Reviews with content warning for Homophobia - The Route of Ice and Salt

Despite being less than four hours long, this took me ten days to listen to. "Queer retelling" meant something very different in the 1990s. Something much less palatable. Something much more powerful. It's dark. It's disturbing. It's phenomenal. Beautiful prose. Visceral horror. Difficult meditations on consent, sin and guilt. This is not a book to be read by just anyone. But those who it is meant for will find it a deeply rewarding experience.

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kaiyakaiyo's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

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

3.75

This one was a doozy. Definitely leaned into the horror aspect (some of the rat scenes sent chills down my spine), but also honed in quite well on the queer themes. The captain (does he have a name?) is extremely neurotic & super fucking horny for other sailors, and those two things combine into a tremendous amount of guilt and misery about his sexuality. Dracula, being the literal leech he is, takes advantage of said guilt to deleterious effects. The first half was definitely… something, but the latter half of this book is incredibly interesting. As a Dracula- (the book) obsessed freak, this was very much my jam. Gotta love when someone un-subs the subtext and just makes it text

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perkyanda's review against another edition

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dark mysterious sad slow-paced

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

1.5

It is truly impressive that a book with such a cool concept managed to be so thoroughly boring from beginning to end. I like a good character story but dear god, it’s repetitious ruminations for over 100 pages. The same general thought is repeated and reworded consistently throughout the book. I get that as a device it’s effective in demonstrating his obsession but damn is it boring to read about.

Technically decent book, but good lord it was so so boring and neither fun nor enlightening,

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owlribbon's review against another edition

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dark reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

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sofipitch's review against another edition

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dark mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes

5.0

Much more erotic than I expected. 😂 The prose is sensual, and a lot of the imagery and horror momentsIsuperb. I also think vampirism = homosexuality is so common but it is usually implicit or simply presented with gay vampires. It's interesting to see the story of a gay man who has been persecuted like a monster realize he isn't one when faced with the real thing

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renegadegrocerycart's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

I am broken. This book has broken me.

A bold and inventing re-envisioning of the Demeter episode in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, this novella makes textual what was only subtext about queer desire in Stoker’s novel. Locked in the mind of a repressed and deeply guilty queer man, this novel delves deeply into the metaphor of vampirism and homosexuality—and, most satisfyingly, wrenches the two apart by the question of consent. I’ve struggled for months after reading Dracula to figure out the queer reading I’ve heard discussed, and this novella explores and explains it in a way that finally made it click for me.

The captain ties himself to the helm in defiance of the monster and declares himself not to be a monster, absolving himself of the guilt that was never really his and instead imposed on him by society and the people of the village who killed his first lover.

This novella is wild and surreal and nothing like I’ve ever read. I docked a half star for the translation, because I didn’t love it and felt that something was lost in the translator’s clinical and stilted word choices.

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angreadseverything's review against another edition

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dark slow-paced

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

2.75

Kinda boring, not a lot happens in the book

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