Cassandra Khaw

From USA Today bestselling author Cassandra Khaw comes “The Salt Grows Heavy”, a dark and deliciously twisted mermaid tale.

After murdering her husband and burning his kingdom to cinders, a mermaid joins a strange doctor on a journey through the eerie taiga. Deep in the woods, the pair stumble upon a village, full of seemingly ageless children and the three surgeons who oversee them—called only “the saints.”

After discovering the villagers’ taste for a sinister blood sport, the mermaid and her companion must embrace the darkest parts of their true nature, if they hope to survive.

The Salt Grows Heavy

Amelia Hruby

"There is nothing wrong with being a monster." Their mouth bends. "You always know the right things to say."

Stas

It is always interesting to see how often women are described as ravenous when it is the men who, without exception, take without thought of compensation.

They kiss me then. Through the hair matted to my brow, their mouth wet with warmth. They kiss me and my heart seizes with grief. “Bury me, my love, and take a lock of my hair with you. Carry me through the centuries. I think I’d like to share, just a little, in what immortality is like.”

“The saints don’t know everything ,” says my companion. 

sami

They kiss me then. Through the hair they matted to my brow, their mouth wet with warmth. They kiss me and my heart seizes with grief. "Bury me, my love, and take a lock of my hair with you. Carry me through the centuries. I think I'd like to share, just a little, in what immortality is like."

Karter

"I'm sorry if this is not what you want. I can fix this. I can let you rest again. Or I can help you leave. I've amassed enough of a fortune in these years to assist you in beginning a new life. l can—" Wordless, they unfold their arms, stretching them out to me. There is no hesitation. I plunge into their arms. And it is enough, it is more than enough.

For a wild moment, I'm subsumed by hypotheticals: what if I were to devour them? Bone and brain and bezoar, the last swallowed whole and unbroken. Would their cells, once edited into nutrients, then parasitize mine? Colonize and civilize the crenellations of my brain, develop into a ghost, a disparate consciousness. If I could answer this with any certainty, I'd consume them in a heartbeat, preserve them in every chapter of my body. ld do anything but watch them die.

"I'm dying" They smile when they tell me this, relieved. My plague doctor moves their arm and their wounds are revealed, entrails disgorging in cold, grey loops. Their blood had frozen to an alphabet and it is a love letter spilled over the corpse they hold, it is a living will, it is instruction. But I ignore them. I'm not ready. Not yet, not yet. "Slowly, and without particular hope for recovery."

I gorge myself on his pain. I eat him alive. After everything that he has done, this seems like fair restitution.

Tell me: is your joy sweeter for your knowledge of what it is like to die? Do you enjoy every sunset better? Or does it stain you, follow like the whisper of a nightmare that will not end with your waking? A whipped dog is not happy to see its owner, it is merely counting the hours until the next torment." "The saints-" Defance in the yaw of the words, his voice pitched high and quick. But Luke's protest is reflexive, without conviction. "The saints don't know everything" says my companion. "They promised." "They lie"

 It was rumored that she had no heart and thus had to steal the king's Own organ, that she was a bone-wight, cruel, a lie accoutred in stolen flesh, that she was hungry, bitter, resentful of her spouse's sweet son. It is always interesting to see how often women are described as ravenous when it is the men who, without exception, take without thought of compensation.

They nuzzle their jaw into my hands, allow my fingers to cinch about their skull. I could snap their neck, dislocate the vertebrae stacked upon each other, sever the blood flow. They know this. I do too. Nonetheless, they place their faith and their breakable flesh in my fingers, eyes closed.

Zack Winiecki

I’d slice my larynx clean, make soup of the ribbons. I’d peel every word from my vocabulary. Anything, everything, so long as i can keep them anchored to this life.

I gorge myself on his pain. I eat him alive.

Ryn Johnstone

Apiecalypse Jen

And you shall know her by the trail of dead.

Certain stories are recounted so many times that they become parched of meaning, stories like those concerning the girl and her wolf in the woods, the cinder-smudged princess, the monstrous beauty who vomits pearls with every sob.

Others, however, are kept from taverns and wine-warmed conversations, catalogued but rarely recited. Complicated stories with no easy ending, stories that remind us karmic debt is a contrivance of despair, that there is nothing fair or sweet about this world.

a gory, cryptic, eerie, slightly heartbreaking spin on the little mermaid story. a nice creepy & quick read for halloween! (not recommended for the squeamish)

Jasper

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Magnificent imagery, weird shit, mild horror.  My one complaint is that a lot of the words were incredibly repetitive. I love the rich language but find some synonyms every once in a while. 

Nicole Neuman

Excellent worldbuilding and perfectly and believably gorey storytelling. I would definitely recommend trying it out if it sounds interesting to you. In spite of the praise, I bumped the rating down as a I wish it had held my attention a little better throughout the reading / listening experience.

mehrsa

i honestly have no idea what to say. i went into this book completely blind (didn't even read the description) and i'm very pleasantly surprised but also horrified at the same time. there were a few things that i didn't quite understand, but i really enjoyed this book. 

the writing is absolutely beautiful, very poetic and lovely, while also still easy to understand. i love how visceral the descriptions are, it's very nasty and addicting at the same time. i loved how their relationship developed so slowly, while still being very meaningful. the plot was a bit disjointed for me, but i had fun reading it and that's all that matters! 

kaii

woah.... 

i honestly have no idea what to say. i went into this book completely blind (didn't even read the description) and i'm very pleasantly surprised but also horrified at the same time. there were a few things that i didn't quite understand, but i really enjoyed this book. 

the writing is absolutely beautiful, very poetic and lovely, while also still easy to understand. i love how visceral the descriptions are, it's very nasty and addicting at the same time. i loved how their relationship developed so slowly, while still being very meaningful. the plot was a bit disjointed for me, but i had fun reading it and that's all that matters! 

Me parece que la prosa es hermosa sin embargo, como lectora no nativa del idioma, me costó un poco de trabajo leerlo, lo que me llevó a cuestionarme si algunos usos del lenguaje eran necesarios para la narración. Dejando esto de lado la historia me pareció completamente fascinante, el universo que se construye tiene elementos muy diferentes al nuestro y aún así está cargado de características y personajes sumamente cercanos al nuestro. Este viaje contenido en su propia mitología me parece una gran obra para hablar de las balanzas de poder y ética y moral de dar o quitar la voz (y la vida).

dani ocean.

I like the concept of The Little Mermaid but twisted as fuck, but I had no clue what was happening for the first half, which is insane because it’s 100 pages total. The end picked back up, but I still barely cared because I’m not a fan of gore. True horror fans might enjoy this but not I.

Nik ✨

Go girl… give us nothing.

I like the concept of The Little Mermaid but twisted as fuck, but I had no clue what was happening for the first half, which is insane because it’s 100 pages total. The end picked back up, but I still barely cared because I’m not a fan of gore. True horror fans might enjoy this but not I.

I felt like I should love this book because i’m usually a fan of ornate prose and mythical retellings. Unfortunately, the style of prose felt smothering rather than lush. There was absolutely no contrast in tone or intensity throughout so sentences and word choices that should have been stunning instead left no impact. 

As far as plot, I found the main character one-note and too super-powered to give the risks she took any stakes. I also didn’t feel that the relationship between the two main characters was well developed. If this story was a vignette in a larger novel and the relationship had more time to build I could see the ending being much more hard-hitting. 

Clearly I didn’t like this book very much! But I’ll give it 2.5 stars for the creativeness of the post apocalyptic setting and because in certain areas the prose really worked and created some gorgeous and gory moments of description. 

Shoob 🧸

I felt like I should love this book because i’m usually a fan of ornate prose and mythical retellings. Unfortunately, the style of prose felt smothering rather than lush. There was absolutely no contrast in tone or intensity throughout so sentences and word choices that should have been stunning instead left no impact. 

As far as plot, I found the main character one-note and too super-powered to give the risks she took any stakes. I also didn’t feel that the relationship between the two main characters was well developed. If this story was a vignette in a larger novel and the relationship had more time to build I could see the ending being much more hard-hitting. 

Clearly I didn’t like this book very much! But I’ll give it 2.5 stars for the creativeness of the post apocalyptic setting and because in certain areas the prose really worked and created some gorgeous and gory moments of description. 

the writing was great but i dooo feel like it drowned in itself and it needed more space, sometimes the plot got lost in the writing

AMAZING WONDERFUL FANTASTIC

the writing was great but i dooo feel like it drowned in itself and it needed more space, sometimes the plot got lost in the writing

This is just the kind of gut spilling, organ consuming thing that I like.  

Kiersten

britt

beautiful prose. the author successfully experimented with the stringing of words and phrases to accurately describe what they want to convey. most people complained abt the overwhelming use of difficult english words but i don't think it ruined the story enough to give it less than 3 stars. 

(a dark and gruesome retelling of the little mermaid with hints of frankenstein)

beautiful prose. the author successfully experimented with the stringing of words and phrases to accurately describe what they want to convey. most people complained abt the overwhelming use of difficult english words but i don't think it ruined the story enough to give it less than 3 stars. 

(a dark and gruesome retelling of the little mermaid with hints of frankenstein)

Iman Kamil

This was a total 180 from "nothing but blackened teeth" written by the same author, pleasantly surprised!

Beautifully written. Broke my heart and then wrapped it up and gave it back to me. 

It was bit difficult to read as a non-native bc of a lot of purple prose but man I loved it, it was so dark and I loved the characters <3

Emily Perkovich

I enjoyed this much more than Nothing But Blackened Teeth. I loved the atmosphere that was created, but I do still feel that Khaw’s writing would really thrive in a longer form than the novella and continue to keep my fingers crossed for a longer work. I would have loved for parts of this to feel less rushed so that they could really be immersive. Thank you to Tor & NetGalley for the ARC

A weird, creepy, mythological my accurate mermaid horror story that is also sort of a love-despite-all-odds kind of story. A short read and written really poetically, it was a binge I blew through in one go. Dark, but also, had a little after glow.

exactly what i was hoping for. very creepy and a little romantic.

liya n

Read as an ARC I received as a bookseller

A fantastic Gothic fantasy/horror (but also a little bit of a romance???). Read it in one sitting. Loved the writing style- a flowery kinda Romantic prose. I am sick in love with the plague doctor and mermaid and their relationship with each other. I never thought I could care so much about characters in such a short amount of time, but here I am. The horror parts of the story definitely squicked me out quite a bit (maybe don't try to eat while reading, I sure couldn't lol) but it was all so worth it for the pay off.

Emma

Read as an ARC I received as a bookseller

A fantastic Gothic fantasy/horror (but also a little bit of a romance???). Read it in one sitting. Loved the writing style- a flowery kinda Romantic prose. I am sick in love with the plague doctor and mermaid and their relationship with each other. I never thought I could care so much about characters in such a short amount of time, but here I am. The horror parts of the story definitely squicked me out quite a bit (maybe don't try to eat while reading, I sure couldn't lol) but it was all so worth it for the pay off.

The Salt Grows Heavy

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