Salt

by Amy K. Marshall

Once Upon A Time ... there lived a King of Tsitadel who had three Prince Afanasiy who was dark and scowling, Prince Ilya who was fairer but by no means fair, and Prince Innokentiy who was so foolish that his family believed no formality or attention should be paid to him. When King Daniil gives his eldest two sons ships and goods to trade to the farthest reaches of the Known World, Queen Sofiya, begs for a ship for her youngest son. The King bestows a rickety ship stuffed to the gunwales with coarse burlap and water-ruined silk and crewed by ancient sailors on Innokentiy along with his hope that the whole lot of them will drown in deep water. But, as the ship heaves-to within sight of a strange island, a Fog of Souls sweeps across the sea and the world changes .... completely....

54 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 22, 2013

Reviews

[Chrystal Grcevich · Rating 4 out of 5]

Salt is a charming retelling of an old Russian folk tale where three princely brothers set out to claim their fortunes. Two of the brothers are favored by their king, but the youngest, Kenya, is a fool in his father's eyes. Since this is so short, I really do not want to divulge the story further than this. I enjoyed the depth that each character brought and their distinct roles. This is very much a tale for those who love Cinderella-esque stories where the main character triumphs despite overwhelming hardships. Within the story there is a bit of "old" magic, a tinge of love, a bit of lust, some hate and sweet revenge. It's amazing that it fits within a scant less than 60 pages!

Kudos to Ms. Marshall and her intricate stylings. She is definitely a wordsmith with a passion for campfire-style story weaving! Upon receiving the first draft of her short story, I am a bit ashamed to admit that I had to write her for clarification about what had happened. Thankfully she obliged and edited a bit of the story to make everything flow together a bit more. Once she did that, I read it again and thoroughly enjoyed it. This is not a children's tale in the way that it's written, but the premise of the story could be one to tell your kids; after you've skipped over the lusty bits, that is!

I received this book from LibraryThing Early Reviews in exchange for my honest review. I was not compensated monetarily for submitting my review and declare that all opinions penned are my own.

[Mirrani · Rating 5 out of 5]

I couldn't put this down. As soon as I picked it up I became caught in the modernly-darkened world of the old fairy tale from Russia. I don't usually go for books about zombies or the undead, in fact I typically avoid them because they're the "in" thing and everyone is trying to include them, which just makes me think of them as overused plot points. That wasn't the case with this book. I simply didn't at all care that there were undead. The story was that good. Normally I try to include ideas about character or writing style, but with a short fairy tale you really can't do that as much and, to be honest, rambling on about the way this is written would just take away from what it is. Read it for yourself and enjoy, but make sure you've got time to go from beginning to end because you won't want to put it down until you're finished, then will be consumed with a desire to have every fairy tale you know retold by this author. Trust me, that's what I'm going through right now.

Note: Though this book was a free gift from the author, the content of my review was in no way influenced by the gifting. The book speaks for itself and my review would have been worded just this way even if I'd gone out and bought it. I also give bonus points for Text To Speech enabling on Kindle format.... but that also wasn't a factor in the above review.