The Salt Grows Heavy

“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)

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112 pages

Average rating: 6.52

63 RATINGS

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MsFirstEdition

Feb 28, 2025

2/10 stars

It felt like a poor rendition of a gory "The Little Mermaid". I think the plot could have really worked if there was a better execution, especially because I really got into it at the end after the story ended and there was some filler info that could help tie the plot points together. It ended up being the only redeeming aspect. The flow of the book also seemed pretty broken to me because I had such a struggle with the vocabulary. I'm not averse to a writer using more complex terms, but it felt as if a thesaurus got loose in the pages, and it took so much longer to read this book even though it was less than 100 pages. All-in-all: I think it had potential, but the backstory would have made a better book than this.

not_another_ana

Dec 29, 2024

8/10 stars

3.75/5

No, we are not very different at all, even if one is fashioned with thread and dried sinew, the other cleaved and then conjugated by magic.

A siren and a plague doctor travel the land together, walking away from destruction and right into something sinister in the middle of the woods. This is a strange book to summarize or even describe. It felt more like an event or a landscape. I think you'll either like this or absolutely despise it, no inbetween.

Beautiful yet challenging prose. At times I felt like I was wading through a swamp whenever the author threw these complex and uncommon words (not helped by the fact that English is my second language). Very vibes but with a lot of thoughts. I would highly recommend checking trigger warnings for this one, you'll find everything from cannibalism to child death to graphic gore. Ultimately I liked it but I felt cheated by the length, like a meal missing its main ingredient.

Codeliusthe2nd

Sep 04, 2024

8/10 stars

This was such a unique story, told from a very unique perspective. I would have loved for this to be a little longer, to offer a bit more backstory to these two very interesting characters. I don’t dip my toes into fantasy that often, so this was a bit of a different read for me, which was pretty refreshing. My only real qualm with this story was the fact that there were phrases constantly used throughout that felt a bit redundant. We can only hear about “sinew” a couple of times before getting tired of hearing about it. That being said, the rest of the story was compelling and I’m so glad that I gave this story a chance.

Shigarachki

Jun 27, 2024

3/10 stars

awful. just awful. for a horror/creepy book there is literally no horror. it’s hard to follow the story since she uses ridiculously fancy words for five minutes straight to describe a single event. the event is a character laughing and you get “my lungs filled with air to exhale a sound like screeching resembling the joy of a child on a sunny day in the park” .. obviously a joke but what is the significance of doing this. honestly could’ve been a great story but the writing style lost me, glad I bought it as an audio book and not the actual book.

ElleBelle

Feb 01, 2024

10/10 stars

Amazing. Messed up and in prose but amazing