Every River Runs to Salt

December 5, 2018 11:11 PM - by Rachael K. Jones

The Pacific Ocean is a big thing to steal, and Quietly's roommate Imani never does anything small. But then Imani goes and dies, and Quietly is left to travel to the Under-Ath (the underworld beneath Athens, Georgia), with angry gods at her heels, to clean up the mess Imani left behind and try to rescue her friend.

"In her long-form debut Every River Runs To Salt, a novella out today from Fireside Press, Jones turns ideas and metaphors into living, breathing characters. She designs an underbelly to a university town that’s both underworld and a chance for redemption, maybe in the same breath. She underscores all of these big, mythologically inclined characters by grounding her narrative in love—what it means to hold on, and let go, and come around changed on the other side."
-Den of Geek (review contains some spoilers)

"Rachael K. Jones’s novella EVERY RIVER RUNS TO SALT [...] is a beautiful story of friendship, love and katabasis set in a version of Athens, Ga., where a woman can have a glacier for an ancestor and steal an ocean on a whim."
-The New York Times

posted by lesser weasel (1 comment total)

I wasn't entirely sure about the fantastical elements going in, not having read speculative fiction in a while, but once I hit a stride it was a very weird, and very enjoyable trip. It didn't take long to finish, but I think the story would have been diluted had it been longer. I finished it weeks ago and it's been flitting in and out of my mind since.
posted by lesser weasel at 11:22 PM on December 5, 2018