The weight of the sea’s tears: a review of The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw

[This review contains some mild spoilers]

Have you ever wondered what the story would be like if The Little Mermaid had a slightly different story? What if, instead of saving a Prince out of love, she was taken against her will from her home? What if instead of giving up her voice voluntarily, the Prince who captured her cut it off so that she couldn’t speak? What if instead of being a harmless fish, Ariel had an insatiable hunger for human flesh that could topple kingdoms?

The Salt Grows Heavy is a dark fantasy novella that explores this gruesome hypothetical. It is written by Cassandra Khaw, a Malaysian author with a unique, highly gorey, and anatomical writing style. The novel follows the adventures of two deuteragonists — the aforementioned morbid fairy-tale version of Ariel the mermaid, and a gender-ambiguous plague doctor who seems much too kind. 

They begin their adventures traveling a desolate empire after the mermaid’s daughters gorged themselves on the citizens and monarchy. However, the short novella soon takes a turn after our deutarogonists find themselves in the woods, witnessing a naked boy getting butchered by a gang of children wearing various animal carcasses and leathers and chanting“The Pig! The Pig is dead!” Too noble to let this atrocity go unpunished, they step in to help save the boy, being just seconds too late. After restraining who appears to be the group leader, they ask him why he committed the act. His answer? “The Pig always dies. Just ask our Saints.” 

This inciting incident lays the groundwork for the rest of the novel, meeting a commune deep within the woods with savage, ageless children and three immortal “Saints,” who call themselves surgeons and perform impossible feats of self-mutilation — cutting off their hands, scooping out their eyes, and excising their own hearts.

The plague doctor, who we find out has a connection to these surgeons and commune, urges the mermaid to save the indoctrinated children. The mermaid refuses, saying it is futile and that she has already made irreversible choices that have sealed their death (which are too graphic to describe here). Ultimately, however, they do retaliate against the surgeons and stage an uprising, which fails miserably and ends in their capture. 

I won’t continue any longer into the plot, and I hope you’re now encouraged to read the novel yourself. However, as for my thoughts on the novel, I very much enjoyed the writing style. As someone in science who wishes to go into medicine, the verbiage, diction, and metaphors that Khaw uses are insanely graphic and impressive in their ability to elicit visceral disgust. A taste of some of her favourite phrases: cracking cartilage, spilling bone, flaying spidery arteries, and webs of ochre blood. Moreover, the ending had me much sadder than anticipated with some really hard-hitting lines that complement and complete the love story of the mermaid and the plague doctor. I further liked the exploration of the themes of devotion and love as they pertain to two very damaged people.

With that being said, I almost wish that the plague doctor wasn’t a plague doctor. At times, I thought it didn’t add anything to the plot or even took away from it, as it’s kind of silly having to imagine a serious story with someone wearing a bird mask. Given the mermaid’s experience with the Prince, I thought it would’ve been really nice to see how a relationship with a human would’ve unfolded. This would’ve allowed for a more potent examination of themes of forgiveness, trauma, as well as vulnerability. While the writing was beautiful as well, I thought the flow of the plot was very hodge-podge and at times hard to follow. I enjoyed how it read like folklore, but putting more time into worldbuilding would’ve made the novella far more consistent in terms of the rules that govern the setting, along with the intricate and rich history of the mermaids, plague doctors, and various other mystical creatures mentioned briefly (like dryads, nymphs, and others). 

Overall, with how short the book is, I would recommend it to students solely as a masterclass in metaphors and descriptive writing. Don’t expect much in terms of plot, but that’s not what you should be reading it for anyways. Happy reading Warriors!