3/5 stars.

The Route of Ice and Salt is an interesting horror/thriller novel set on a ship called the Demeter where things quickly go awry in what should be a normal delivery. The writing, though difficult to get through really showed the eerieness of the story. Despite this, it was a struggle to get through because I found it hard to keep reading, having to take breaks multiple times which really created problems in the flow of the story.

While the writing really wasn't for me, it was sa compelling story I'm sure fans of horror and queer gothic literature will love.

DRC provided by Innsmouth Free Press via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Representation: gay protagonist.

Content Warning: internalised homophobia, homophobia, violence death, suicide.

The Route of Ice and Salt by José Luis Zárate, and translated by David Bowles, is a prelude of Bram Stoker’s Dracula filled with queer yearning and eerie symbolism. Zárate narrates what happened to the oblivious captain and his crew on the Demeter, during the journey that will bring the famous Count Dracula to England.

Despite its short length, I had problems keeping my focus and I felt the need to stop reading for hours before starting again which impacted my overall reading experience.

I loved, though, the vivid imagery the metaphors created in my mind, and the captain’s inner conflict, the evocative descriptions of his most physical desire and the contrast between the salt of the sailor’s sweat, of the water that soaked them, with the ice of the colder routes that forced the sailors in less revealing attires and helped quashing the cravings the captain harboured. I liked the juxtaposition of the captain’s hunger for other men and the vampire’s thirst for blood; how the captain, in spite of his homophobic upbringing, realises the distinction between himself and the vampire.

I also really enjoyed both Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s foreword and Poppy Z. Brite’s afterword. The latter cited an essay I would really be interested in reading.

I unfortunately had to DNF this book. I was so excited to be approved for it and was expecting it to be a new favourite. I read Dracula this year so a story about what happened on Dracula's voyage to England was definitely an interesting take for me.

I really wanted to love this and kept pushing myself to read it, but I ultimately had to DNF it. I think that it absolutely has the eerie, gothic vibes so many Dracula fans want and I really enjoyed that part of it. What made me DNF was the captains internal monologuing. I love horror and angst, but I found some of his suppressed desires to be off putting and a bit too unsettling. I know that internalized homophobia and suppressed desire is something that a lot of people experience and something that would be even more prevalent at the time this book was set in, but I was finding a lot of the internal thoughts of the captain to be making me uncomfortable and it became a real struggle to keep reading.

I think this book could be a 5 star for a lot of people, but sadly it wasn't the right one for me. I think I would need to be in a very specific headspace to read this. The book itself wasn't bad, it just wasn't for me at this time.

The Route of Ice and Salt was a fascinating queer semi-retelling of Dracula. Set during Dracula's voyage to England, this novel follows the Captain of the Demeter as he and his crew become unwittingly ensorcelled by Dracula's power.

The Captain was such an empathetic and intriguing character. He is gay during a time where people would run a stake through a queer person's heart, much like they would a vampire. In fact, in Poppy Z. Brite's afterward, it's mentioned how Zarate often correlated vampirism and homosexuality -- as well as Stoker, who may have been writing about the ruination of his friend Oscar Wilde. That was so interesting to discover!

Zatate's novel was powerful and so intense, I really encourage everyone to read it. Plus, it's short and quick, but packs one hell of a punch!

I have never read Dracula but still enjoyed my time with this novella. I don't think you need to read Dracula to understand what is going on. This story felt like a crazed horny fever dream while also being a philosophical piece on human nature and sin. One page the narrator wants to lick his crewmates' bodies and can't stop thinking about hickeys and the next he has these thoughts that could be heard in the room of a philosophy class.

"If I have appetites that I consider monstrous... aren't they all? Is the sin of others not as great as the one I dare not exercise, like the one I perform in secret."

"I know that Thirst is not evil in and of itself, nor Hunger a stigma that must be erase by fire and blood. Not even Sin. It is what we are willing to do to feed an impulse that makes it dangerous.

Are you kidding me?! Beautiful! *chefs kiss*

I appreciated the afterword because whenever I read short stories or novellas I doubt whether I "picked up" on everything. It felt an English teacher was included with the novella and was able to provide some history and context.

I have honestly never read anything in my life like The Route of Ice and Salt by José Luis Zárate , translated by David Bowles. First published in Mexico in 1998, the book had a cult following, mostly because readers could not find gay gothic fiction, with solid literary appeal. While gothic novels available today are varied and exciting, there's something otherworldly about this one, like Moby Dick and Star Trek were commandeered by a gay writer. The story takes place in the 19th Century, on a schooner christened the Demeter. Our narrator is a nameless gay captain, who navigates his ship and crew with haunted distraction and lust for the young sailors who surround him. By his own admission, he is not a good captain, even though he maintains a sense of duty and superiority that can only be possessed by a sea captain. His isolation becomes fascinating, however, because of his propensity to write about sordid fantasies, detailed dreams, and even a biblical knowledge of his ship. As the reader moves with the ship, we understand that something strange is going on. The book is divided into three parts, with each one handing the reader clues, like breadcrumbs, to where it is leading us. It is a unique read, with an equally unique ending. To have its language, nuances and dramatic tension in perfect translation for an English-speaking audience is a credit to Bowles, a remarkable translator of the original Spanish.

The Route of Ice and Salt is a novella originally published in 1998 in Mexico by a small press trying to break into the local Science Fiction and Fantasy market with Mexican authors. The novella was an adaptation of a small part of Bram Stoker's Dracula, namely the shipment of Dracula to England on the doomed ship Demeter, with the story being told from the point of view of its ill fated captain, now reimagined as a gay man in the homophobic world of 1897. The novella apparently became a cult hit in Mexico (even though its publisher failed) and was translated into French at one point, but only now is being translated into English for English-speaking audiences.

It's an impressive work, especially when given the context in which it was produced, in presenting a gay man in a homophobic time, confronted with horror and finding it in himself to proclaim his own value at the end in the face of that horror. I should add that this edition of the work comes backed with not one but three explanations of this context - a foreword by Silvia Moreno-Garcia explaining the context of its publication, a new foreword by the author as to why he would write a story about a Vampire and monsters, and an afterword by Poppy Z Brite on the literary connections between vampires and homosexuality and how that history applies to the novella. So it's kind of hard to miss what this novella is doing in this package given all that comes with it, but fortunately, what it's doing is fairly well done.

Quick Plot Summary: The Captain of the Demeter has a secret: he's a homosexual, in a world and time (1987) that hates and murders men for the mere idea of love of another man. Indeed, the Captain believes his own desires to be almost monstrous, desires that have gotten another man killed in the past, and works his best to hide them from his crew.

But when they take a commission to transport boxes of soil from Transylvania to England, the Captain and his crew of 9 begins to feel something strange and wrong on the journey - something dark and wrong. And when crew members begin to disappear, fear and terror will spread among the crew, until the Captain is left to faceoff with the nightmare himself, and to deal with a monster as it truly is.

Thoughts: Those familiar with Stoker's Dracula will have an idea of where this novella is going and who is going to survive, but Zárate changes things up tremendously by making the unnamed captain a gay man in a world where that carries a punishment of death. This is a man who has gone as far as to choose a crew and shipping route that will result in them wearing plenty of clothes, so that he won't be tempted by the sight of their sweaty skin. He doesn't just fear that he will be killed for acting on his desires, but that he might actually deserve to - that his own desires make him nothing more than a monster, no better than the terrifying rats that Dracula (unnamed here, but well you know) brings with him on the journey.

And so, even as the men die around him, even as the Captain's fate is sealed by Stoker's story, the Captain here still has his own journey that results in a triumph Stoker could never have given him. Zárate uses the horror of Dracula's actions, the creation of his hungry thralls, to create a contrast between what is and what isn't monstrous, and how it isn't desire itself that is monstrous, but what some people may do to feed it. I don't want to say more because summarizing this further will only ruin the impact of the revelation, one which arguably is not as necessary anymore in much of the world....and yet still is in others. And that makes this novella well worth reading, as an excellently crafted work with this message, which can reach more people now that it has been translated into English.

DNF
Got to be honest, this book made me so uncomfy. I'm sad cause I was really excited for this, I'm trying to read more queer books published before the 2000's. But I just couldn't with the sexual scenes, especially after the one involving his ship. I think some people would get alot out of this book, but I just couldn't

This is an exploration on desire and shame. Told very stylistically and through the use of the Dracula story. You are following the Captain of the Demeter, unbeknownst to him and his crew, they are transporting Dracula to London. However, the story is not about Dracula it is about the Captain and the shame he carries for being gay and his lover having been killed. He desires his men but will not act on his desires.

There's so much to dig into and analyze in this story but it is not for everyone. If you don't like highly stylized writing and atmospheric stories this won't be for you. But if you do, you are in for a treat.

This was a dreamlike novella, taking an episode from the novel Dracula and exploring it from the point of view of the characters on the ship that transports Dracula to England. This novella is dense and challenging, both in terms of the content (the captain's past, the growing unreality of the voyage) and the prose (lyrical, repetitive). Zárate's themes of eroticism, repression, and guilt/absolution that flow through this novella are strong and consistent. This was a strange and interesting book!

This is a wonderfully penned tale of the journey Dracula takes from his home in Wallacia to London. Set on board the ship and told in the Captain's voice, we are given a look at what makes a person evil. In a time when one's sexuality could classify you as evil, and coming from an author who has been there, this novella explores how these thoughts dictate a person's judgment of themselves.

Harboring his own desires, knowing he has to be surrounded by the one thing he wants at all times, this ship Captain walks the line of being a good Captain and wanting to take what's in front of him.

This novella is chock full of erotic imagery and desire. It plays well into the themes we all know from the original tale. With the twist of reading this from the perspective of a gay man. Add to that a gay man who is forced to act as if he isn't enticed by the sight of the sailors laboring around him night and day.

The ending of this novel was bittersweet and I thoroughly enjoyed it. My only complaint is that it does get overly repetitive in places, which was bad enough to have me setting the novel aside for a while.

**I received an ARC of this book through NetGalley**

When I found out Silvia Moreno-Garcia published the translation of this book and that it was a take on the Dracula lore, I knew I had to read it.

Originally published in 1998 and now available in English, The Route of Ice and Salt explores a captain's repressed sexuality, desire, and guilt on his doomed sea voyage to England.

Poetically written with just the right amount of spookiness, I found this book intriguing, and at times heartbreaking. There has been a lot of exploration of homoerotic undertones in vampire fiction, and this book weaves them into its narrative. The narrator ultimately absolves his guilt and comes to the conclusion that he, as a gay man, is not a monster, unlike the vampire haunting him.

The Route of Ice and Salt is definitely worth checking out for horror and literary fiction fans alike.

A slow burning tale, written in a beautifully lyrical style, where menace increases as the voyage moves on. A sensual story of the hidden, the monstrous, and fear.
Spawned from the classic Dracula, this book explores the sea voyage from the viewpoint of the captain in an original and haunting way. It will no doubt be initially confronting to some readers in the candid directness of the captain's thoughts but it brings a fullness to the narrative that is vitally important.

The Route of Ice and Salt was originally published in 1990s Mexico and is being translated into English for the first time in 2021. It is a story of Dracula's journey to England, narrated by the ship's captain who, even though he starts the journey unaware of the presence on his ship is, unfortunately, all too aware of the nature of vampires, and of creatures of appetites that are outside the norm.

This is a book about monsters. This is also a book about gay desire. I am fighting against my own instincts at the moment that tell me to quote Jeffrey Jerome Cohen's essay "Monster Culture: Seven Theses" in lieu of continuing this review, the way JLZ quotes Bram Stoker's own logs from the Demeter in the middle of the book.
It was a dense and tension filled novella that made me want to get out of bed, turn all the lights on, and attempt to write a paper or ten about it. The way José Luis Zárate weaves together the different visions of the vampire from across and around southeastern Europe to reflect and respond to the Captain's own internalised guilt and shame is exquisite, and difficult to read at times but all the more rewarding for it when you reach the ending.

Reader I loved it.

Thank you to NetGalley and Innsmouth Free Press for the copy of The Route of Ice and Salt.

A queer novella retelling of Dracula aboard the Demeter, this was packed with gothic atmosphere, sensuality, and a haunting symphony of rats. The author included the original logs from Dracula and places them throughout the novella, so if you haven’t read Dracula you can still read this. This is the type of story that could be deeply analyzed, as there isn’t necessarily much plot, but instead a journey through internalized and externalized homophobia, queerness at this point in history, and the Captain of the ship coming to terms with his past and sexual desire.

While I found some parts difficult to get through, the detailed complexities of the Captain and unfortunately, the rats, led me to become engrossed. If you aren’t a fan of rats this might not be for you! Overall this was an interesting take on a piece of Dracula. It was originally published in the 1990’s in Spanish, and this is a translation. There is a fantastic foreword from Silvia Moreno-Garcia, a prologue from the author, and a great afterward from Poppy Z. Brite that describe the phenomenon around this novella.

CW: Internalized and externalized homophobia, body horror, some gore, rat things, sexual themes and detail

I heard of this book from Silvia Moreno-Garcia who published it in English for the first time this year. She talked about it on Twitter and mentioned it was available on Netgalley. Since I really enjoyed her novels Mexican Gothic and Gods of Jade and Shadow, I trusted her recommendation.

I have never read Dracula, but I don't think that is a deal breaker for reading this novella. This actually made me interested in reading Dracula for the first time.

The writing is very poetic and well done to set the story in the 1800s. Going into it knowing it is a cult novella with a gay protagonist should sort of prepare you for the blunt queer desire jumping from the pages. The captain has his own backstory that slowly comes out during the book. It's very much about how he deals with his oppressed homosexuality and realizes that being gay is not the same as being a monster (something he'd grown up believing and blaming himself for). The book is very dark and the descriptions of the rats and the ghouls aboard the ship were intense and made me claustrophobic. A very quick and also thought-provoking read.

This was a strange novella about the captain of the ship that brought Count Dracula to England. And while there's a strong gothic current throughout the story, there is a greater emphasis on the homoerotic theme. The captain is haunted by his homosexual yearnings, and the vampiric overtones draw some interesting parallels between his internal plight and the bloodthirsty goings-on.

It's almost impossible to translate a book from one language to another without losing some of the flavor of the original. And while I can't compare the English version to the original Spanish version, I do think the translation does a serviceable job. The language is poetic and full of dark imagery that evokes the captain's desperation.

I also appreciate the short length of this book. A longer novel would have become tiresome, so the short form works well for the story. I recommend this book to vampire fiction fans and to literary aficionados alike.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC in exchange for my honest opinions.

I’ve been stuck on how to review this book for a while now because it’s a difficult one, really. To review it at all properly requires splitting it into the book and the translation (although not having read the original text makes that...hard to say the least). So, this is a review for why you should pick the book up in general, regardless of which language you’re reading it in (and why English-speaking readers should be very happy they can finally read it too).

The Route of Ice and Salt fills in the gap between Dracula’s departure from mainland Europe and his arrival on the shores of England, following the captain of the Demeter as he gradually comes to realise not all is as it seems aboard his ship.

As the introduction notes, vampirism is often taken as an allegory for gayness, and this novella interweaves the two explicitly and incredibly well. The Captain’s former lover is killed in a manner that would befit a vampire; he often thinks of his desire as somehow parasitic. But it also pulls apart the allegory, dissects the comparison and throws it away. The Captain comes to realise there is nothing wrong with his being gay, but there is something wrong with a creature which feeds off the living, as it has done its crew.

In addition to this — and I think this is a point about the translation as well as the original work — the writing is intoxicating and tense. It pulls you in in the first part, with the Captain’s fight against his own desires, hooks you then, and proceeds to slowly and steadily intensify as each crew member disappears mysteriously on the voyage. You go through the book almost as in the dark as to what’s coming as the characters themselves (I say almost because you are at least aware of Dracula’s presence). Granted, some of this may have been that I haven’t actually read Dracula, but in terms of building the tension, the point stands.

So, even if you haven’t read (or don’t care to read) Dracula, this novella should definitely be on your radar (and also, not having read the other is no barrier to reading this).

I wasn’t really sure what to think of this one, but in the end give it a thumbs up. If you like the Dracula myth, then this is definitely worth checking out.
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First, the premise: it’s the story of the captain of The Demeter, the ship that brought Dracula from the Black Sea to England in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
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Next, the weirdness: there is a lot of weird dream sex. It also dives right in to the captain thinking lascivious thoughts about his crewmembers, and how he likes them to be clothed so he won’t be tempted (because he would never act on it).
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I wasn’t exactly sure what to make of the beginning, which felt a little like the author was going all-in on what readers in Mexico at the time might expect from a gay man (see above re weird sex dreams etc). I am happy to say that by the end of the book, the captain has come to terms with his feelings and his past and has let go of his guilt. All in all it’s not a self-hating-queer story, but I did get those kinds of vibes at the beginning.
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Next, the amazing part: the writing is just lovely and so atmospheric. David Bowles did a great job translating…or at least, the translated work is very, very well written.
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The creepy: the caskets of earth, and how the vampire is slowly suspected/revealed, is creepy af. Shivers. Really well done. So yeah, if you like Dracula stories, or groundbreaking-if-weird queer fantasy, this is a good addition to the collection.
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Additional content warnings: racism early on with an offhand comment of wanting a sex worker to be as white as possible. Mention of child sex slavery. Suicide. Mob murder of a gay man (in the past but described). Dubious consent (in the past) which is addressed as wrong.
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I supported the translation of this by donating to a project started by #SilviaMorenoGarcia, and got an ARC in exchange for an honest review. TL;DR I also requested from #Netgalley. Pub date January 19, 2021, so get your pre-orders in!

This is amazing!
I was expecting something a little different going in, but I was pleasantly surprised.

This book has elements of a gothic horror and was very compelling.
I am in awe of whoever translated this book because they have done an exceptional job on it.
I couldn't even tell that it had been initially written in a different language.

This book follows a sea captain and his repressed sexuality and shows us his inner most thoughts.

This was a unique read for sure and I quite liked it.