Sci-Fi/Fantasy Novellas - The Salt Grows Heavy By Cassandra Khaw

Interested in reading a novella that was a finalist for the 2024 Locus Awards? Novellas are books under 175 pages.

“A feverishly gory, grotesquely beautiful and baroque fairy-tale-meets-love-sonnet."

You may think you know how the fairy tale goes: a mermaid comes to shore and weds the prince. But what the fables forget is that mermaids have teeth. And now, her daughters have devoured the kingdom and burned it to ashes.

On the run, the mermaid is joined by a mysterious plague doctor with a darkness of their own. Deep in the eerie, snow-crusted forest, the pair stumble upon a village of ageless children who thirst for blood, and the three “saints” who control them.

The mermaid and her doctor must embrace the cruelest parts of their true nature if they hope to survive.