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A review by the_chaotic_witch
House of Salt and Sorrows by Erin A. Craig
1.0
House of Salt and Sorrow
Erin A. Craig – 2019 – 400 pages – Debut
1/5 stars
SPOILER-FILLED
This was my moon-buddy read for the Zodiacathon 2019 with my lovely Caprimoons from twitter. I was a little behind but they seemed to enjoy it so I was quite disappointed when I didn’t.
First for the spoiler-free plot:
This is a retelling of The Twelve Dancing Princesses. In this story, the father is a duke who has lost his wife to childbirth of his 12th daughter. The oldest three died in unfortunate accidents – horribly and gory. By now it is generally suspected that the sisters are cursed and will die off one by one – oldest to youngest.
At the beginning of our story, the forth (and by that point the oldest) sister is being buried, having fallen off a cliff under uncertain circumstances in the middle of the night.
While our main character Annaleigh (sister no. 6) suspects her sister’s death not to be an accident and starts to investigate the rest of the family decide that they’ve been mourning for too long and that it’s finally time to stop and live again. Additionally to that Morella (the stepmom) decides the day of the funeral is the perfect timing to announce she’s pregnant with a son about which none of the sisters is particularly pleased.
So, when an old childhood friend named Fisher reappears, he and Annaleigh decide to distract the sisters by going on the hunt for a hidden magical door that can lead you anywhere you want. Thus they can all escape the curse and see more of the world than their small island. They find the door and it leads them to the most beautiful dances and balls and the sisters go there every night having a blast.
But as Annaleigh’s investigations lead her to another death she stops going and when ghosts start to cause mayhem, things get dangerous.
The idea of the plot is hardly connected to what we learn in the first 300 pages.
It is that a hurt woman summons a trickster to get revenge and status by ensuring her son will be the heir and not the eight sisters before him and this trickster takes a deity of Madness to aid who spins reality and thoughts, driving sister against sister making them kill each other or themselves.
And this very idea is one of the main issues of the plot. If you loved this book and you want to defend it then you can read everything I will write here and explain it away with “that was Kosamara that is why xyz happened/behaved that way”.
Before we talk about the many issues I had with the story let’s quickly get the writing out of the way. It was fine. Not exceptional. Most of the times I thought the metaphors were very odd, very wordy not saying a lot.
Here’s an example from page 283 of my edition:
“Rivulets of water wept down the stone wall like quicksilver, as if beads of moonlight dew flowed out of the very bricks themselves.”
First two short things: Worldbuilding and magic system.
My edition has no map I don’t know if that is a fault or if there just isn’t one but it would have helped. From the text itself, I had no clear idea of the geography of the world. As well as some political things like we have a duke and kings that’s it? And then suddenly we also have different peoples of different gods?
Also, the weather in this world was very dramatically convenient. Just saying.
The whole construction felt ill thought through and just going along with it as one wrote the story and thus having a lot of plot holes.
That’s the theme for the whole construction of the story.
The magic system I thought wouldn’t be an issue because I didn’t anticipate magic. I knew about the ghosts but that doesn’t always have to be magic. Then out of nowhere, there was a world of gods who intervene in the world and connected to that the door and Cassius. Neither was explained and the door was incomplete in itself. I won’t go in-depth on that but yes.
Additionally, to that the triplets had that certain magic between them which also never got mentioned again!
Noooooooow. For the execution. And the ranting. Yay.
We will put the main issues on hold to talk about the characters first.
The sisters for the longest time were really confusing to me. I couldn’t sort through the age of them, how many were dead or alive and whether the triplet and the Graces were the same set of people or not. Spoiler alert they-re not.
The father was at first super unreasonable and dismissive to anything plot-related and then super inconsistent. First, we have this loving father figure who is a little irresponsible in his financial reasoning but okay. Then we’ve got a conveniently absent father. Then one who suddenly puts the new wife over his daughters. Then we’ve got the abusive drunk and at the end the terrible person who likes young girls and is just horrific.
The story couldn’t decide whether or not the reader was supposed to like the stepmom, Morella. She was nice, then too obvious in her pursuit of producing the next heir, then nice and weak, then pitiable, then too pitiable….
She also appeared much younger – around Annaleigh’s age and that didn’t lend itself well to the story either.
After being tied to the bed because pregnancy she just disappeared to come back out of nowhere at the very end. She was mentioned alright and but felt like not even a side character but a background character – like about-ish Roland the butler.
Maybe the author intended for us to forget about this possibility of a villain but the poor execution connected with her very very weak and too easy ending – it did nothing for me.
Of all the characters Annaleigh was the only thinking one, and we will get to that later.
There were too many men.
At first, I feared a love triangle which just evaporated after a few pages.
Fisher was sketchy. And apparently supposed to show that even if there is an old childhood friend who’s in love with our Main they don’t need to end up together but no.
He was super unimportant except the few short periods where he was the main plot device.
Edgar was super dramatic, then not at all, also very quickly forgotten and for the huge part that he played for about 27% of the story he was just not important enough?
And Cassius.
Oh, Cassius. I wouldn’t say I disliked him. I didn’t like him either. Because can someone please tell me who he was other than our main plot device which is in love with our Main. Because of their insta-love, there was no chemistry between them, nothing that drew them to each other or connected them. His character arch of being demi-god was an extremely easy way to explain the sketchy things about him and it was resolved too quickly and never explained. And afterwards, he was just there to drive the plot. He was a plot device without a character, giving hints and information at random intervals, holding back information and just being there. He was just – there.
About that also, everyone was sketchy. No idea how Annaleigh trusted anyone because I didn’t trust any of the characters and not in a good way.
They were all super irresponsible, especially Camille. Yes, she didn’t expect to be heiress but then she felt like she was reasonable but never acted like it. Annaleigh was the only thinking character and can someone please tell me why she was the one taking care of Morella/their mom before that?
And one last thing on that note: Kosamara says that Verity is totally tormented by her. She never appears disturbed by the ghosts. Except for that one Eulalie nightmare which doesn’t seem to upset her that much either.
Now I don’t really know how to structure this next part so I hope it won’t get too confusing.
Even though Kosamara controlled everything. Why was Annaleigh able to find anything amiss? How could Camille believe her at the end? She doesn’t feel like she would just stop when the trickster has his son. She feels like she would definitely finish the job no matter what Viscardi tells her to do. In addition to that her explanation of what was going on was way too rushed and like so many things never spoken about once it was over.
Though the creep-factor was pretty efficient it, too, was over and gone too quickly.
As for everyone being sketchy, I was guessing the whole time and not in a good way. There was too much happening and too little explaining, too many turns and too little consistency.
One of my biggest plot-related issues it how the mourning was handled. Five years of mourning period… okay. That would have been acceptable if that was the only thing that ended. But there was no sorrow the only one who seems affected by the sisters' death! seemed to be Lenore and she was also just quiet and that’s it. There was no feeling. Nowhere. No pain, they talked about the sisters yes but without an inch of emotion!
And connected to that: The title. No sorrow, yes there was a house, and the salt was just mentioned too many times without actually being of any importance.
The ending was … odd.
It starts with Kosamara’s explanation followed by going home and then that fantastic (shock horror yes I like something!) twist of reality in which Annaleigh is now very convincingly believed to have gone mad and even suspected to be the one who killed her sisters!
But then that suddenly stops.
She’s deemed sane enough to help with the childbirth. Which she does. And Camille wants to believe her suddenly. How? No one knows.
Son is stillborn. Father takes him away and is never seen again.
Then Morella apparently decides that she can just tell everyone her life story because slipping out of character can’t be explained away by Annaleigh’s madness.
And that’s what she does. Explains everything. Viscardi appears. Morella just dies. Oh and that child thing is born – no explanation on that. Viscardi takes his son home. House burns. Everyone’s okay with Annaleigh again. Cassius reappears and dies. (Oww…) Oh, wait no. He’ll come back anyhow.
Also, playing with reality doesn’t mess with one’s mind apparently and doesn’t leave at least the trace of PTSD. (Far From Home had the same issue…)
It was all so rushed and emotionless?
And that’s where the greatest issues come in which are purely executional not plot-related.
Firstly. The story couldn’t decide what it wanted to be.
Murder mystery?
Ghost story?
A story about a hurt woman meddling with gods and that backfiring?
No one knows! Yes, it was all of that but separate. If it were interwoven okay, but they were practically three different stories.
Secondly. There was a lot of foreshadowing and then dropping the plot points.
One example: something. That was mentioned way too obviously but then nothing came of it. There was no revelation because Kosamara was still a someone.
And then thirdly. There was NO COMMENTARY WHATSOEVER AND SO MAY THINGS STILL OPEN/UNCLEAR AT THE END!
We never talked about the Edgar/Eulalie thing, never commented on “Edgar is way too lowly for her”, why Annaleigh was able to find something amiss (!!), why Viscardi came to the dances, the whole Viscardi-son thing, magic is never introduced at one point it’s just there! We never talk about the new knowledge of the father or what happened to him, never really or at least not enough how the sisters died and how or not this is related to the deaths before that. We NEVER talk about how wrong that shoe-competition was and how it just dissolved into thin air, what creeps the uncles were and how wrong that all was??
Also, at the end. No explanation to the other sister or the reader what happened, either show us how they react or tell us that they “got the memories back” or something, the same thing with Fisher. So he’s dead now how the reader found out he died right? Can we please get the telling Hannah or a word about the funeral or anything?!
Plus at the end, when Annaleigh is doubting her own sanity, the things falling off shelves? Can we get a word on that?
Aaaand the curse.
It’s there. Everyone fears it. Everyone denies it. It’s this thing everyone dreads because it keeps the boys away. But then it’s suddenly gone. Just disappeared and at some point taken out again – a few words about it – and then it’s put away again. Also, it’s never resolved as such.
And about keeping the boys away. (Okay, here might be speaking my ace a little but still.)
Why were they all so thirsty?? Yes, okay, you’ve been stuck with your too many sisters for up until 17 years and apparently three or four very smutty novels but why are they all so thirsty for a man’s touch??
That really bothered me!
So.
All in all, I gave it an enjoyment rating of 2/5 stars.
A neutral rating 1/5 stars.
And a final rating of 1/5 stars.
Erin A. Craig – 2019 – 400 pages – Debut
1/5 stars
SPOILER-FILLED
This was my moon-buddy read for the Zodiacathon 2019 with my lovely Caprimoons from twitter. I was a little behind but they seemed to enjoy it so I was quite disappointed when I didn’t.
First for the spoiler-free plot:
This is a retelling of The Twelve Dancing Princesses. In this story, the father is a duke who has lost his wife to childbirth of his 12th daughter. The oldest three died in unfortunate accidents – horribly and gory. By now it is generally suspected that the sisters are cursed and will die off one by one – oldest to youngest.
At the beginning of our story, the forth (and by that point the oldest) sister is being buried, having fallen off a cliff under uncertain circumstances in the middle of the night.
While our main character Annaleigh (sister no. 6) suspects her sister’s death not to be an accident and starts to investigate the rest of the family decide that they’ve been mourning for too long and that it’s finally time to stop and live again. Additionally to that Morella (the stepmom) decides the day of the funeral is the perfect timing to announce she’s pregnant with a son about which none of the sisters is particularly pleased.
So, when an old childhood friend named Fisher reappears, he and Annaleigh decide to distract the sisters by going on the hunt for a hidden magical door that can lead you anywhere you want. Thus they can all escape the curse and see more of the world than their small island. They find the door and it leads them to the most beautiful dances and balls and the sisters go there every night having a blast.
But as Annaleigh’s investigations lead her to another death she stops going and when ghosts start to cause mayhem, things get dangerous.
The idea of the plot is hardly connected to what we learn in the first 300 pages.
It is that a hurt woman summons a trickster to get revenge and status by ensuring her son will be the heir and not the eight sisters before him and this trickster takes a deity of Madness to aid who spins reality and thoughts, driving sister against sister making them kill each other or themselves.
And this very idea is one of the main issues of the plot. If you loved this book and you want to defend it then you can read everything I will write here and explain it away with “that was Kosamara that is why xyz happened/behaved that way”.
Before we talk about the many issues I had with the story let’s quickly get the writing out of the way. It was fine. Not exceptional. Most of the times I thought the metaphors were very odd, very wordy not saying a lot.
Here’s an example from page 283 of my edition:
“Rivulets of water wept down the stone wall like quicksilver, as if beads of moonlight dew flowed out of the very bricks themselves.”
First two short things: Worldbuilding and magic system.
My edition has no map I don’t know if that is a fault or if there just isn’t one but it would have helped. From the text itself, I had no clear idea of the geography of the world. As well as some political things like we have a duke and kings that’s it? And then suddenly we also have different peoples of different gods?
Also, the weather in this world was very dramatically convenient. Just saying.
The whole construction felt ill thought through and just going along with it as one wrote the story and thus having a lot of plot holes.
That’s the theme for the whole construction of the story.
The magic system I thought wouldn’t be an issue because I didn’t anticipate magic. I knew about the ghosts but that doesn’t always have to be magic. Then out of nowhere, there was a world of gods who intervene in the world and connected to that the door and Cassius. Neither was explained and the door was incomplete in itself. I won’t go in-depth on that but yes.
Additionally, to that the triplets had that certain magic between them which also never got mentioned again!
Noooooooow. For the execution. And the ranting. Yay.
We will put the main issues on hold to talk about the characters first.
The sisters for the longest time were really confusing to me. I couldn’t sort through the age of them, how many were dead or alive and whether the triplet and the Graces were the same set of people or not. Spoiler alert they-re not.
The father was at first super unreasonable and dismissive to anything plot-related and then super inconsistent. First, we have this loving father figure who is a little irresponsible in his financial reasoning but okay. Then we’ve got a conveniently absent father. Then one who suddenly puts the new wife over his daughters. Then we’ve got the abusive drunk and at the end the terrible person who likes young girls and is just horrific.
The story couldn’t decide whether or not the reader was supposed to like the stepmom, Morella. She was nice, then too obvious in her pursuit of producing the next heir, then nice and weak, then pitiable, then too pitiable….
She also appeared much younger – around Annaleigh’s age and that didn’t lend itself well to the story either.
After being tied to the bed because pregnancy she just disappeared to come back out of nowhere at the very end. She was mentioned alright and but felt like not even a side character but a background character – like about-ish Roland the butler.
Maybe the author intended for us to forget about this possibility of a villain but the poor execution connected with her very very weak and too easy ending – it did nothing for me.
Of all the characters Annaleigh was the only thinking one, and we will get to that later.
There were too many men.
At first, I feared a love triangle which just evaporated after a few pages.
Fisher was sketchy. And apparently supposed to show that even if there is an old childhood friend who’s in love with our Main they don’t need to end up together but no.
He was super unimportant except the few short periods where he was the main plot device.
Edgar was super dramatic, then not at all, also very quickly forgotten and for the huge part that he played for about 27% of the story he was just not important enough?
And Cassius.
Oh, Cassius. I wouldn’t say I disliked him. I didn’t like him either. Because can someone please tell me who he was other than our main plot device which is in love with our Main. Because of their insta-love, there was no chemistry between them, nothing that drew them to each other or connected them. His character arch of being demi-god was an extremely easy way to explain the sketchy things about him and it was resolved too quickly and never explained. And afterwards, he was just there to drive the plot. He was a plot device without a character, giving hints and information at random intervals, holding back information and just being there. He was just – there.
About that also, everyone was sketchy. No idea how Annaleigh trusted anyone because I didn’t trust any of the characters and not in a good way.
They were all super irresponsible, especially Camille. Yes, she didn’t expect to be heiress but then she felt like she was reasonable but never acted like it. Annaleigh was the only thinking character and can someone please tell me why she was the one taking care of Morella/their mom before that?
And one last thing on that note: Kosamara says that Verity is totally tormented by her. She never appears disturbed by the ghosts. Except for that one Eulalie nightmare which doesn’t seem to upset her that much either.
Now I don’t really know how to structure this next part so I hope it won’t get too confusing.
Even though Kosamara controlled everything. Why was Annaleigh able to find anything amiss? How could Camille believe her at the end? She doesn’t feel like she would just stop when the trickster has his son. She feels like she would definitely finish the job no matter what Viscardi tells her to do. In addition to that her explanation of what was going on was way too rushed and like so many things never spoken about once it was over.
Though the creep-factor was pretty efficient it, too, was over and gone too quickly.
As for everyone being sketchy, I was guessing the whole time and not in a good way. There was too much happening and too little explaining, too many turns and too little consistency.
One of my biggest plot-related issues it how the mourning was handled. Five years of mourning period… okay. That would have been acceptable if that was the only thing that ended. But there was no sorrow the only one who seems affected by the sisters' death! seemed to be Lenore and she was also just quiet and that’s it. There was no feeling. Nowhere. No pain, they talked about the sisters yes but without an inch of emotion!
And connected to that: The title. No sorrow, yes there was a house, and the salt was just mentioned too many times without actually being of any importance.
The ending was … odd.
It starts with Kosamara’s explanation followed by going home and then that fantastic (shock horror yes I like something!) twist of reality in which Annaleigh is now very convincingly believed to have gone mad and even suspected to be the one who killed her sisters!
But then that suddenly stops.
She’s deemed sane enough to help with the childbirth. Which she does. And Camille wants to believe her suddenly. How? No one knows.
Son is stillborn. Father takes him away and is never seen again.
Then Morella apparently decides that she can just tell everyone her life story because slipping out of character can’t be explained away by Annaleigh’s madness.
And that’s what she does. Explains everything. Viscardi appears. Morella just dies. Oh and that child thing is born – no explanation on that. Viscardi takes his son home. House burns. Everyone’s okay with Annaleigh again. Cassius reappears and dies. (Oww…) Oh, wait no. He’ll come back anyhow.
Also, playing with reality doesn’t mess with one’s mind apparently and doesn’t leave at least the trace of PTSD. (Far From Home had the same issue…)
It was all so rushed and emotionless?
And that’s where the greatest issues come in which are purely executional not plot-related.
Firstly. The story couldn’t decide what it wanted to be.
Murder mystery?
Ghost story?
A story about a hurt woman meddling with gods and that backfiring?
No one knows! Yes, it was all of that but separate. If it were interwoven okay, but they were practically three different stories.
Secondly. There was a lot of foreshadowing and then dropping the plot points.
One example: something. That was mentioned way too obviously but then nothing came of it. There was no revelation because Kosamara was still a someone.
And then thirdly. There was NO COMMENTARY WHATSOEVER AND SO MAY THINGS STILL OPEN/UNCLEAR AT THE END!
We never talked about the Edgar/Eulalie thing, never commented on “Edgar is way too lowly for her”, why Annaleigh was able to find something amiss (!!), why Viscardi came to the dances, the whole Viscardi-son thing, magic is never introduced at one point it’s just there! We never talk about the new knowledge of the father or what happened to him, never really or at least not enough how the sisters died and how or not this is related to the deaths before that. We NEVER talk about how wrong that shoe-competition was and how it just dissolved into thin air, what creeps the uncles were and how wrong that all was??
Also, at the end. No explanation to the other sister or the reader what happened, either show us how they react or tell us that they “got the memories back” or something, the same thing with Fisher. So he’s dead now how the reader found out he died right? Can we please get the telling Hannah or a word about the funeral or anything?!
Plus at the end, when Annaleigh is doubting her own sanity, the things falling off shelves? Can we get a word on that?
Aaaand the curse.
It’s there. Everyone fears it. Everyone denies it. It’s this thing everyone dreads because it keeps the boys away. But then it’s suddenly gone. Just disappeared and at some point taken out again – a few words about it – and then it’s put away again. Also, it’s never resolved as such.
And about keeping the boys away. (Okay, here might be speaking my ace a little but still.)
Why were they all so thirsty?? Yes, okay, you’ve been stuck with your too many sisters for up until 17 years and apparently three or four very smutty novels but why are they all so thirsty for a man’s touch??
That really bothered me!
So.
All in all, I gave it an enjoyment rating of 2/5 stars.
A neutral rating 1/5 stars.
And a final rating of 1/5 stars.