Cassandra Khaw (A Song for Quiet; Hammers on Bone) vivisects myths and stitches them into each other in The Salt Grows Heavy, a gorgeous and gory horror fantasy novella that thrums with the pull of the deep. A mermaid princess whose newborn daughters have devoured a kingdom leaves her offspring to feast on the subjects of their father, a prince who stole her from the sea and cut out her tongue. Accompanying her into the world is a mild-mannered plague doctor, an androgynous being stitched together from many bodies. Out in the wild, the pair meet a collection of savage children who make games of murdering each other. The children lead them to their "saints," the same three mad surgeons who created the plague doctor. When the plague doctor decides they cannot leave the children to serve as body-part farms for the surgeons' experiments in immortality, the mermaid joins her companion in a cruel and deadly cat-and-mouse game that will take them into the heart of their own darkness.
"All of my kind are just souls with a cloak of skin and scales, barely tethered to the act of living," the mermaid says, but her narrator's voice is fresh and vital, the depth of her growing attachment to the plague doctor palpable. The sweetness of their bond provides a bright spot in a progressively darker and bloodier story made vivid by Khaw's poetic prose. Fantasy horror fans should love this fairy-tale gem. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads