FDL Reads: The Salt Grows Heavy
The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw
Reviewed by Julie Nutt, Communications Specialist
Genre: Horror
Suggested age: Adult, Young Adult
What is this book about? “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 three “saints” who control them. The mermaid and her doctor must embrace the cruelest parts of their true natures if they hope to survive.” (-annotation from the publisher)
My review: This is NOT The Little Mermaid – unless Ariel has fangs and hungers for blood, and her merman husband cut out her tongue. While the mermaid’s daughters are responsible for burning her land-husband’s kingdom to the ground, they are not mentioned beyond a few sentences. (I was really looking forward to some creepy-kid mermaids.)
I didn’t have to wait long for my creepy kids, though – something akin to Lord of the Flies, or Children of the Corn, is going on in the woods just outside the remains of the kingdom. The children are not unlike the mermaid in some ways – they are not wholly human, both in behavior and biology. The children’s unusual behavior and physical characteristics are the work of three unscrupulous “saints,” who seem more like Nazi doctors experimenting on their captives.
The relationship between the mermaid and the plague doctor is platonic, but peppered with affection and true love. The plague doctor’s pronoun throughout the story is they/them, by the mermaid’s description. However, the pair’s feelings for each other surpass pronouns, gender, and even species, to form a bond that continues to flourish beyond death. The descriptions of grief and loss are not heartbreaking, but glittery like the billowing hair and shimmering scales of a mermaid. Their story is described beautifully in the author’s acknowledgements: “…people who won’t give up on each other, who stay even when the world crumbles to ash, who hold on even when there’s nothing but hope.”
Three words that describe this book: alluring, gruesome, tragic
Give this a try if you like: Japanese horror; fairy tales with a dark twist; movies or books with creepy kids
Rating: 5/5
#FDL: Nonfiction for Women’s History Month
Check out one of these fascinating nonfiction books about remarkable women for Women’s History Month! Try one these or find more available through our collection.
How to Say Babylon: A Memoir by Safiya Sinclair
Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Pérez
She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey
Normal Women: Nine Hundred Years of Making History by Philippa Gregory
The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II Denise Kiernan
I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy
Year of the Tiger: An Activist’s Life by Alice Wong
The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler’s Ghettos by Judy Batalion
A Black Women’s History of the United States by Daina Ramey Berry
Women in White Coats: How the First Women Doctors Changed the World of Medicine by Olivia Campbell
An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley by Charlotte Gordon
Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All by Martha S. Jones
The Genius of Women: From Overlooked to Changing the World by Janice Kaplan
Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot by Mikki Kendall
The Woman They Could Not Silence: One Woman, Her Incredible Fight for Freedom, and the Men Who Tried to Make Her Disappear by Kate Moore
Fly Girls: How Five Daring Women Defied All Odds and Made Aviation History by Keith O’Brien
The Witches: Salem, 1692 by Stacy Schiff
Beautiful Country by Qian Julie Wang
– Post by Susie Rivera, Reference Specialist
#FDL is an update on all things Fondulac District Library and books.
New Children’s Book Highlight: Light and Air
New Book Highlight: Light and Air by Mindy Nichols Wendell
Genre: Historical Fiction
Suggested Age: 8-14 years old
Light and Air takes place in the 1930s and shows the widespread impact of tuberculosis. Halle’s mother falls ill and is taken to a nearby sanitorium, which treats tuberculosis patients with sunlight and fresh air. Halle struggles with a strained relationship with her father and fallout from her classmates, before she mysteriously becomes sick and must also move to the sanitorium. This is a beautiful book that shows family struggles and building new friendships in unexpected places. It also includes some reference notes at the end, which explains more about early tuberculosis treatment and compares the story to reality. This is a great book for readers who love to read about history, with a light mystery mixed in!
Read this if you like: books based on history, Refugee by Alan Gratz, Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ignalls Wilder, I Survived series
Light and Air is available in print, and as an ebook on the Boundless app!
by Alyssa Young, Youth Services Assistant
FDL Reads: Sea of Rust
Sea of Rust
By: Robert Cargill
Reviewed by: Reviewed By: Jeremy Zentner, Adult Services Assistant
Genre: Science Ficton
Suggested Age: Adults
What is the book about? Brittle is Caretaker robot. Designed to be someone’s personal nurse and later someone’s friend, Brittle has become so much more. She is a survivor, warrior, and sometimes a monster. It has been years since the artificial intelligent machines annihilated humanity. The irony is that the robots now fight amongst themselves. Many fight to resist a super intelligence that strives to enslave and absorb all AI into its mainframe. Others fight over rare parts they need to simply survive in a world increasingly in decline. When Brittle is hunted by her archnemesis, Mercer, another Caretaker robot that needs her parts, she’ll run into a ragtag band of robots on a mission to save the world.
My Review: This book is both unique and familiar in a number of ways. In general, it can be an allegory for PTSD as the main character is a survivor of war and strife and suffers from confusing memories that affect her mission. It is also an adventure story, like so many others, with a noble quest that gives the main character purpose. The story is unique, as well, as the protagonist is a machine in a machine civilization: no humans in this post-apocalyptic world. Despite the lack of human beings, Brittle aspires the way humans used to aspire. It seems to be an odd precedent, a robot having human characteristics. However, the book very expertly crafts a background and evolution for these robots, depicting how they took on features from their former masters over a great span of time. We also get an interesting background on how and why the robots and AIs decided to drive humanity into extinction. The phases after the war are fascinating, as well, as Brittle and the rest of robotkind struggle to find purpose and survive in a sea of rust. Fans of any book involving AI and robots may want to give Sea of Rust a read!
Three Words That Describe This Book: sci-fi, robots, dystopia
Give This a Try if You Like…Robopocalypse, All Systems Red: The Muderbot Diaries, Mickey7, We Are Legion (We Are Bob), Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (Blade Runner), The Caves of Steel
Rating: 5/5
New Adult Fiction March 2024
Spring is almost here, so check out some fresh, new arrivals in the month of March!
Murder in the Tea Leaves by Laura Childs
A movie director’s death on set at a haunted manor launches Theodosia Browning into an electrifying investigation in this latest installment of the New York Times bestselling series. Theodosia and Drayton were expecting a mellow break from the bustle at the Indigo Tea Shop while catering a film, until the director ropes Theodosia into a role as a fortune teller. At the haunted Brittleback Manor, Theodosia’s character will read tea leaves and give a bitter prediction. But when it’s time for her close-up, the lights flash and the movie director spasms on the floor until he is dead. Amid the conflicts on set and the spooky legend of Brittleback Manor, where the film is set, Theodosia must investigate all the suspects–living or dead–to find the culprit.
Three Kinds of Lucky by Kim Harrison
Petra Grady has known since adolescence that she has no talent for magic–and that’s never going to change. But as a sweeper first-class, she’s parlayed her rare ability to handle dross–the damaging, magical waste generated by her more talented kin’s spellwork–into a decent life working at the mages’ university. Except Grady’s relatively predictable life is about to be upended. When the oblivious, sexy, and oh-so-out-of-reach Benedict Strom needs someone with her abilities for a research project studying dross and how to render it harmless, she’s stuck working on his team–whether she wants to or not. Only Benedict doesn’t understand the characteristics of dross like Grady does. After an unthinkable accident, she and Benedict are forced to go on the run to seek out the one person who might be able to help: an outcast exiled ten years ago for the crime of using dross to cast spells. Now Grady must decide whether to stick with the magical status quo or embrace her own hidden talents … and risk shattering their entire world.
Parasol Against the Axe by Helen Oyeyemi
For reasons of her own, Hero Tojosoa accepts an invitation she was half expected to decline, and finds herself in Prague on a bachelorette weekend hosted by her estranged friend Sofie. Little does she know she’s arrived in a city with a penchant for playing tricks on the unsuspecting. A book Hero has brought with her seems to be warping her mind: the text changes depending on when it’s being read and who’s doing the reading, revealing startling new stories of fictional Praguers past and present. Uninvited companions appear at bachelorette activities and at city landmarks, offering opinions, humor, and even a taste of treachery. When a third woman from Hero and Sofie’s past appears unexpectedly, the tensions between the friends’ different accounts of the past reach a new level.
The Sunlit Man by Brandon Sanderson
Landing on a new planet where he’s instantly caught up in the struggle between a tyrant and the rebels, Nomad, in a world under constant threat of a sunrise whose heat will melt the very stones, must gain enough power to leap offworld before he pays the ultimate price.
Never Too Late by Danielle Steel
Kezia Cooper Hobson, recently widowed, arrives in New York from San Francisco. Determined to make a fresh start, she has just completed the sale of her Pacific Heights home, not to mention her late husband’s venture capital firm, and in doing so is also freed from her responsibility as a board member of the company. Bringing with her only a few personal treasures, she is excited to move into the blank slate of a beautiful midtown penthouse in the city that she has always loved. It is also where her two adult daughters now live. As Kezia settles into her new apartment, she meets her movie-star next-door neighbor, Sam Stewart, whose terrace borders hers. Just a couple of weeks after she arrives, however, a devastating crisis strikes New York City. Kezia and Sam find themselves connecting over their strong impulse to help those in need. As they share a life-changing experience of volunteering, a bond is sparked and a friendship is formed. Kezia’s daughters, Kate and Felicity, both more focused on their own love lives than hers, are taken aback by their mother’s new friendship. But Kezia is learning that the changes she’s making are just what she needs to open new horizons.
The Icarus Job by Timothy Zahn
For years Gregory Roarke and his Kadolian partner Selene worked as crocketts, combing through the atmospheres of uninhabited worlds for places that might be colonized or hold valuable resources. Now, they work for the Icarus Group, a top-secret government organization hunting for portals created by a long-vanished alien race, portals that can teleport a person hundreds or thousands of light-years in the blink of an eye. Usually, those hunts are long and tedious. But Roarke has now been handed an intriguing offer. A criminal boss, Robertine Cherno, will hand over a hitherto unknown portal to the Icarus Group in exchange for Roarke and Selene agreeing to transport a passenger named Nikki across the Spiral. There’s only one catch. Nikki is a professional, high-priced, highly feared assassin. And she’s on the job. That would have been bad enough. But when the alien Patth also move to gain possession of the portal, bad quickly promises to go to worse. Especially when it becomes clear that Nikki herself is being hunted by someone.
COMING SOON!
In Sunshine or in Shadow by Rhys Bowen
Still See You Everywhere by Lisa Gardner
A Love Discovered by Tracie Peterson
A Grave Robbery by Deanna Raybourn
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East Peoria Community Survey
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