Salt

This post first published October 25, 2010.

Author: Maurice Gee
Published: January 2008
Publisher: Orca Book Publishers
Series: The Salt Trilogy #1
252 pages (hardcover)
 
I finished this book a week or two ago, but due to academic obligations, I haven’t had a chance to write anything about this book on my blog until now. Well, better late than never!

First, I wasn’t really sure what time period this novel was set in, and I never really figure it out even at the end, although I do have an idea. It’s definitely an alternate world, but in comparison to our real world, I’d say it could be anywhere between the late 1700’s to early 1900’s, but what threw me off are these “bolt gun” weapons that sound kind of like electricity, so I’m unsure. Again, this is definitely a made-up world, so the time period does not need to be accurate in any way to our real world.

This novel is dark and the characters are gritty and hard. In this world, Company (elite, wealthy ruling families) arrived from across the sea, seemingly wanting to become trading partners with the people they encountered there. In time, however, they took over and forced all the people there to live in “burrows” (it’s what they call the extremely poor parts of town), and taking in many of them as slaves to work in various parts of the region. One such region are the salt mines, and the most feared place a slave would not want to work in is Deep Salt. Nobody knows what is mined in Deep Salt, for no one ever returns from that place.

One of the main characters is Hari, and in the beginning of the story, his father is taken away to work in Deep Salt. Hari is horrified and vows to rescue his father, despite not really knowing how to go about accomplishing this. He is a very stubborn teenager, and hates Company with all his heart. You can really feel the hatred Hari feels; it is always on his mind and he’d love nothing more than to be able to kill all of Company. During his journey to save his father, he runs into Pearl and her maid, Tealeaf. Pearl is a daughter of one of the Company families (easily recognizable by her pale skin, in comparison to the burrows people who are all dark skinned) and is running away from home because she doesn’t want to marry. Hari wants to kill Pearl, but Tealeaf has these strange powers that lets her control men and animals. Pearl has this ability too, or is learning anyway, and the two ladies realize Hari also has this power. After an initial period of deep hatred for one another, Hari, Pearl and Tealeaf decide to work together because they realize whatever’s inside Deep Salt is dangerous enough to kill every living thing and they must put a stop to it.

I noticed this is sort of similar to the Europeans colonizing like North America. Maybe it’s inspired, I don’t know. There’s definitely seems to be a deep moral background to Salt. In any case, I did enjoy this book, though I didn’t find myself addicted or anything. I think one of the things that threw me off a bit was the world. I couldn’t quite place what kind of  world this is, plus then it turns out the characters have secret controlling powers which confused my concept of the world further. Not that there’s anything wrong with it all, it was just something I’m not used to, since I guess I’m so conditioned to generic or stereotypical types of fantasy worlds. It’s new to me, and I’m not quite sure how I feel about it, though it’s definitely not awful or anything.

The writing is almost sort of poetic, I liked it very much. Even the characters speak kind of poetic-ish. I don’t mean they talk like Shakespeare or anything, but just the manner of speech and choice of words make this novel seem less on the realism side and more on the art side. I actually really enjoyed the writing.

The plot didn’t really blow me away or anything, but I was entertained and had a pleasant time reading it. This is the kind of novel I would suggest reading on a rainy day or something, seems perfect for it (suits the mood of the novel too)! I really didn’t like Hari at first because he had such murderous intents for everyone that exasperated me at a certain point, but by the end he really warmed up to me. He’s probably the only character that really stands out to me. The ending was very exciting, by far the best part of the novel (rebellions, people flying off cliffs, Hari and Pearl realizing their feelings for one another … so much stuff happens!) and it sets it up for the next two books (this is a trilogy). I read that each book in the trilogy focuses on a different generation, so the second book, I guess, I will be meeting the second generation, or Hari and Pearl’s child. I will definitely be looking out for book two. I’m not going to be actively searching for a copy because, well, I wasn’t that captivated by the story, but if I see it, I most certainly will grab it and continue reading the series.

My Rating: 3.5/5