House of Salt and Sorrows by Erin A. Craig
Published 2019 · 416 pages · 82,000 words · about 5 hours at an average pace · Anthropology & Folklore, Fantasy, Horror, Romance
How hard is House of Salt and Sorrows to read?
House of Salt and Sorrows scores 23 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it relatively accessible. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 25 out of 100
- Maritime and gothic vocabulary. Descriptive prose with period-appropriate diction. Accessible but atmospheric.
- Sentence structure: 24 out of 100
- Abstraction: 22 out of 100
- Concrete and atmospheric. The psychological themes of grief and madness are experienced through Annaleigh's perceptions rather than analyzed.
- Information density: 22 out of 100
- Focused on atmosphere and mystery rather than dense world-building. The fairy tale framework keeps information manageable.
- Narrative indirection: 28 out of 100
- The unreliable perception -- is this magic or madness? -- creates genuine indirection. The twist reframes earlier events.
- Symbolic density: 32 out of 100
- Salt as preservation and tears. The sea as death. Dancing as escapism and entrapment. The lighthouse as truth. The fairy tale source adds symbolic resonance.
- Ironic distance: 12 out of 100
- Gothic sincerity. The dread and the romance are both played straight, with emotional commitment.
- Resolution withholding: 22 out of 100
- Standalone novel with a complete, twist-driven resolution. The mystery is fully answered.
- Structural complexity: 22 out of 100
- First-person chronological with mystery elements. The dual-world structure -- real estate and magical ballrooms -- adds mild complexity.
How House of Salt and Sorrows is regarded
House of Salt and Sorrows holds a literary regard score of 41 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.