The Circus of Dr. Lao is an irreverent, licentious, insolent and most amusing book. For sardonic gaiety under fire, for the relief of a good guffaw, here is a circus of legendary creatures (with illustrations by Boris Artzybasheff) which is at once a play, a dream (if not a nightmare), a fantasy of science fiction that is horrifying, disgusting, intriguing, scintillating. And between the lines of its imaginative orgies, you will find food for thought in its satirical comment on civilization. Charles Finney is the actual creator of the genre of "dark fantasy". Not being a particularly prolific writer, he wrote the novel that became the most famous and popular in his oeuvre. Finney by himself became a significant representative of the pre-war fantasy and horror literature. The world renowned Satanist philosopher - the "Black Pope" - Anton Szandor LaVey was quoted in an interview with the line of The Circus of Dr. Lao, calling it one of the favorite "Satanic novels".