The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw
Tor Nightfire (May 2023)
Reviewed by Haley Newlin
Cassandra Khaw is known for their evocative prose, intensely dark and stunning worlds, masterful acts blending genres and lines of reality and fiction, and humans and monsters. In their fantasy-horror novella, The Salt Grows Heavy, a mermaid’s daughters unleash death upon the kingdom. Bodies line the streets, stacked in towering piles. They’ve gorged themselves on townspeople.
Mermaids leave nothing to waste.
Two lone survivors, the mermaid and an elusive plague doctor, embark on a journey through the ruins, discovering horrifying creatures. They come across a group of kids playing a grotesque, murderous game and follow them back to a village of never-aging children who serve and worship three demented surgeons. The children refer to these men as “The Saints.”
Of course, these men don’t have the best intentions as the kids imagine. They’re tortuous in their inquisitions. The plague doctor is appalled.
In their lush, gory descriptions, Khaw explores themes of survival and resiliency. Despite the horror of this dying world, the plague doctor still longs to help people. He wants to free the children. Altruism is strange and otherworldly to the mermaid. When she was “wrenched from the maw of the sea” and had her tongue removed by her husband, no one came to her aid. But that’s the way of the world revoked of its glitter and shine.
Adorned in a carefully bleached half-skull vulture mask, the plague doctor has seen the worst. They’ve seen death as a sport, fire, and torture, and in all of this, they’ve held onto their desire to heal.
They must take on the doctors and save the children.
Khaw establishes an unfair and cruel world, where women are “ravenous,” and men take without thought — much like the one we live in today. The author immerses readers in their gorgeous prose, leaving them terrified and alone, with hunters on the prowl and freezing to death.
I appreciate how the cold breaks down all preconceived notions of humans and monsters. “Such petty concerns do not survive the cold…there is only space for simplicity: the compulsion to put one foot after another, to draw one breath after the next.”
This represents not only survival and resiliency but identity and transformation. The character arcs left my jaw on the floor, a testament to the multifaceted layers within us: the good and the bad, evil and honor, human and monster. When you think it’s over, life renews through blood and fire.
In its bleak yet lyrically stunning style, The Salt Grows Heavy is among the most cleverly crafted stories I’ve ever read. It’s insightful and mind-bending. Peculiarly pragmatic at times, an impressive feat for a grim reimagining of a tale typically told with consent between the mermaid and humans and ending in a marriage that can only breed happiness.
The exploration of gender, the disregard of it at times, is astonishing and unlike anything I’ve ever read before. That tact truly made this tale as old as time, notably modern.
Admittedly, this book, despite its short length, is literary coded with incredibly sophisticated phrases. If you prioritize accessibility in reading, this book may not be for you.
If you like Grimm’s Fairytales, Robert Eggers’ film The Lighthouse, or The Mermaid by Christina Henry, I highly recommend you check out The Salt Grows Heavy.
This book will haunt me for years to come.
