The Salt Grows Heavy
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3.5 • 16 Ratings
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
From USA Today bestselling author Cassandra Khaw comes The Salt Grows Heavy, a razor-sharp and bewitching fairytale of discovering the darkness in the world, and the darkness within oneself.
“Narrator Susan Dalian viscerally conveys the gruesome body horror while deftly capturing the lush imagery.” - Library Journal
“This brilliant novella is not to be missed.” —Publishers Weekly, STARRED review
You may think you know how the fairytale goes: a mermaid comes to shore and weds the prince. But what the fables forget is that mermaids have teeth. And now, her daughters have devoured the kingdom and burned it to ashes.
On the run, the mermaid is joined by a mysterious plague doctor with a darkness of their own. Deep in the eerie, snow-crusted forest, the pair stumble upon a village of ageless children who thirst for blood, and the three “saints” who control them.
The mermaid and her doctor must embrace the cruelest parts of their true nature if they hope to survive.
A Macmillan Audio production from Tor Nightfire.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
The sharp-bladed imagination of horror writer Cassandra Khaw blends “The Little Mermaid” (very much not the Disney version), “The Three Army Surgeons,” and a dash of Frankenstein into a violent and passionate tale. A sharp-toothed deep-sea creature, viciously deprived of her tongue and brutally gifted with legs, gains gory vengeance on her captor/husband and his kingdom. She and another survivor, a mysterious plague doctor, journey away from the slaughter, only to land in a strange village led by a trio of doctors performing brutal experiments on children in search of immortality. Narrator Susan Dalian takes on the inhuman mermaid so thoroughly that we were chilled by her alien nature while sympathizing with her as a woman victimized by men’s brutality, and yet we also could see her strength and ability to reassert her considerable power. You may find yourself surprised at how this gory but poetic fable gradually blossoms into a love story.
Customer Reviews
wanted this to be good ..
for a horror/creepy book there is literally no horror. it’s hard to follow the story since she uses ridiculously fancy words for five minutes straight to describe a single event. the event is a character laughing and you get “my lungs filled with air to exhale a sound like screeching resembling the joy of a child on a sunny day in the park” .. obviously a joke but what is the significance of doing this. honestly just a waste of money.