House of Salt and Sorrows

The Twelve Dancing Princesses is hard to adapt, as it has way too many characters. House of Salt and Sorrows tries to eleviate the problem by killing off a third of the girls before the story even starts. It's not enough. Only three sisters matter (and one of the dead ones.) Trying to keep track of the rest is an exercise in frustration.

The worldbuilding is where this book shines. The story centers around islanders with ocean-centric religious practices. Humans don't have magic but their gods walk the earth and magic lingers some places.

Content warnings: Pregnancy and childbirth, lots of death, mild horror

I'm still very ambivalently confused about this book. I was hoping for something spooky as we moved into the Halloween season. And barring that, I was really looking for something atmospheric and rich with gothic romance. What I got was a story that while certainly aware of those things and trying very hard to achieve them, thought the best way to do that was to throw everything in the kitchen into one pot.

House of Salt and Sorrows follows the second oldest daughter, Annaleigh, of a family of seven girls that were once twelve. In five years, Annaleigh has lost her mother and several of her older sisters, the last of which under what she sees as mysterious circumstances. As her family, especially her newly remarried father, decides to move forward and shake off rumors of a curse, Annaleigh starts seeing ghosts and comes to believe that her sister was murdered. Also, there's a magical portal to some fancy balls, because this is inspired by the story of the Twelve Dancing Princesses, though it honestly could have done without that plot element as well as several others.

So, there's a lot going on here. There's a ghost story, and a murder mystery, and a romance with a handsome outsider, and a court drama, and a high fantasy magic system and world building. Its never really woven together, like, at all. I was never really sure why the story was taking the diversions it was. Why are we spending all this time on this romance when the love interest's personality is basically nonexistent? What was the point of the dancing and the balls when it took so long to get there and its introduction to the story is completely unrelated to the murder mystery at the core? Is this story about gods and monsters? Families and ghosts? A girl driven mad with grief? Its hard to call a story atmospheric when each plot point isn't given the time to create that atmosphere.

I could definitely feel the homages to classic gothic literature (there were elements that invoked Edgar Allen Poe, Shirley Jackson and Daphne du Maurier) which I have no doubt were intentional. But I don't really like hauntings (or even suggestions of hauntings) mixed up with firmer magic systems. If Craig wanted this to be about trickster gods, the idea of trickster gods should have been introduced at the beginning, not three quarters into the story. It actually took me a while to realize “Oh, when they talk about their gods, they're not talking about “God” they're talking about actual magical beings that effect their world.” I don't know, maybe I'm being very particular about my horror, but I feel like that kind of thing rips the bed sheet right off your spooky ghost. That might be why I was struggling with the way Annaleigh's family responded to her suspicions - what the story needed was non-believers, not just people with a vague disinterest in an honest investigation.

Getting out of the weeds a bit, I wish Annaleigh was more of a character. She's pretty bland at the beginning, and grows a little bit as the story goes on as a competent “second-in-line” figure, but she's still felt very undefined. Her love interest is so hollow he's practically a ghost himself. He's a mop of curly hair and good manners, but other than that he has no personality. The dialogue felt hokey and unnatural. The pacing is just not right for this kind of story - the scary bits are not tight enough, the slower moments and more contemplative plot elements are given little time to breath and flesh out. I appreciate that in the final act Craig really went all out with scary imagery, and while the detail she went into to create this seafaring culture was lovely, I thought the prose was just alright. And like many YA books I've been reading lately, while it has some mature elements, this felt like it was geared for a much younger audience.

House of Salt and Sorrows is readable but far from riveting, and everything it goes for felt weak and watered down. Points for trying, Craig is clearly a horror fan - the love is there but the skill really isn't.