Reviews tagging 'Vomit'

The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw

18 reviews

e_l_k's review

challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

5.0

I'd seen this book on plenty of best-of horror lists, but I'll be the first to admit that the premise alone didn't thrill me.
That doubt was dashed from my mind from the first page onwards.
Khaw has a way with descriptive prose that my English teachers would have envied, coveted, before gagging at how vivid the depictions of viscera and horrible violence are. This is NOT a book for the faint of heart or stomach. But it is a spellbinding tale of rediscovery, self-acceptance, and love in the face of pure, selfish evil. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Medical content, Grief, Pregnancy, Slavery, Gore, Vomit, Child death, Injury/Injury detail, Miscarriage, Cannibalism, Violence, Torture, Domestic abuse, Medical trauma, Death, Emotional abuse, Excrement, Blood, Child abuse, Dysphoria, and Murder

There is a short story at the very end of the book that presents the events directly precluding the main narrative.

kstrammel's review

adventurous dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Body horror, Death, Gore, Child abuse, Blood, Cannibalism, Fire/Fire injury, Suicidal thoughts, Slavery, Physical abuse, Violence, and Vomit

pacifickat's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-paced

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

5.0

 

What did I just read?? Also, it was wonderful.

"I recall once, there was an astronomer in my husband's court, who extolled the poetry of the universe, how numinous we were despite the mucus and the blood we shed. 'Stardust,' he'd said, inebriated with his own doctrine. 'We are made of stardust.' Or maybe of primordial elements, such as the ocean, and the dark, and the killing flame, and love."

For one, this is a story about stories.

The narrative takes the shape of a dark mashup of

The Little Mermaid, Frankenstein, and Lord of the Flies, with a sprinkling of biblical types and symbols

. It took me a minute to get my bearings at the beginning. (Wow, this is gorgeous poetic writing. Huh, that's weird. It sounds like her children are

casually snacking on a human corpse

. Oh no wait, they are. Yikes. What is this story?)

It is also a commentary on how the stories humans tell themselves shape their beliefs and behaviors, sometimes leading to their own suffering and ruin, even as those same stories are defended as sacrosanct. Sometimes horrors in this upside-down world mask themselves in holiness. The true enemies, the charlatans wielding power, want people to believe that evil is found elsewhere, and to fear the outsider rather than questioning the darkness in their own midst, in their own systems of belief.

"Man mistakes his own experiences as the canvas on which all truths are drawn. He is rarely correct in his respect."

"There is a reason The Hunt is central to so many narratives. For all that humanity professes to delighting in its own sophistication, it longs for simplicity, for when the world can be deboned into binaries. Darkness and light. Death and life. Hunter and hunted."

This is also most definitely a horror story.

While the prose is a mesmerizing, undulating, hauntingly beautiful (unless big words bother you) thing, the plot beneath is feral and eviscerating.

People get eaten, tongues cut out, empires burn, characters are vivisected, entrails are spilled.

There is no lack of truly grotesque detail. This is an apocalyptically dark canvas on which to paint a fairy tale.

This is also a haunting love story.

"I wonder sometimes if this consciousness is the same, if I am the same. Or, if I am a mere fabrication strung together by circumstances."
"There is nothing wrong with being a monster."
"You always know the right things to say."

The story reminds me more than a bit of This Is How You Lose The Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone: the sumptuous use of language, the poetic cadence of the narrative, the distinct natures and voices of the main characters, and

their uncanny romance which slowly springs from time spent wandering a dangerous world together, sharing pieces of themselves along the way. Their love, once realized, crescendos into an unrelenting force in a dark and dangerous world, defying death, time, and logic.

 

"[...] Eternity is a worthless bauble without their conversation. [...] I will love them to the death of days."

 

Conclusion

I really enjoyed the telling of this tale. As one Barnes & Noble reviewer put it, "For someone who simply loves words, this novella was practically a playground [...]."

However, the weirdness of the plot and sheer quantity of strange vocabulary and odd phrasing employed throughout made me wonder if the author may have been aided by AI in their writing process. I saw online that she has utilized AI in the past for visual character studies, but it made me wonder if she also used it to create this written work. It is a weird world we live in where this might even be a question a reader would think to ask -- but there it is, sitting in the back of my mind even as I thoroughly enjoyed the story.

In the absence of further evidence, I am going to give the author the benefit of the doubt and offer up 5 stars. This kind of story is totally my jam.

 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Domestic abuse, Body horror, Child abuse, Death, Fire/Fire injury, Toxic relationship, Murder, Blood, Medical content, Grief, Torture, Injury/Injury detail, Physical abuse, Violence, Cannibalism, Gore, and Slavery

Moderate: Xenophobia, Vomit, and Animal death

religious radicalization

, power and control

percival_wise's review

dark emotional tense fast-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Medical trauma, Injury/Injury detail, Pandemic/Epidemic, Body horror, Child death, Fire/Fire injury, Physical abuse, Torture, Violence, Vomit, Cannibalism, Death, Murder, Blood, Gore, Grief, Infertility, Medical content, Miscarriage, and Pregnancy

nubiani's review

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

natka_manatee's review

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

bellebeaumont95's review

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective tense

• 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

 Brutal and beautiful in the same degree, The Salt Grows Heavy is a horror novella about narratives of power, and about two people shaped and rebuilt by horrifically traumatic events choosing to stay together.

The writing is lovely, if a little overdone, coloring the scenes in a way that had me both flinching away and immediately coming back, mesmerized. I would have liked to spend a little more time with the two main characters (who I found fascinating) and exploring their relationship, but as the horror fairy tale it is, the brevity works.

In my questionable habit of comparing things to other things, I might describe this as "What if The VVitch (2015) had a crossover with The Language of Thorns, written by the authors of This Is How You Lose The Time War . (All things I LOVE, so this is high praise). 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Death, Cannibalism, Violence, Body horror, Domestic abuse, Torture, Gore, Blood, Medical trauma, Murder, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Pandemic/Epidemic, and Physical abuse

Moderate: Vomit

shakita45's review against another edition

dark emotional sad fast-paced

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

5.0

I devoured this book like the mermaid devoured everyone else.

But seriously this book blew me away, and I'm going to work through Khaw's entire body of work now.  This little story had me in tears in a way full-fledged novels don't manage, and the writing style is beyond beautiful and incredibly evocative.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Gore, Cannibalism, Vomit, Body horror, and Medical content

booksthatburn's review

dark reflective tense medium-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? Yes

5.0

THE SALT GROWS HEAVY is technically the story of a plague doctor and a mermaid, a description which does not do nearly enough to imply how cool and weird this book is. The main character is not nameless, but her name is explicitly one that cannot be pronounced by humans, and so neither does the story render it in a form I could repeat. It deals with cycles of abuse, a religious cult, deprogramming, reclaiming agency, and the need to rescue someone in a bad situation like the one you yourself previously escaped. It’s also about a group of children worshiping a trio of surgeons who claim that death is not murder because they’ll be brought back to life. The children become more and more distorted, changing into a strange collection of remnants in the hands of those who would use and abuse them under claim of immortality.

Khaw's style has clearly developed more since HAMMERS ON BONE (also excellent), and this is less of a romp than THE ALL-CONSUMING WORLD. It has their willingness to just let a story be bleak without being depressing, finding hope interwoven with death, plus a strange interlude into cult deprogramming. It is specifically a follow up to one of the stories from the collection BREAKABLE THINGS, called "And in Our Daughters, We Find a Voice". That story is included in the back of THE SALT GROWS HEAVY for anyone who needs a refresher.

THE SALT GROWS HEAVY is a truly excellent piece of horror. I’m very glad I read it. I hope you like it too.

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Content Warnings

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

Moderate: Grief, Sexism, Vomit, Confinement, and Animal death

Minor: Pregnancy, Sexual content, Fire/Fire injury, Toxic relationship, and Miscarriage

"And in Our Daughters, We Find a Voice" - Graphic CW for blood, gore, death. Moderate CW for toxic relationship, confinement, pregnancy, miscarriage, violence, cannibalism.