The Salt Grows Heavy

A mermaid, estranged from her husband's court (having killed/eaten them all, I presume), is accompanied by a plague doctor who finds her in the aftermath on a journey to escape. On their way they come upon a village consisting entirely of almost feral children—and three surgeons whom the children call saints. The children claim the saints can bring them back to life better than before, but the surgeons are nigh immortal and children brought back are sometimes missing organs. It doesn’t take long for this duo to catch onto the reason behind the immortality, and it’s the plague doctor who wants to save the children whether or not they want to be saved. Unfortunately, good intentions lead to sad conclusions.

Or, at least, that’s what I’m assuming the plot was. Honestly, it felt like the author sorted a thesaurus by least commonly used words and wrote a book using only those. This prose is so purple, it’s almost black. There’s a creepy folklore story buried in here, but not being able to follow along fully with what was going on from scene to scene sometimes really took me out of it. I wish I could rate this book higher, but not being able to fully follow a story makes it difficult for me to recommend it to other people.

Also, there’s lots of visceral detail here. So if excessively detailed surgical scenes, cracked ribcages, eating of eyeballs, descriptions of entrails, and much, much more is not your cup of tea, pass on this.