The Salt Grows Heavy was a Christmas gift and I didn’t know what to expect at all from this novella – although the hardback cover did inspire thoughts of melancholy and fantasy. It was only after I began reading that I realised that the art on the cover, was in fact depicting a much darker idea of what a mermaid is.

This former mermaid queen, who is our view into this strange and hostile world, journeys together with her Plague Doctor companion through foreign lands. They encounter a pack of children, cruelly hunting one of their own, and are invited back to the isolated village that the group comes from. There, they meet a trio of barbarous surgeons who the kids call ‘saints’ (spoiler: they are anything but!)

I was so uneasy about these newcomers to our story and was so eager for our main character duo to move on in their journey and get as far as way from that village as they could. Alas, I had to sit in unwilling participation for what happened next. Not what I expected at all, but something that kept me on the edge of my seat all the same.

Despite being such a short book, I actually found myself taking some time getting through it. More than once, I had to take a moment to put the book down and think about what I’d read. Not because I found any of the contents hard to stomach (and it was so very grisly!) but purely because of how detailed the prose was: this book is filled with densely packed detail and big words. Both are things I greatly enjoy, but even I, at times, struggled to discern what was happening on the first pass.

I wouldn’t have had it any other way though (because I do so love this type of writing) and I’m really not someone who rushes to finish a book anyway. In fact, taking a moment to really absorb the words, and the story that they spun, only made it land harder; made the impact stronger.

The story in The Salt Grows Heavy is dark. It’s gory, gruesome and entirely unafraid of explicitly describing body horror and blind cultish obediance. It worked and was so good: because I found myself feeling frequently on edge with what was happening to these characters. Body horror isn’t a trope that I’m so familiar with, and nor is it something that I seek out, either. The loss of body autonomy – especially when it includes forced violation of the human body – is something that I avoid like the plague, and there were a lot of times when I felt very disturbed and unnerved when reading this book.

Despite that, I couldn’t put it down and was so eager to see how it all ended. The writing kept me coming back, too, and I would regularly pause for a moment, impressed at Khaw’s writing, but also flummoxed about how someone even goes about learning to describe like that!

I admired it, and I think I have a lot to learn if I ever want to pursue my childhood dream of becoming an author.

This is my first book by Cassandra Khaw, so I was unfamiliar with her game, but if this is the terribly unique story that they normally explore, using this same intricate prose, then I can’t wait to find and read more of their works!