You might think the fairytale goes this way: A mermaid comes to shore and weds the prince. But the story always forgets mermaids have teeth. This mermaid’s daughter has even devoured the entire kingdom and burned it to ash.
Joined on the run by a mysterious plague doctor, the mermaid stumbles upon a strange village of ageless children who thirst for blood, controlled by three “saints.”
Together, the mermaid and doctor must embrace the darkness of their own natures to have a chance to survive.
Why we’re excited about this book:
Within a few short years, Cassandra Khaw is quickly becoming a household name when it comes to horror and weird fiction. The author of The All Consuming World, These Deathless Bones, the Gods and Monster series, the Persons Non Grata series, Breakable Things, and Nothing But Blackened Teeth, their short fiction has graced the pages of such publications as Clockwork Phoenix, The Dark Magazine, Shimmer, and Orphans of Bliss: Tales of Addiction Horror among others. With their latest, Khaw twists the fairytales of our past into a blood-splattered nightmare with horrors that linger long after the last page is turned. Paul Tremblay (The Cabin at the End of the World) calls The Salt Grows Heavy “A feverishly gory, grotesquely beautiful and baroque fairy-tale-meets-love-sonnet. Cassandra Khaw’s imagination is limitless.” T. Kingfisher (What Moves the Dead) says: Cassandra Khaw’s writing is never more lyrical than when they’re describing the knife in your heart. The bones of a fairy tale sunk deep in a charnel house of descriptive prose, an elegant confection with a blood-soaked core. I devoured it in one sitting.”, and Brian Evenson (The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell) says the book is “A brutal and deadly romp whose language is as sharp and glittery as a scalpel made of ice. Strange and compelling, The Salt Grows Heavy is unlike anything else out there, a dark spell with needle-like teeth.”
Forthcoming from Tor Nightfire 2 May 2023, The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw is available for pre-order now.
BOB PASTORELLA