Reviews tagging 'Violence'

The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw

197 reviews

katebitters's review against another edition

challenging dark

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

4.75

Not for everyone, but I loved it. There's a vague echo of The Little Mermaid twisted into this dark fairytale, but this is definitely for adults (with strong stomachs) only. The writing is dense, so I listened to the audiobook twice. I liked it even better the second time around.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Gore, and Cannibalism

nubiani's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious tense fast-paced

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

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder, Torture, Child death, Violence, Death, Cannibalism, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Vomit

Minor: War

clynns's review against another edition

adventurous dark hopeful tense fast-paced

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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Child death, Blood, Cannibalism, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Grief, Pregnancy, Rape, Kidnapping, Physical abuse, Vomit, Confinement, Death, and Torture

loki29's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious sad fast-paced

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

3.0

A bizzare but intriguing book. It took me a while to get used to the language. While I did end up kind of enjoying the language used, I found it felt pretensious at times. 

However, it had a good pace and kept me intrigued from start to finish. I would love to have had more about the mermaid and the plague doctor

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Child death, Blood, Medical trauma, Miscarriage, Violence, Death, Injury/Injury detail, and Medical content

astralslayer1_'s review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious tense medium-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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Child death, Gore, Blood, Murder, Violence, Cannibalism, and Body horror

not_another_ana's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious tense fast-paced

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

3.75

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.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Child death, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Gore, Cannibalism, Death, Torture, Body horror, Blood, Medical trauma, and Murder

Moderate: Pregnancy

natka_manatee's review against another edition

dark slow-paced

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

1.0

It’s not even the word themselves that are hard to understand, it’s the combination of them and the fact that after you recall the definition, they still don’t actually mean anything. What even happened here? What are “snow fountains” (pg14)? This is like an insufferable teenager discovering the thesaurus. Never again.

Also, this is not even remotely a fairytale. The only thing in common is that she (whoever she is bc she doesn’t have a pronounceable name) is technically a mermaid like “The Little Mermaid”. Although, she also walks on land the whole time and turns into fire at one point so who really knows.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Blood, Miscarriage, Body horror, Child death, Injury/Injury detail, Torture, Violence, Grief, Murder, Death, Cannibalism, and Gore

Minor: Vomit

It just sucked dude idk what to tell you

cpratreads's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-paced

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

4.0

A very interesting read. I really liked the style and the story. The gore was written in an interesting way, and the action moved at a good pace for a novella. 

Definitely interested in reading more from Khaw. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Violence, Gore, Death, and Child death

Moderate: Child abuse, Domestic abuse, and Sexual assault

ejoverly's review against another edition

dark tense medium-paced

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

It takes you around half the book to wade through the nonsense sentences to figure out what this book is even about and then you spend the rest of the time second guessing yourself. It’s like she wrote the whole thing with predictive text. There was an overwhelming amount of adjectives that had you forgetting the beginning of the sentence by the time you made it to the end of the sentence. Most of the sentences didn’t mean anything at all and once cobbled together with the other sentences it STILL meant nothing. 

Please do not read this book thinking it is a fairy tale. The description is very misleading. This was a gory waste of time. The only reason I finished it was because it was so short I thought surely it would get better. It DID NOT. I don’t think I’ve ever read anything worse.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Medical trauma, Blood, Fire/Fire injury, Physical abuse, Torture, Violence, Cannibalism, Medical content, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Body horror, Infertility, Gore, and Kidnapping

melaniem03's review against another edition

dark slow-paced

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

3.0

Audiobook version. The prose in this is quite striking at times and often somewhat complex (this was likely compounded in audio format as it requires you to pay somewhat close attention). It's a love story but told through a very dark, very gruesome fairytale lens of a mermaid and a plague doctor. There's a lot of body horror (detailed gore descriptions) which isn't my thing so I struggled a bit with that. Someone who doesn't mind that would probably love this.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Injury/Injury detail, Blood, Violence, Cannibalism, Body horror, Death, and Gore