Reviews tagging 'Blood'

The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw

254 reviews

sussaann's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense
  • 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? No

5.0

I've never loved a book as much as I love this book. It's remarkable and heartbreaking, every time I re-read it I find a new line that makes it hurt better, this time it was "Better I be reduced to miscreant daydreams of the ocean than be alive without them." Khaw has a unique talent for making body horror beautiful and disgusting. Am I throwing up because it's so graphic or because I'm crying so hard? The world may never know...
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trante89's review against another edition

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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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adragoninspace's review against another edition

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dark mysterious slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes

3.5

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nerdatlas5's review

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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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booksandfin's review

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dark mysterious fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix

3.25

This was an interesting novella. A quick and gruesome read. I loved a lot of the elements in the story and how it fell back into original myth telling that is dark and eerie. I wish it had been a little longer so we could have gotten to know characters a bit better though. I think that there just wasn’t enough time for me to become invested in the characters.

Great for body horror fans! :-)
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troubleintandem's review against another edition

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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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elizrec33's review against another edition

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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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pinkjunimos's review against another edition

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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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bookish_mermaid's review against another edition

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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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ichthyomancer's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad fast-paced

4.5

Honestly felt the first half was a little hard to get into- it’s own language bogged it down in the beginning, but matured as the novel progressed into something I honestly can’t be mad about. I think the lore contained in the book despite it’s small size was amazing and genuinely made me want to see other fairytales set in the same universe, but I’m happy with this little sliver into it that we got.
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