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3.77 AVERAGE
3.77 AVERAGE
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Originally posted to I Should Read That
I was sent a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. This review is spoiler-free.
Joanne Harris is rapidly becoming one of my favourite authors. Pocketful of Crows was a standout read from last year, and The Blue Salt Road is just as good. I really appreciate retellings of lesser known fairy tales and folklore, and the Child Ballads fit the bill perfectly. Harris’s haunting style and talent for storytelling bring The Blue Salt Road to life.
The Blue Salt Road is a fairy tale in the old tradition, meaning it is incredibly dark and there are some horrifying implications to the story. Harris’s writing is haunting and atmospheric -- it was so easy to sink into this book on a cold, dark evening. I particularly enjoy any story that takes place on, in, or around the sea, and you could really feel the salt in the air, the harsh cold, and the spray of the sea while you’re reading. There are gorgeous illustrations throughout the book, and I really felt like they complimented the story so well. I loved seeing our characters and setting come to life on the page.
Something I really liked about The Blue Salt Road is that we have a male selkie as our main character. In every selkie tale I’ve heard, it’s always a female selkie who is torn from her family and the sea when a man steals her seal skin. The fact that Harris decided to flip the usual story made it all the more compelling, and to me it felt like an even crueller twist of fate. I don’t want to reveal too much, but I really liked our nameless main character enjoyed his story arc, which gave similar satisfaction I found in Pocketful of Crows.
I would so highly recommend The Blue Salt Road as the nights grow longer and the air becomes chillier. Harris’s tale has so much magic and atmosphere, you’ll find yourself falling into the world she creates.
I was sent a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. This review is spoiler-free.
Joanne Harris is rapidly becoming one of my favourite authors. Pocketful of Crows was a standout read from last year, and The Blue Salt Road is just as good. I really appreciate retellings of lesser known fairy tales and folklore, and the Child Ballads fit the bill perfectly. Harris’s haunting style and talent for storytelling bring The Blue Salt Road to life.
The Blue Salt Road is a fairy tale in the old tradition, meaning it is incredibly dark and there are some horrifying implications to the story. Harris’s writing is haunting and atmospheric -- it was so easy to sink into this book on a cold, dark evening. I particularly enjoy any story that takes place on, in, or around the sea, and you could really feel the salt in the air, the harsh cold, and the spray of the sea while you’re reading. There are gorgeous illustrations throughout the book, and I really felt like they complimented the story so well. I loved seeing our characters and setting come to life on the page.
Something I really liked about The Blue Salt Road is that we have a male selkie as our main character. In every selkie tale I’ve heard, it’s always a female selkie who is torn from her family and the sea when a man steals her seal skin. The fact that Harris decided to flip the usual story made it all the more compelling, and to me it felt like an even crueller twist of fate. I don’t want to reveal too much, but I really liked our nameless main character enjoyed his story arc, which gave similar satisfaction I found in Pocketful of Crows.
I would so highly recommend The Blue Salt Road as the nights grow longer and the air becomes chillier. Harris’s tale has so much magic and atmosphere, you’ll find yourself falling into the world she creates.
adventurous
emotional
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
dark
fast-paced
The Blue Salt Road tells of the tale of a curious and bold selkie prince who wandered riskily onto the land of the Folk, but his tale turns into an unexpected adventure filled with secrets and treachery, hard truths and bitter lessons learned along the way, and perhaps in the end, a possibility of love after betrayal.
I picked this up because of Sue Grant's luscious cover art, and stayed for Harris's magical storytelling. Like the wild waters of Sule Skerry, Harris's writing style is beautiful and savage, and the lives of the people are harsh like the cold northern winds of the Orkney Isles. Definitely one to remember.
I picked this up because of Sue Grant's luscious cover art, and stayed for Harris's magical storytelling. Like the wild waters of Sule Skerry, Harris's writing style is beautiful and savage, and the lives of the people are harsh like the cold northern winds of the Orkney Isles. Definitely one to remember.
adventurous
dark
hopeful
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Liked
*Unique story
*Selkies
*Sea faring adventure
*Unexpected story, I bought the book based on the cover and didn't know anything going in
*Brautiful book
*Unique story
*Selkies
*Sea faring adventure
*Unexpected story, I bought the book based on the cover and didn't know anything going in
*Brautiful book
You may have noticed a recent trend of books of myths and legends retold for a modern audience. For example, there’s Neil Gaiman’s Norse Tales, treading similar ground to Joanne’s version of the Asgard-ian myths. I can also think of Stephen Fry’s Mythos, retelling of the Greek myths and Anthony Horowitz’s Legends series which cherry-picked myths for a young adult readership.
There are also those stories that seem to echo old-school fairy stories but in a grown-up setting. The obvious example is the original Grimm’s Fairy Tales, a very different proposition to the ones told to children, but more recently books such as Naomi Novik’s award-winning books Uprooted and Spinning Silver seem perhaps to be more like The Blue Salt Road. Here, after recently telling us tales of Nordic myth and Travelling Folk, Joanne tells us a folklore style story of Scottish fisher-folk.
The Blue Salt Road is inspired by Celtic myth (and the so-called traditional Child Ballads), as a story of humans and selkies. Selkies are seals but, like the folk stories of mermaids, can transform into human form.
In this story of island folk, for many years the humans and the selkie have kept a respectful distance between themselves. Flora McCraiceann, a young maiden of the islands, is determined to better herself and escape her predictable life planned out for her. To do this, she inveigles a selkie to be her boyfriend. Once pregnant, she captures the selkie’s skin he discards on transforming to a human and locks it away in a cedar chest. The legend says that once separated from its skin, the selkie cannot return to seal-form and loses memories of its previous life, instead left as a confused and subdued human.
Flora and the selkie marry, and the selkie tries to make the best of its human life as one of the Folk, though always confused by the attraction of the sea and the call of its creatures.
Before the baby is born, the selkie’s father-in-law, determined to help this strange young man settle into his family life, takes him on the village’s next whaling trip. The hunt is gruesome and distressing. Confused by his thoughts and dreams, the selkie is unable to fulfil his role and kill a whale, and is soon regarded by the rest of the crew as ‘a clocker’, a symbol of bad luck.
Once abandoned by the crew, the selkie discovers the truth about his own past, and returns to the village to revenge his deception and take revenge on those that had trapped him so, as well as take his child away from those who had treated him so badly. The last part of the book tells us what happens and deals with the consequences of the character’s actions.
The Blue Salt Road is the sort of story that you can imagine being passed on from generation to generation. It feels timeless, the sort of tale that you can imagine being told around a campfire in the frozen North, a story passed on through word of mouth to today and that stays memorable ‘in the telling’. The style seems right, in that the language is old style descriptive rather than the modern contemporary language of Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough’s science fiction Petaybee series, which has similar origins.
The Blue Salt Road is a story of a harsh and even brutal lifestyle and is definitely an adult telling of a folk tale, or at least young adult. There is some brief mention of sex and some of the hunting details are quite graphic and not for the faint-hearted. For much of the story the perspective is firmly on the sea creature’s side, with humans often being devious and callous by comparison with the gentle and considerate denizens of the deep.
The illustrations by Bonnie Helen Hawkins (who also did the illustrations for 2017's A Pocketful of Crows) are pencil drawings scattered throughout the novella and are sensitive to the tale. To be frank, in my opinion the story is strong enough to not need them, but I must admit that they do add to the overall feel of the book as a nice physical object. This would make a nice accompanying item to A Pocketful of Crows on a person's bookshelf.
And at just over two hundred pages it’s also a book easily read in one sitting.
In summary, The Blue Salt Road is an old-school folktale of magic, love and betrayal that you can read and enjoy, without it outstaying its welcome. The skill of the writer is that for such a relatively short tale it is engaging and will stay with you after you have finished reading it. And if you don’t come out of it feeling a degree of sympathy for seals and whales, I’ll be surprised….
There are also those stories that seem to echo old-school fairy stories but in a grown-up setting. The obvious example is the original Grimm’s Fairy Tales, a very different proposition to the ones told to children, but more recently books such as Naomi Novik’s award-winning books Uprooted and Spinning Silver seem perhaps to be more like The Blue Salt Road. Here, after recently telling us tales of Nordic myth and Travelling Folk, Joanne tells us a folklore style story of Scottish fisher-folk.
The Blue Salt Road is inspired by Celtic myth (and the so-called traditional Child Ballads), as a story of humans and selkies. Selkies are seals but, like the folk stories of mermaids, can transform into human form.
In this story of island folk, for many years the humans and the selkie have kept a respectful distance between themselves. Flora McCraiceann, a young maiden of the islands, is determined to better herself and escape her predictable life planned out for her. To do this, she inveigles a selkie to be her boyfriend. Once pregnant, she captures the selkie’s skin he discards on transforming to a human and locks it away in a cedar chest. The legend says that once separated from its skin, the selkie cannot return to seal-form and loses memories of its previous life, instead left as a confused and subdued human.
Flora and the selkie marry, and the selkie tries to make the best of its human life as one of the Folk, though always confused by the attraction of the sea and the call of its creatures.
Before the baby is born, the selkie’s father-in-law, determined to help this strange young man settle into his family life, takes him on the village’s next whaling trip. The hunt is gruesome and distressing. Confused by his thoughts and dreams, the selkie is unable to fulfil his role and kill a whale, and is soon regarded by the rest of the crew as ‘a clocker’, a symbol of bad luck.
Once abandoned by the crew, the selkie discovers the truth about his own past, and returns to the village to revenge his deception and take revenge on those that had trapped him so, as well as take his child away from those who had treated him so badly. The last part of the book tells us what happens and deals with the consequences of the character’s actions.
The Blue Salt Road is the sort of story that you can imagine being passed on from generation to generation. It feels timeless, the sort of tale that you can imagine being told around a campfire in the frozen North, a story passed on through word of mouth to today and that stays memorable ‘in the telling’. The style seems right, in that the language is old style descriptive rather than the modern contemporary language of Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough’s science fiction Petaybee series, which has similar origins.
The Blue Salt Road is a story of a harsh and even brutal lifestyle and is definitely an adult telling of a folk tale, or at least young adult. There is some brief mention of sex and some of the hunting details are quite graphic and not for the faint-hearted. For much of the story the perspective is firmly on the sea creature’s side, with humans often being devious and callous by comparison with the gentle and considerate denizens of the deep.
The illustrations by Bonnie Helen Hawkins (who also did the illustrations for 2017's A Pocketful of Crows) are pencil drawings scattered throughout the novella and are sensitive to the tale. To be frank, in my opinion the story is strong enough to not need them, but I must admit that they do add to the overall feel of the book as a nice physical object. This would make a nice accompanying item to A Pocketful of Crows on a person's bookshelf.
And at just over two hundred pages it’s also a book easily read in one sitting.
In summary, The Blue Salt Road is an old-school folktale of magic, love and betrayal that you can read and enjoy, without it outstaying its welcome. The skill of the writer is that for such a relatively short tale it is engaging and will stay with you after you have finished reading it. And if you don’t come out of it feeling a degree of sympathy for seals and whales, I’ll be surprised….
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Reads like a folklore tale, which was nice. Wasn't the biggest fan of the prologue or the epilogue; felt they were perhaps unneeded or could have been altered in some way to add something extra as opposed to reiterating already known information. Read this book while I was cold, and I was Shivering by the end with how well that feeling is described. A neat little story about selkies and the sea.
"Once, we all lived in the sea," the grandmother had told her. "Its salt runs in our blood; our tears are memories of the ocean."
What I've liked best has definitely been the prose. The beauty of it draws the reader in - all senses engaged - until you can feel the icy spray on your face, hear the gull's cry on the wind and see the glistening selkie's head break the deep green of the surface.
"The Blue Salt Road" is a fairytale - modern and authorial - and it shows. The characters are not supposed to be relatable, but convincingly sketched carriers of the story. The story is beautiful and simple and cruel. Straightforward underneath the well-measured ornateness.
The modernity and the author's hand come to the fore in the final - morally grey - chapters, where the reader finds choosing sides is only deceptively easy.
As beautiful as the cover suggests. :)
What I've liked best has definitely been the prose. The beauty of it draws the reader in - all senses engaged - until you can feel the icy spray on your face, hear the gull's cry on the wind and see the glistening selkie's head break the deep green of the surface.
"The Blue Salt Road" is a fairytale - modern and authorial - and it shows. The characters are not supposed to be relatable, but convincingly sketched carriers of the story. The story is beautiful and simple and cruel. Straightforward underneath the well-measured ornateness.
The modernity and the author's hand come to the fore in the final - morally grey - chapters, where the reader finds choosing sides is only deceptively easy.
As beautiful as the cover suggests. :)