Scan barcode
A review by lizshayne
The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw
challenging
dark
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
Starting off the year with a bang and a whimper of terror.
Fundamentally, The Little Mermaid is a horrifying story and what Khaw mostly does here is simply divide out the horror evenly.
This book is also helping me nuance my theory of books that speak to morality - horror is usually a genre that speaks to who we find terrifying and, in doing so, sets up a kind of morality about the universe of who is good and who is bad by who is threatened, by whom, and who survives. Fairy tale horror plays with this and it has a lot to say about who is bad and much less to say about who or what is moral. (Which is a fascinating twist on the fairy tale, which is very much a story about how to be good by the time it gets to the 19th century.) In part, I think it's a deep awareness that you can't talk about morality in a world of monsters who make monsters. The mermaid and the plague doctor are who they are because of what was done to them so this story is a continuation of who has the right to transform someone else's body. Which is the horror in the depths of the little mermaid.
Fundamentally, The Little Mermaid is a horrifying story and what Khaw mostly does here is simply divide out the horror evenly.
This book is also helping me nuance my theory of books that speak to morality - horror is usually a genre that speaks to who we find terrifying and, in doing so, sets up a kind of morality about the universe of who is good and who is bad by who is threatened, by whom, and who survives. Fairy tale horror plays with this and it has a lot to say about who is bad and much less to say about who or what is moral. (Which is a fascinating twist on the fairy tale, which is very much a story about how to be good by the time it gets to the 19th century.) In part, I think it's a deep awareness that you can't talk about morality in a world of monsters who make monsters. The mermaid and the plague doctor are who they are because of what was done to them so this story is a continuation of who has the right to transform someone else's body. Which is the horror in the depths of the little mermaid.