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A review by skylarkblue1
The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw
challenging
dark
mysterious
fast-paced
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
2.5
I'm... honestly just kinda confused?
This book is like someone wrote a draft, and then for every other word they looked up the least used synonym for it. I'm really glad I read this on kindle as otherwise I'd have to strap a dictionary to the book lmao. Even kindle though was getting confused on some words - either just returning no results across the dictionary, wikipedia and translation, or just defining it as "abjective" and nothing more.
The writing was just incredibly over the top and way too descriptive. My favourite part was "the parabola of my lower lip" like, what does that even mean lmao. The descriptions where so much that it was getting into the realm of not really making too much sense - sort of lead to it feeling like a dream, a sort of hazy stream of consciousness. And I'm not too sure on if I enjoyed that or not haha.
Due to the style of writing I was actually pretty lost on what the story even was about. Cannibalism, cults(?) and magical science but nothing really seemed to connect too much together. Despite how descriptive the writing was, there wasn't that much world building and explanations for the systems and world so you're kinda just thrown in and expected to follow along.
It's also supposed to be queer, but the only queer part I could see was the plague doctor was just... unknown gender? The MC uses they/them for them, but it's stated a fair few times that they just don't know their gender, they're androynous and all that - never explicitly saying they're non-binary or even alluding to that.
I think this is a read that you'll either like or you wont. The first paragraph alone will let you know if you'll like the writing or not.
This book is like someone wrote a draft, and then for every other word they looked up the least used synonym for it. I'm really glad I read this on kindle as otherwise I'd have to strap a dictionary to the book lmao. Even kindle though was getting confused on some words - either just returning no results across the dictionary, wikipedia and translation, or just defining it as "abjective" and nothing more.
The writing was just incredibly over the top and way too descriptive. My favourite part was "the parabola of my lower lip" like, what does that even mean lmao. The descriptions where so much that it was getting into the realm of not really making too much sense - sort of lead to it feeling like a dream, a sort of hazy stream of consciousness. And I'm not too sure on if I enjoyed that or not haha.
Due to the style of writing I was actually pretty lost on what the story even was about. Cannibalism, cults(?) and magical science but nothing really seemed to connect too much together. Despite how descriptive the writing was, there wasn't that much world building and explanations for the systems and world so you're kinda just thrown in and expected to follow along.
It's also supposed to be queer, but the only queer part I could see was the plague doctor was just... unknown gender? The MC uses they/them for them, but it's stated a fair few times that they just don't know their gender, they're androynous and all that - never explicitly saying they're non-binary or even alluding to that.
I think this is a read that you'll either like or you wont. The first paragraph alone will let you know if you'll like the writing or not.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Blood, Body horror, Cannibalism, and Gore