Reviews tagging 'Torture'

The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw

185 reviews

swamphag666's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious sad fast-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, Domestic abuse, Gore, Physical abuse, Sexism, Torture, Medical trauma, Murder, and Injury/Injury detail

trante89's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark mysterious sad medium-paced

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

4.5

Interesting, dark, take on a fairy tale. Combining aspects or characters from the little mermaid and Frankenstein into a horror novella. The vocabulary was a bit distracting and can cause the reader to have to pause and look up the words very often with a few pages. It's a only a hundred or so pages but still took roughly a week to finish.

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Content Warnings

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

Moderate: Confinement

Minor: Miscarriage and Pregnancy

pancre_ass's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Loveable characters? Yes

3.0

• I liked the contrast between the known mermaid tale and what actually happened
• The writing style is quite pretty and grotesque
• Not a native English speaker but I don’t mind looking up words every page.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Gore, Violence, and Medical content

Moderate: Child abuse, Child death, and Torture

Minor: Pregnancy

lalazee's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious sad tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• 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

3.5

Stunningly written, pure gothic art. I reached the upper limit of my body horror preferences, though, which is why I didn’t give a four star. Other people won’t mind at all. The story was devastatingly fascinating, the characters darkly creative, and all around I am WOWed by the effectiveness of such a short novella. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror and Torture

nerdatlas5's review

dark emotional mysterious fast-paced

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

4.0

Gotta say, I was a little worried about starting this because I found Khaw's other novella, Nothing but Blackened Teeth difficult to follow to a negative degree, but this was a huge improvement. I enjoyed how she played with the way fairytale's betray the bias' of the teller and how she twists them to a much darker form. The horror of it was also well done, especially hearing some of the body horror being described made me pretty squeamish. The characters of the mermaid and plague doctor were done well, and their developing relationship with each other felt so real and full of depth. And for the most part the story did a good job balancing unveiling information to drive the plot while still giving enough to make it understandable. Overall an excellent horror novella.

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Content Warnings

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

Moderate: Animal death, Domestic abuse, Torture, and Violence

troubleintandem's review against another edition

dark mysterious tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• 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

This book has some beautiful language and vivid imagery, most of it about cold snow, blood, and vivisection. A kind of strange fascinating intersection of Madeline Miller's Cersei and Phil Tippett's Mad God.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Body horror, Bullying, Death, Gore, Physical abuse, Self harm, Torture, Violence, Blood, Cannibalism, Murder, and Injury/Injury detail

aspyd05's review

dark tense fast-paced

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

4.0

Lush and visceral. Very poetic and beautiful but also pretty gory

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror and Violence

Moderate: Child abuse and Torture

Minor: Child death

elizrec33's review against another edition

dark emotional medium-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Gore, Torture, Blood, and Cannibalism

pinkjunimos's review against another edition

dark fast-paced

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

4.5

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Content Warnings

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

Moderate: Miscarriage, Cannibalism, and Injury/Injury detail

bookish_mermaid's review against another edition

adventurous dark 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

5.0

This book immediately sucked me in. I couldn't put it down! It blended my four favorite things; mermaids, romance, horror, and gore!
The only criticism is that a lot of the words were pretty large and advanced. I felt like I needed a dictionary next to me as I was reading 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Body horror, Gore, Physical abuse, Torture, Blood, and Medical content