Astounded. My introduction to C. Khaw, was bombastic and I am absolutely flabbergasted. Cunning, grotesquely graphic, my senses were heightened throughout the whole read. With each virtual finger flip of a page I tasted metal in my mouth and sharp prodding down to my bone. As the story continued, the detail entranced me, leaving me sitting, crookedly in my spot, only getting up to stretch, listening to my bones snap between my breath, I just wanted more.

The world is a visceral place. We are animals. Sometimes, rather than just being instinctual, we let it live on pages.

As this story unfurled, it did not go the way I expected. The ending, Wow. Am I going to look into everything C. Khaw has published, absolutely, yes. Do I want all the copies and all the signing invites, dead yes. I just want more.

Though March, one of the best books I've read all year (this is my 21st).

Thank you Netgalley & C. Khaw for this ARC.
(this rocked!!)

See this book was good but a 3 star book. Like when you ask for Coke but they ask if Pepsi is okay. And you say sure because pepsi is good but not exactly what you wanted. That's this book. It was just good.

I honestly have no idea what I just read and no idea what I feel about it but leaning significantly more towards I didn't like it at all.

This is a thrilling tale of a quirky adventure that you won't want to put down. This book is dark, riveting, and not for the faint of heart.

The premise had me at “Ariel,” the book delivered on horror I didn’t know I needed. This is a twisted tale, but somehow a parable for truth and vulnerability too. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the free advance copy.

A violent and gory spin on The Little Mermaid fairy tale. A mermaid leaves the sea to live on land with the man she loves but she does not get the fairy tale ending. Years later her daughters have bled and burned the kingdom down forcing the mermaid to flee with a somber doctor hiding behind a plague mask. They hunt and become the hunted when they run into a nightmarish group of bloodthirsty kids who are tortured and torture others in a village controlled by bizarre surgeons. The story is written in a fairytale style yet it definitely falls into the horror category. Not for those looking for a Disney reboot but it is a prime example of blending genres. My thanks to the publisher for the advance copy.

A mermaid leaves a ruined kingdom in the company of a plague doctor. The odd couple share a strange kinship as neither is entirely of the world they inhabit. During their journey, they encounter a vicious group of children who worship a trio of scary surgeons.

While the world building is wickedly cool, the plethora of obscure words and flowery language of the mermaid’s narrative may be off putting to some readers. I liked the relationship between the mermaid and the plague doctor and their casual acceptance of each other. The mix of weird science and myth worked for me. I found the children and the surgeons especially creepy and found myself rooting for the mermaid and the plague doctor despite their monstrousness, or maybe because of it.

The book is simply structured with three chapters each covering a night and an epilogue. The epilogue really made the book for me as did the mermaid’s chronicle of her world and the relationship between her and the plague doctor. Be sure to check out the sweet dedication in the acknowledgments.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Thanks to Tor Nightfire for providing an Advance Reader Copy via NetGalley.

This book was provided to Me by NetGalley and torNightFire for free in advance of publication for me to provide an honest review. Thank you Net Galley and tor!

This is a travelogue following not your Disney princess mermaid who has a taste for human flesh and a plague doctor who is non-binary. During their journey of a cross a kid being hunted by a group of other kids, the surviving kids take them to a village to meet the three adults that the kids called the saints. The saints harvest the organs from the victim and use it to extend their lives. The victim is then resuscitated. The plague doctor does not want this to continue and wants to expose the saints for what they are: monstrous humans.

This book examines what it means to be monstrous. At its heart, it's also a love story. I enjoyed this book. I enjoyed the taiga setting. Cassandra Khaw's writing is so brutal and gory and honest I could read it all the time.

I am torn on what rating to give this. While the writing was beautiful and gruesome, I found that I really struggled to love this one.

This follows a mermaid and a plague doctor in a rather gruesome world. I enjoyed these two characters and how vicious this story is - very visceral in its descriptions of body horror and gore but still being beautifully written.

While this is primarily a horror story, it does involve a bit of a love story as well. I think I would have preferred either no love story at all or a slower build of one. It felt a little underdeveloped and would have made the book more emotional for me.


Overall, this was dark and gruesome but an enjoyable time.

Thank you to NetGalley and Tor for the arc!

This was different and that's what made it amazing. Not for the squeamish but if you like gore and fantasy be sure to check this one out.

It feels wrong to review this novella in plain writing, as it’s written in such elegant, otherworldly prose, but I will try. Honestly the most impressive thing about Khaw’s writing is the flowing, delicate, ease with which they use words I must look up on nearly every page (and I promise I did well on the SAT). Their writing is really worth reading even if sometimes it feels way more flowery than active. The characters in The Salt Grows Heavy, a plague doctor and vicious mermaid, both stranded in a ruined landscape, are so likable despite being almost inherently unlovable. I really loved the motifs and questions about human nature that Khaw presents, about immortality, sacrifice, and worship, without spoiling too much here. The horror of this story is in carefully crafted scenes of anatomical gore (stomach-turning, but tasteful and not excessive) and terrifying crises of ethics and humanity. I will definitely read this again after looking more into the mythology of mermaids and adjacent creatures. This definitely strikes me as a work worth rereading to catch more meaning and detail. I recommend this to really anyone with an interest in fairy tales, mythology, or horror.

Thank you Tor Nightfire and Netgalley for giving me access to review this ARC.

I read about 30 pages throughly and the writing made it very hard for me to understand what was happening. I ended up skimming the rest of the story. I had reread over and over again to try and understand, but unfortunately the writing just didn’t stick with me. The Synopsis intrigued me so I was excited to dive in but was frustrated with myself for being clueless the whole time
This is not a reflection on the story itself, I think it is just a me issue.
I would love to come back and revisit this story and try again to truly experience this story.

I was not able to finish this book unfortunately. The writing did not make sense to me and was too difficult to get through.

"The Salt Grows Heavy" by Cassandra Khaw is a strange book. In a pastiche of "Frankenstein" and "The Little Mermaid" and "Lord of the Flies," we are given an odd, often gruesome travelogue that ends sooner than expected.

After fleeing a plague—in fact, the mermaid’s children eating everyone in the kingdom—the silent mermaid and a cobbled-together plague doctor find themselves in a frozen village filled with children who regularly kill each other, only to be resurrected by a trio of masked doctors called the saints. These doctors are, in fact, the ones responsible for creating the plague doctor, and this gives our characters mixed feelings. When more information is revealed, and the purpose of the children uncovered, the mermaid must decide whether to flee or remain beside her loyal doctor as they do what they think is right.

The set-up of this story had me thinking we’d be following these two characters for a while, but their travels come to an abrupt stop in the snowy woods when they witness the brutal murder of a child by a group of other children. And it all unravels from there. The turns of events are unexpected all the way through, and the reader cannot guess what is going to happen next. Truly, when the blurb or I compare this to other stories, that’s really not going to set the reader up to understand what’s happening.

"The Salt Grows Heavy" has to be read to be understood. And then you’re going to have to sit with it for a couple of days after. I received the ARC from NetGalley.

Loved this folklore/fairytale horror!! The story was so unique but so incredibly disturbing. I also found this to be a little bit of a look at Nature vs. Nurture - needing to kill vs. gaining power from it. The acts of the doctors/saints was truly horrifying. I also LOVED the ending and the little bit of romance and rep for non-binary.
My only call out is I wish there was a prologue of some sort of short explanation for the world they were living in - I spent about 25% of the novella trying to figure it out, but again didn't ruin anything for me.

The Salt Grows Heavy is dark and bloody and gory and beautiful and disgusting and utterly impossible to put down. Khaw's prose alone is worth the price of admission, but this novella sunk its razor-sharp teeth in and ripped me to shreds by the turn of the last page.

An elegant and eerie tale from Khaw, who continues to surprise. This slim novella manages to deftly examine some big questions about... well, the point of life, really. Is it to live well, or to live long? What would we sacrifice from the former in order to have the latter? It's also a story about oddball soulmates, or at least oddball partners in life, and those are often the best kinds. Especially when those partners might, I don't know, tear your heart out with needleteeth or reveal themselves to be otherwise more 'monstrous' than first meets the eye. Fascinating, fun, and wondrous.

Thank you to NetGalley for the review copy!

5/5 stars

A truly lyrical read that has some of the most lush and evocative writing that I have ever had the pleasure to read. Khaw does an amazing job at creating a beautiful story that lingers in the mind for days afterwards. The romance, the gore, the scenery.... everything just comes alive (though some of the gore descriptions did turn my stomach)! I couldn't get enough of the fairy tale aspects of the story or the way that stories shape both the narrative and the world of this novella. I also am in awe at the romance that appears in this story. While not a main focus, it hit all the right spots and just set my brain on fire with how pitch perfect it was. How can you not when you have lines like:

"Bury me, my love, and take a lock of my hair with you. Carry me through the centuries. I think I'd like to share, just a little, in what immortality is like."

"Whatever they want, I will place it at their feet. Even their death."

On the craft side, I often find that novellas suffer from having too little or too much plot as the shortness of the format often is difficult for authors to pull off. However, Khaw does an amazing job with providing just enough detail that I never felt lost or confused but also didn't bloat the story with extraneous information or leave me with so few details I couldn't understand what was happening. It truly was such a tightly written and evocative piece that I know I will buy in paperback as soon as it comes out.

Recommended for all those who want to read an evocative short read, have watched too many Aemond or Daemon Targaryen edits on TikTok, or wants to read a really interesting fairy tale adjacent story.

I am not one to read many novellas but the premise of this book piqued my interest. The Salt Grows Heavy is a short, fast paced novella that had me hooked only a couple of pages in. Cassandra Khaw writes so beautifully that the imagery - both the wonderful and the horrible - comes across vividly.
Body horror, death, companionship, and a question of what makes a monster are all themes of this wonderful novella.

Thank you Netgalley for the digital ARC.

I think another reviewer described this reading experience best: I feel like I am experiencing a reader's higher.

Khaw somehow mixed the dark and grotesque with a enchanting and lyrical prose; it was beautiful and perfect and holy hell how did she do it!? Like, how can a story filled with gore, shiny, grey intestines, and putrid odors be so excellently placed with a love story so enduring and poetic?

This is a novella I could read again and again, left in awe every time ❤