Review of Salt by Maurice Gee

It’s been a while since I’ve read a fantasy I liked as much as this one. The opening scene where Hari’s father, Tarl, is being taken away to be a slave could be straight out of a historical fiction, except for the part where the guards use “their electric hands” to shoot “fizzing bolts” into the air. Is this science fiction? Then comes the part where Harl “sent a questing thread out from his mind to the horses, found them and whispered silently: Brother horse, sister horse, the black fly stings your rump,” causing the horses to lurch forward. Harl has been learning from Lo, an ancient prisoner, how to communicate with animals without using words and although he is unable to prevent his father being taken away, he does manage to escape himself. Another story is unfolding at the same time: Pearl, the daughter of a privileged family runs away to escape an arranged marriage, taking with her Tealeaf, the maid who has been teaching her to communicate wordlessly. It is inevitable (for the story, anyway) that two young people fleeing the same city should meet up in the countryside; what isn’t so obvious is that they would meet when Hari kills Pearl’s brother (who is seeking Pearl, but is only too happy to be sidetracked by hunting and killing a Burrows boy). And so the great adventure begins. Tealeaf knows that the children need each other, but she won’t tell them why. Tarl’s father has been taken to the most dangerous of the mines, Deep Salt, from which no one has ever returned. The quest to save Tarl turns into a race to save mankind from itself. In this first book of The Salt Trilogy there’s plenty of adventure, suspense, fighting and romance to keep most readers happy. Review by Stacy Church