The Salt Grows Heavy
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4.1 • 37 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
“Khaw’s poetic prose and stylish approach to gore make it a blood-soaked, unforgettable gem.” —The New York Times
From Cassandra Khaw, USA Today bestselling author of Nothing But Blackened Teeth, comes The Salt Grows Heavy, a razor-sharp and bewitching fairy tale of discovering the darkness in the world, and the darkness within oneself.
A Best Horror Book of 2023 (The New York Times, Library Journal) • A Best Book of 2023 (NPR) • A Bram Stoker and Shirley Jackson Award Finalist! • An Indie Next Pick
You may think you know how the fairy tale 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.
Includes the bonus short story, "And In Our Daughters, We Find a Voice", set in the same universe.
Also by Cassandra Khaw:
The Library at Hellebore
Nothing But Blackened Teeth
A Song for Quiet
Hammers on Bone
The Dead Take the A Train (co-written with Richard Kadrey)
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
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. We were chilled by the mermaid’s 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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this twisting and pitch-black horror tale from Khaw (Nothing but Blackened Teeth), a voiceless mermaid plucked from the ocean ventures into a snowy forest alongside a melancholy plague doctor. These unlikely traveling companions soon encounter a village of mutilated children and uncover the architects of this bizarre encampment: three surgeons obsessed with immortality and the reconstitution of the body. As more of the village's terrible secrets come to light, the mermaid and the plague doctor must rely on each other to survive. Khaw's prose is rich and gorgeous ("In my dreams, I still swim that soundless black, still travel its eddies of salt and cold nothing"), and the surprising tenderness at the story's heart is only magnified by the violence and gore that surround it. Both elements prove devastatingly effective in constructing a folklore-infused world that feels wholly unique for contemporary horror fiction. Expertly blending a gothic atmosphere with elements of splatterpunk, this brilliant novella is not to be missed.
Customer Reviews
I’m a sucker for dark fairytales
Dark. Horrid. Macabre. Lovely. Poetic and all around a romantic read.
In its core, the book is about love.
Monsters. How they become the terrifying things we fear… so deliciously crafted in a rhythmic haunting way.
I LOVED this one!
The salt grows heavy
Hated it, couldn’t finish
Sounds like a college grad dropout using every fancy word they could remember
And ohhhh pronouns
Torturous reading