Reviews with content warning for Death - The Salt Grows Heavy

"Mermaid. A word that demonstrates the ineptitude of human language, and the species' predisposition for ingantalizing the unknown. ... [P]alatability is prized over accuracy. It is easier to market a nymph than a viperfish."

The Salt Grows Heavy is a horror/fantasy novella of a murderous mermaid and a gender non-conforming plague doctor travelling through a near-dead kingdom, each with a traumatic past to contend with. Very well written, though it's hard to say 'beautifully written' when the subject matter is, very often, viscera. Heed the content warnings on this one - not for the faint of heart.

Content warnings: graphic gore & body horror throughout. Cannibalism is on page & described in detail. Blood, death, deaths of children, murder, violence, medical content, medical experimentation, misogyny, sexism, abuse, spousal abuse, rape (not on-page or described in any detail), kidnapping, mass murder, cult violence / religiously motivated abuse.

Content Warnings

themorrigan43's review against another edition

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dark emotional tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

This is a novella, it's very fast and it is very gory. A strange adaptation of The Little Mermaid story, mixed with some Frankenstein.

Content Warnings

moodreader89's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.25

I think it definitely should come with trigger warnings —that’s on me though for not checking.

It was very descriptive, there is a lot of body horror, like…a lot. I definitely found myself shocked and gagging while reading; while the characters and world are fascinating and I might be interested in more about it, I don’t think the character development was enough to make me care as much as I could have? It is a beautifully poetic, grisly—also in a poetic and purposeful way, story though.

Content Warnings

kileyjojo's review against another edition

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dark fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.5

If you're expecting this to be a horror retelling of The Little Mermaid, it's nothing like that. This book is a short novel about the aftermath of what would have been that story. That doesn't make it bad, but it's something to note if that's what you are looking for in a book.

I go back and forth on how I feel about this book. The pace is extremely fast and the story flies by but I don't think that's a bad choice. It could have been fleshed out more but I think it gets the job done. That being said, you're thrown right into the midst of the story and are given practically no background on the characters or what they are encountering. This does prevent the feeling of the book being padded but it also makes it harder to connect to the characters.

The vocabulary used in this book is very advanced. I found myself skipping every other word because I didn't know the meaning of them. This, in combination with the fast pace, makes the book confusing. When the scenes aren't clearly spelled out, it's hard to understand what is happening and how the characters got from point A to point B. For example,

there is a portion of the book where the mermaid is dissected on a table. Two sentences go by and she's whole again and running through the woods. The dialogue and the story are so hard to comprehend that I feel like I missed an entire chapter

.

If you enjoy horror, gore, and just going with the flow, you would like this book. I don't think the author is a bad writer. I think the book is falsely advertised in where the story goes and that the vocabulary makes the already short book feel even shorter. There are great messages in the book and the characters are unique and interesting. I just wish we got to see more of them. The page count really hinders the character development. The story feels completed but feels like something is missing.

Content Warnings

cwerber's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Holy shit, y'all.

This novelette is something else and I mean that in the best way possible. It will turn your notion of the little mermaid story upside down.

Content Warnings

chilivanilli28's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Content Warnings

mspidalieri's review against another edition

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challenging dark reflective tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

This book is overwrought.

The effect of the prose was lost on me; I had to physically stop myself from tallying how many times the author used the word “viscera” throughout the entire text.

Maybe the audiobook format didn’t do it justice, but a lot of what I disliked about this story could’ve probably been fixed by a vicious editor.

But, I digress. It’s got guts and gore, if that’s what you’re into. What’s done is done.

Content Warnings

_mor06_'s review against another edition

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dark mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? N/A
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

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