The Salt King

by Natasha Pulley

A novel about belief, religion, and the power of myth that blends the gripping, end-of-the-world storytelling of The Passage with Natasha Pulley’s biting wit and queer romance.

Jesuit priest Avelyn Brocken was born into a mining family in Hreodwater, a small, isolated salt town in England. At 16, after a mining disaster killed his family, he fled.

When a fellow priest is miraculously healed only to then be turned to salt after a visit to Hreodwater, Avelyn is sent to investigate. When he arrives, the town’s doctor, Jericho, tells him that the priest is not the only one experiencing strange cures—and may not be the only one in danger from a substance in the mine that the locals call “salt light.”

As Avelyn and Jericho team up to protect the Hreodwater from salt light, strange happenings occur at mines around the world. At an archaeological dig on the Dead Sea, electrical devices froth salt, while at a huge salt works in Poland, communication is lost, and rumors circulate of total annihilation.

As salt light devastates cities around the world, Avelyn must decide what to believe—and whether his faith is strong enough to withstand an apocalypse.

Genres: Fantasy, Horror, LGBT, Queer, Fiction, Adult, Romance

464 pages, Hardcover

Expected publication August 18, 2026

About the author

Natasha Pulley is the author of The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, The Bedlam Stacks, and quite a lot more. An international bestseller, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street won a Betty Trask Award and was shortlisted for the Author’s Club Best First Novel Award, the Locus Awards, and remained on the Sunday Times bestseller list for much of summer 2016. The Bedlam Stacks was longlisted for the Walter Scott Award and shortlisted for the Encore Award.

Natasha has lived in Japan as a Daiwa Scholar, as well as China and Peru. She was a 2016 Gladstone Writer in Residence, and she teaches Creative Writing at Bath Spa University, alongside short courses at the Cambridge Institute of Continuing Education. She has also taught various courses for the Arvon Foundation and is always happy to be contacted about other residential teaching too.

Reviews

[Lottie from book club · Rating 4 out of 5]

as a distinguished Pulleyhead I am delighted to report that this did what every Natasha Pulley book does: delivered exactly what I expected in one hand (chaste romance, Englishisms, handwavy attitudes to religion, irreverence, and the occasional octopus) while pulling the rug out from under me with the other (everything else).

glad to see that after confusing me with radiation (is that how it works?) and Ancient Greece (is that what they did?) and blowing my whole tiny mind with Mars (??????) she decided to just invent her own world-within-a-world so that nothing could be accused of being inaccurate. still left me feeling like I would have coped better if I had a couple of doctorates, but I loved every page. I want to keep her brain in a jar.

p.s. salt your food

[Rickie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Natasha Pulley fans need to run, not walk, to the bookstore for this one. If you love the magical settings and quirky writing, the deep dives into nerdy and niche topics (particularly radiation, linguistics, and also a little theology), as well as the characters and romance archetypes (aka sad pathetic men who are in love with one another) in other Pulley books, then you will love The Salt King. Also, this might be too niche but if you are a Natasha Pulley fan and and Ethel Cain fan I think you’ll really connect with this book.

There are so many things about this book that I loved. For me, this is my favorite Pulley book since The Kingdoms came out. I loved that even though this book was set in the modern world, it was primarily set in an area so isolated and magical that the author was able to truly create her own rules for the world and let her imagination take free rein. I loved the dark, gothic vibes of the book, particularly the theological arguments around what constitutes an angel and what should be considered a demon. To me, as someone who has struggled with deconstructing my faith, the main strength of this book is its analysis of faith vs belief. I also loved Jericho, the love interest, as a character and he may be my new favorite Pulley character.

Ultimately, this book is about learning to accept love from the people around you, and how that makes us all better and stronger. It’s about what it means to believe or have faith in something and that ways that can be both empowering and harmful. It does lean heavily into the concept of a biblical apocalypse, however, and can feel very dark, dire and hopeless in moments, so just know that going into it. I highly recommend this book and I will be thinking about it for a long time to come.

[James]

5/10: ARC REQUEST APPROVED WE ARE BLESSED ON THIS DAY

5/1: I requested an ARC. Let it be known that if I don’t get approved I will spend the next few months crying.

WHAT, WHEN WAS THIS ANNOUNCED??? WERE NONE OF YOU GUYS GOING TO TELL ME OMGGG

[Celeste Alexander · Rating 5 out of 5]

Okay, wow. Been trying to gather my thoughts on this read for a few days now, trying to streamline them into something coherent or at least something more than repeated variations of ‘oh my god I love this book please inject it into my veins’, but really there’s so much to say about it I hardly know where to begin.

First off, this reads like a classic Natasha Pulley book yet is somehow different from anything she has ever written before. There’s still the wonderful, beautiful magic that she weaves into every novel (all written in her singular style, of course), but set in the modern world and all done on a scale I don’t think she has done previously. And honestly? She pulls it off. I mean, she _really_ pulls it off. She’s genuinely outdone herself and I can do nothing but gleefully applaud.

Of course, my favorite aspect of a Pulley novel generally tends to be the characters, and things turned out no differently here; I loved and appreciated each character so much that I thoroughly enjoyed every second I got to spend with them. I adored Tallis, with her intelligence and stubbornness, and always looked forward to her chapters. I particularly loved the way her and Sally’s characters both complimented and contrasted with each other (I also loved Sally, and my only complaint is I wish we got to see more of him). Additionally, I was drawn towards Father Li, and especially how his relationship with Avelyn was portrayed.

With Avelyn being the main character and whatnot, it shouldn’t be too much of a shock that he was easily my favorite character. I loved his voice and his attitude, and I especially loved his complexities and nuances. The way Natasha Pulley writes his conflicting feelings towards faith was absolutely incredible, and a real highlight of the novel for me. In general, I really loved the way this novel explores the concepts of faith and belief, and the negatives and positives that come with them.

All together, this is a magnificent book. It is the first book I’ve read in a while that I feel strongly compelled to reread; it’s just so wonderfully dense that I feel like I have barely scratched the surface of this magical world. No doubt when this releases I’ll be first in line for my physical copy, hi-lighter in hand and ready for annotations.

P.S. Dearest Natasha Pulley this is both a review and a marriage proposal. Please meet me at the courthouse tomorrow at noon. Which courthouse? Doesn’t matter; I’ll be there if you believe I will ;)

Thank you to Orion Publishing Group and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for my honest review!

[Bloss ♡]

Hmm. Harmful language detracted from my enjoyment of this ARC to the point where I’m not comfortable rating this yet. Review to come.

[yen nguyen]

yay! sounds like The Bedlam Stacks x The Watchmaker of Filigree Street. fingers crossed it's anything like them. I'm still waiting to feel again the magic of Pulley's early works.

[nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

natasha pulley you've done it again!!!
what a delight to be treated to hreodwater and the rest of the worldbuilding in here. the setting is absolutely my favorite part of the salt king, and you can feel it as distinctly as a character, so strange and eerie and wild! i liked that this one was scary, and really interrogated the connections between belief/faith as magic, and avelyn is a top 3 natasha pulley protag for freaking sure, i adored that guy and his catholic guilt. when this book is good, it's really really good.

however, sometimes i was taken out of the story by dialogue that felt a little too heavyhanded, and the pacing of the main relationship was a bit strange, which made the ending feel way too rushed. but that doesnt mean the journey to get there wasn't worth it + i had a lot of fun. 100 more of these books, please natasha, thank you so much!!!

[Madeleine · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a wild read. At times it gave me full body chills, but at other times I was rereading sentences just to figure out what the hell was going on. The opening/beginning felt like the strongest part of the book, and the exploration of religious identity fascinating. The mystery of Hreodwater and the salt light was so enticing, like absolute catnip to me. But some of the characters did have very similar voices, and at times I felt their motivations and actions shifted only to emphasize whatever point the author was trying to make in a particular moment. I rolled my eyes a fair few times and the word “trainwreck” came to mind unbidden. But mostly I was fascinated. Natasha Pulley gained a new fan today!!!!

[anna b · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't think there will ever be a Natasha Pulley book that's not so exactly my shit that I find it hard to talk about. We're 8 for 8 at this point, and the Salt King is one of my favorites immediately.

The setting of this is so striking. Avelyn and Jericho are lovely as always (I will never get over NP's main characters being so disarmed by kindness and so quick to fall in love with someone who shows them the smallest amount of gentleness). I kept seeing echoes of Bedlam Stacks in the beginning of this, and thought that would carry through as the plot unfolded, but this was something else entirely.

Jumping to the different POVs added such a nice layer. Sally and Tallis are so fun to sit with, especially juxtaposed with our classic sad yearners.

Loved it. Pulley doesn't miss for me. Read this and come talk to me about it!!

[Olivia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Natasha Pulley’s books get me every time. There is just something about the way they pull me in with their excellent worldbuilding and complex and compelling characters, but they are so different that I never know what to expect. This one features mysterious lore that unfolds over the course of the story, plus questions about religion and belief. As in many/most of Pulley’s works, there are sweet, chaste relationships that the reader can’t help but root for all along as well as multiple points of view and timelines. Perfect for fans of speculative or apocalyptic fiction or fantasy!

[A · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am feeling SHRIMP emotions (you know how shrimp can see colors people cannot? that but emotions). This book was a powerful gut punch. I don't even know how to define it. It's a romance. It's so much more than a romance? It's about belief, it's about change, it's about goodness, but isn't exactly about evil. Are there things I could critique? Absolutely, but they seem so small compared to how this book left me feeling at the end.

[Myka Wilde · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love, love, loved this book. Very much a Natasha Pulley book, featuring main characters with their own struggles and sadness and falling completely and utterly in love with each other. Jericho and Avelyn my beloveds!

The world building is top notch, I love the reimagined magic of salt and interweaving it into the world as if it was always here. It's so vividly painted I could almost feel the ras myself as I was reading!

[sophie · Rating 4 out of 5]

WHEEEEE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

thank you beloved anna for lending me this book and knowing i would love Avelyn dearly. As flawed as this is (hire a goddamn sensitivity reader and knock it OFF with the footnotes), Natasha's ability to craft a dynamic between two Good characters is unmatched and I'll eat it up fooorever. thanks ~

[rachel x]

"A novel about belief, religion, and the power of myth that blends the gripping, end-of-the-world storytelling of The Passage with Natasha Pulley’s biting wit and queer romance."

oooh, this sounds fantastic

[Hannah L · Rating 5 out of 5]

Natasha Pulley has once more scraped the drifting ephemera of my brain and solidified it into the written word. Immaculate. Sublime. My only grievance is that I have to wait five months to talk about it with everyone.

[Cora · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wrestles with huge and thorny subjects with humor and humanity, and tremendous world-building. I loved this so much!

[litch! (cryptidcasanova) · Rating 5 out of 5]

sobbed. beautiful, unique, scratched an itch so specific I’m not even sure how to describe it. this was my first Pulley read and I’m ecstatic to have a backlog to investigate.