V171 reviewed Salt Slow by Julia Armfield
None
3 stars
Salt Slow is an eerie short story collection, with a focus on light horror, feminist, and queer themes. While some of the stories were interesting, I personally didn't find anything to be anything beyond mildly unsettling.
Short story collections are hard to rate for obvious reasons, but I do find it easier when the collection has a common through line. I like these collections, they provide a standard for comparison internal to the collection, and you generally get some hits if you're interested in the genre they all have in common. However, I simply didn't find this to be scary, horrific, or even very unsettling. Were the stories interesting? Sure, many of them were mildly interesting, though I would have preferred if at least some of the stories were focused on something other than a relationship. But I really wish I was scared from this. Nothing was bad here, so …
Salt Slow is an eerie short story collection, with a focus on light horror, feminist, and queer themes. While some of the stories were interesting, I personally didn't find anything to be anything beyond mildly unsettling.
Short story collections are hard to rate for obvious reasons, but I do find it easier when the collection has a common through line. I like these collections, they provide a standard for comparison internal to the collection, and you generally get some hits if you're interested in the genre they all have in common. However, I simply didn't find this to be scary, horrific, or even very unsettling. Were the stories interesting? Sure, many of them were mildly interesting, though I would have preferred if at least some of the stories were focused on something other than a relationship. But I really wish I was scared from this. Nothing was bad here, so I can't complain too much, but I was just a bit disappointed.
If you read Her Body and Other Parties and really liked it, I think you'll like this a bit less, but you'll probably still like it.