A Review of Cassandra Khaw's "The Salt Grows Heavy"

The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw is a strange book. In a pastiche of Frankenstein and The Little Mermaid and Lord of the Flies, we are given an odd, often gruesome travelogue that ends sooner than expected.

After fleeing a plague—in fact, the mermaid’s children eating everyone in the kingdom—the silent mermaid and a cobbled-together plague doctor find themselves in a frozen village filled with children who regularly kill each other, only to be resurrected by a trio of masked doctors called the saints. These doctors are, in fact, the ones responsible for creating the plague doctor, and this gives our characters mixed feelings. When more information is revealed, and the purpose of the children uncovered, the mermaid must decide whether to flee or remain beside her loyal doctor as they do what they think is right.

The set-up of this story had me thinking we’d be following these two characters for a while, but their travels come to an abrupt stop in the snowy woods when they witness the brutal murder of a child by a group of other children. And it all unravels from there. The turns of events are unexpected all the way through, and the reader cannot guess what is going to happen next. Truly, when the blurb or I compare this to other stories, that’s really not going to set the reader up to understand what’s happening. 

The Salt Grows Heavy has to be read to be understood. And then you’re going to have to sit with it for a couple of days after. I received the ARC from NetGalley.