhabited Blair Long we’re still alive and had been breeding, undisturbed for the past twenty years. That the cannibals had found a new home somewhere. So, he’d gone to the isolated hamlet on the Scottish coastline to finally finish them off. That had been a whole month ago. Now Vickie feared the worst, and within a week, she’d made up her mind – together with her fiancée and his best friend, she was going to return to Invercurie to finish the slaughter once and for all…
Undoubtedly one of Guy’s most pulply of offerings, ‘Cannibals’ (1986) was crammed full of over-the-top horror and maniacal splattering s of bloodshed. Furthermore, it was absolutely ripe with potential for a sequel. With his offering, Welsh author David Owain Hughes has done exactly that. Set some twenty years on, Hughes doesn’t hang around before he’s throwing (now grown up) Vickie Halsey back into the thick of the inbred cannibalistic mayhem.
Hughes lays down the foundations for the short story’s plot in a matter of a few quick pages, and then it’s on to the explosive bloodthirsty action and all-out vengeance-fuelled warfare. This is a ferocious and action-heavy tale in which Hughes doesn’t let up one second from the moment the Dacchas’ start to rear their ugly treble-eyed heads. It’s manic and utterly entertaining. Yeah, you need to suspend all notion of disbelief in this offering – but who gives a flying fuck about that? This is pulp horror entertainment pure and simple boys and girls. And it’s one hell of a read.
The chapbook runs for a total of 45 pages.
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