The Salt Grows Heavy

By Cassandra Khaw

A sensuous and strange horror novella full of creeping dread and delicious gore, twisting mermaid myths into something sharp, dangerous, and hungry, for fans of Christina Henry, Carmen Maria Machado and Eric LaRocca.
After the murder of her husband and the fall of his empire, a mermaid and her plague doctor companion escape into the wilderness. Deep in the woods, they stumble across a village where children hunt each other for sport, sacrificing one of their own at the behest of three surgeons they call "the saints." These saints play god with their magic, harvesting the best bits of the children for themselves and piecing the sacrifices back together again.
To save the children from their fates, the plague doctor must confront their past, and the mermaid must embrace the darkest parts of her true nature.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Titan Books
• Release date: May 12, 2023
• ISBN: 9781803363431

Cassandra Khaw

CASSANDRA KHAW is the USA Today bestselling author of Nothing But Blackened Teeth and the Bram Stoker Award-winner, Breakable Things. Other notable works of theirs are The Salt Grows Heavy and British Fantasy Award and Locus Award finalist, Hammers on Bone. Khaw’s work can be found in places like The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, and Tor.com. Khaw is also the co-author of The Dead Take the A Train, co-written with bestselling author Richard Kadrey.

Reviews for The Salt Grows Heavy

[amanda4242_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

It starts with a mermaid, standing in the ruins of the kingdom that thought it could contain her, and a mysterious plague doctor, stitched together from many parts, deciding to travel together. They come across a strange cult, worshiping a trio of "surgeons" conducting some *really* unethical human experiments. This is a dark and grisly tale that should be a small horror classic.Why don't I rate the story higher? Because the most terrifying part of it is Khaw's tortured prose. Each page is littered with wince-inducing sentences like "in the penumbra, the fading dusk gorgeted by coral and gold" and "the zenith of her head barely grazing the circumference of the plague doctor's shoulders." Half the time the flowery words don't even quite mean what Khaw seems to think they do; it's like they spent all their time flipping through a thesaurus to find the longest synonyms they could without giving any consideration to the words' subtle variations of meaning.Received via NetGalley.

[niaomiya · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book was a horror story but with a welcome depth of emotion - anger, pity, love, passion. Author Cassandra Khaw was SO skilled at making me want to never put the book down, but with only one eye barely open in dread of what was to come. LOL The writing was pure poetry; I absolutely loved the WORDS that Khaw used. (I actually had to look up a few words because I wasn't familiar with them, and when I read their definitions, I thought, "Well, there couldn't have been a more perfect word for what they are describing here.")"The Salt Grows Heavy" is a horror take on the traditional "The Little Mermaid" fairy tale. And, boy, do you have to have a stomach for gore. But you will never experience gore and violence so poetically described. LOLI loved this book, and it was quick read. It was my first Cassandra Khaw book, and now I want to read all of their books, if for nothing else than just to re-experience the pure beauty of their language.