Beautifully dark fairytale with haunting prose.

Perfect for fans of T. Kingfisher or Catherynne M. Valente, this story will bite you and not let go until the end. Our main character is a mermaid-like creature more shark than siren. With her city being destroyed behind her, she walks into the woods along side a plague doctor. An easy friendship begins to form between them when they come upon a scene, where a group of boys are hunting another boy. From there the story squeezes the reader tight, not letting up the pace, while it explores the dark recesses of immortality, love and life.

Although this book is short, I read it so slowly, gnawing on the words and phrases. I highlighted and shared so many quotes with my bookish friends because I had to share the Cassandra Khaw's beautiful words with everyone. "There is a reason the hunt is central to so many narratives. For all that humanity professes to delighting in it's own sophistication, it longs for simplicity, for when the world can be deboned into binaries; darkness and light, death and life, hunter and hunted."

Thank you to NetGalley and Tor Publishing for this advanced reader copy.

This book is best read outside at night, by a warm fire with good company (keep a knife close at hand).

Cassandra Khaw is so tremendously skilled. She weaves sentences and worlds with such creative spin and depth. Salt Grows Heavy is one of her more rich and deliciously gruesome works yet. What's amazing is the same mind who created the Japanese Folklore in Blackened Teeth has created this folklore of the sea.

This was a short, yet dazzling read. The writing style reminded me of Catherynne Valente's. I want more of this world, desperately.

4.5 stars

I went in blind and suggest other readers do too! I loved this haunting, gruesome and strange little fairytale.

Thank you to Tor Nightfire and NetGalley for the digital ARC!

This tiny tale of horror is packed with blood and gore from start to finish. It’s part fairy tale and part love story filled with horrific elements. The writing is absolutely gorgeous, and I could easily imagine all the gruesome scenes. I did have to use the dictionary feature on my kindle a few times to understand. I think people who enjoy dark faerie tales will definitely enjoy this book.

This book was creepy and interesting. I did like some of the world for sure. However, I felt the story was too confusing at times and I couldn’t stick with it. Thought I did like the ending!

(i have received this e-ARC from netgalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.)

wow. cassandra khaw has done it again: making me feel the entire spectrum of human emotion in this gutsy and unflinching tale inspired by folklore. each page (and each paragraph and each sentence) is filled with a kind of magic that ensnares the reader in an inescapable web. the characters have burrowed their way into my heart, and even after the end, their claws will remain a permanent memory on my mind.

Astounded. My introduction to C. Khaw, was bombastic and I am absolutely flabbergasted. Cunning, grotesquely graphic, my senses were heightened throughout the whole read. With each virtual finger flip of a page I tasted metal in my mouth and sharp prodding down to my bone. As the story continued, the detail entranced me, leaving me sitting, crookedly in my spot, only getting up to stretch, listening to my bones snap between my breath, I just wanted more.

The world is a visceral place. We are animals. Sometimes, rather than just being instinctual, we let it live on pages.

As this story unfurled, it did not go the way I expected. The ending, Wow. Am I going to look into everything C. Khaw has published, absolutely, yes. Do I want all the copies and all the signing invites, dead yes. I just want more.

Though March, one of the best books I've read all year (this is my 21st).

Thank you Netgalley & C. Khaw for this ARC.
(this rocked!!)

See this book was good but a 3 star book. Like when you ask for Coke but they ask if Pepsi is okay. And you say sure because pepsi is good but not exactly what you wanted. That's this book. It was just good.

I honestly have no idea what I just read and no idea what I feel about it but leaning significantly more towards I didn't like it at all.

This is a thrilling tale of a quirky adventure that you won't want to put down. This book is dark, riveting, and not for the faint of heart.

The premise had me at “Ariel,” the book delivered on horror I didn’t know I needed. This is a twisted tale, but somehow a parable for truth and vulnerability too. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the free advance copy.

A violent and gory spin on The Little Mermaid fairy tale. A mermaid leaves the sea to live on land with the man she loves but she does not get the fairy tale ending. Years later her daughters have bled and burned the kingdom down forcing the mermaid to flee with a somber doctor hiding behind a plague mask. They hunt and become the hunted when they run into a nightmarish group of bloodthirsty kids who are tortured and torture others in a village controlled by bizarre surgeons. The story is written in a fairytale style yet it definitely falls into the horror category. Not for those looking for a Disney reboot but it is a prime example of blending genres. My thanks to the publisher for the advance copy.

A mermaid leaves a ruined kingdom in the company of a plague doctor. The odd couple share a strange kinship as neither is entirely of the world they inhabit. During their journey, they encounter a vicious group of children who worship a trio of scary surgeons.

While the world building is wickedly cool, the plethora of obscure words and flowery language of the mermaid’s narrative may be off putting to some readers. I liked the relationship between the mermaid and the plague doctor and their casual acceptance of each other. The mix of weird science and myth worked for me. I found the children and the surgeons especially creepy and found myself rooting for the mermaid and the plague doctor despite their monstrousness, or maybe because of it.

The book is simply structured with three chapters each covering a night and an epilogue. The epilogue really made the book for me as did the mermaid’s chronicle of her world and the relationship between her and the plague doctor. Be sure to check out the sweet dedication in the acknowledgments.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Thanks to Tor Nightfire for providing an Advance Reader Copy via NetGalley.

This book was provided to Me by NetGalley and torNightFire for free in advance of publication for me to provide an honest review. Thank you Net Galley and tor!

This is a travelogue following not your Disney princess mermaid who has a taste for human flesh and a plague doctor who is non-binary. During their journey of a cross a kid being hunted by a group of other kids, the surviving kids take them to a village to meet the three adults that the kids called the saints. The saints harvest the organs from the victim and use it to extend their lives. The victim is then resuscitated. The plague doctor does not want this to continue and wants to expose the saints for what they are: monstrous humans.

This book examines what it means to be monstrous. At its heart, it's also a love story. I enjoyed this book. I enjoyed the taiga setting. Cassandra Khaw's writing is so brutal and gory and honest I could read it all the time.

I am torn on what rating to give this. While the writing was beautiful and gruesome, I found that I really struggled to love this one.

This follows a mermaid and a plague doctor in a rather gruesome world. I enjoyed these two characters and how vicious this story is - very visceral in its descriptions of body horror and gore but still being beautifully written.

While this is primarily a horror story, it does involve a bit of a love story as well. I think I would have preferred either no love story at all or a slower build of one. It felt a little underdeveloped and would have made the book more emotional for me.


Overall, this was dark and gruesome but an enjoyable time.

Thank you to NetGalley and Tor for the arc!

This was different and that's what made it amazing. Not for the squeamish but if you like gore and fantasy be sure to check this one out.

It feels wrong to review this novella in plain writing, as it’s written in such elegant, otherworldly prose, but I will try. Honestly the most impressive thing about Khaw’s writing is the flowing, delicate, ease with which they use words I must look up on nearly every page (and I promise I did well on the SAT). Their writing is really worth reading even if sometimes it feels way more flowery than active. The characters in The Salt Grows Heavy, a plague doctor and vicious mermaid, both stranded in a ruined landscape, are so likable despite being almost inherently unlovable. I really loved the motifs and questions about human nature that Khaw presents, about immortality, sacrifice, and worship, without spoiling too much here. The horror of this story is in carefully crafted scenes of anatomical gore (stomach-turning, but tasteful and not excessive) and terrifying crises of ethics and humanity. I will definitely read this again after looking more into the mythology of mermaids and adjacent creatures. This definitely strikes me as a work worth rereading to catch more meaning and detail. I recommend this to really anyone with an interest in fairy tales, mythology, or horror.

Thank you Tor Nightfire and Netgalley for giving me access to review this ARC.

I read about 30 pages throughly and the writing made it very hard for me to understand what was happening. I ended up skimming the rest of the story. I had reread over and over again to try and understand, but unfortunately the writing just didn’t stick with me. The Synopsis intrigued me so I was excited to dive in but was frustrated with myself for being clueless the whole time
This is not a reflection on the story itself, I think it is just a me issue.
I would love to come back and revisit this story and try again to truly experience this story.

I was not able to finish this book unfortunately. The writing did not make sense to me and was too difficult to get through.