Erin A. Craig’s House of Salt and Sorrows opens in the midst of a dreary funeral on a windswept, colorless island in a fantastical, seafaring kingdom populated by The People of the Salt. Annaleigh Thaumas once lived happily with her eleven sisters and doting father in a grand manor high atop the stormy cliffs. Now, though, a deep sadness stalks the covered-mirror-lined halls, as four of the twelve princesses have died unnaturally gruesome and mysterious deaths.
Every evening, as the clock ticks on and the sun slips below the horizon, her remaining sisters desperately seek distraction from their grief by dancing themselves to exhaustion at mysterious midnight balls. As the inhabitants of Highmoor find themselves anxious to move on, Annaleigh grows increasingly desperate to preserve her sisters’ memories and delve into the truth of the mysterious curse that swirls around her family like a dark and threatening storm cloud.
Unpopular opinion alert.
Erin A. Craig’s Gothic fairytale a la Twelve Dancing Princesses starts out incredibly strong. The imagery is absorbing and visceral, pulling you into a glittering otherworld within a world. For the most part, this strength runs the length of the novel. About midway through, though, the novel turns into a hormonally-charged teenaged romance that shoehorns into a trippy kaleidoscopic chain of events that twist and morph until you’re unsure which way is up. When it’s all over, the matter of the novel’s “villain” is still just as predictable, only now you’re disoriented by the time you’ve reached the conclusion you can see coming from across the novel’s choppy Kaleic sea.
That’s not to say that this novel isn’t every bit as magical as the classic Grimm’s story. The glinting forest of moonlit silver, the swan boats, the midnight dancing…all bring to mind snuggly childhood memories of “Read it again, Mom.” However, the focus drifted too far from the promised moonlight waltzes for my taste.
Parts of the plot just didn’t add up. These oddly-placed space-fillers quickly became the central focus, while the lure that drew my initial interest––secret, Gothic dances in mysterious and faraway castles––waned. My personal rating for this book would’ve shot from three to five stars if I had been granted the chance to lose myself a little more often in the sparkling clandestine balls, and spent a little less time wading ankle-deep through the slate gray waters of teenaged angst.
And, oh, yeah––if it hadn’t gotten just plain weird.
PS: Page 303––the word you want is stocky. That is all.
Stories with soul. Strategy with spine. 