The Blue Salt Road - Jan 29

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, and especially because of your family, and while there is something that you can do, other times – not so much. Instead, let us talk about Ms. Joanne M. Harris’ novel ‘THE BLUE SALT ROAD’, and I am warning you, there are spoilers ahead! Now, if the name sounds vaguely familiar, it because it is – we have discussed her other novels, ‘The Gospel of Loki’ and ‘The Testament of Loki’ a while back. What of this one?

It is an abrupt departure from her ‘Loki’ novels…mostly, as there is a reference to ‘nine worlds’ in the ‘Road’, which is a direct reference to the Norse mythology and its’ nine worlds, (look it up). That said, there is no other sign of the Norse in the ‘Road’, as instead it is focused on Celtic, or more precisely – Scottish – folklore, that of the selkies.

What are the selkies? In the Scottish folklore, they are beings that look like seals in the water and like humans on land, they are shapeshifters, and Mercedes Lackey’s ‘Elemental Masters’ series depicted them at length in a couple of earlier novels.

…As a matter of fact, there were several species of underwater humanoids that came into contact with ‘the Folk’, including the merrow, which is a typical mermaid/merfolk type of entity, (while in various RPGs it is the name of an aquatic ogre variety, weird), and the finnfolk, which don’t have anything to do with Finn the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy’s character, but are rather a variety of Fair Folk or elves, albeit they live under the sea. Both of those races are more powerful and more hostile towards humans than the selkies are, and they do not really appear in the ‘Road’, so they are not relevant to our discussion of the novel.

What is relevant here, then? Well, the novel isn’t just about ecology and living in harmony with nature – a large portion of the novel takes place abroad a whaling ship called the Kraken, (the italics belong to Ms. Harris), and how the novel’s protagonist, the male selkie, tries to fit in with the crew and failed, first unintentionally and then intentionally, finally sabotaging the ship and setting it afire – but we are getting carried away. The novel is also about male-female relationships – the twist is that Flora’s family, (she is the female lead of the novel), entrapped selkie men for three generations now – first her grandma, then her ma, and finally Flora herself. This process culminated in a girl named ‘Moire the Star’, but first let us acknowledge the direct mention of ‘the maiden, the mother and the crone’, which is a pagan trinity of a pagan Mother Goddess, (one of them, as there are several, and this one is more of Wicca tradition than anything else is). As the Star implies in her monologue of the novel’s epilogue, she is someone special, and she is destined for greatness. She is right, of course, but here we come to the novel’s flaw – not unlike the SW sequel trilogy, it had been rebooted, somehow.

Throughout most of the novel, Moire’s father interacted with a girl of his clan, the Grey Seals. (Apparently, this group of selkies transforms in grey seals, rather than any other seal species. Okay then). She was the Flounder to his Ariel, until she just vanishes from the pages of the book with nary a reference or an explanation as to what happened to her – and the Captain dies.

Now, for most of the ‘Road’, the Captain is really a non-entity, he is little more than a placeholder; he may be an authority figure, but nothing else; he is hard, callous, cruel, but not intentionally evil, not a villain, as Elsa and Anna’s grandfather was in ‘Frozen 2’, for example. And then Ms. Harris writes his death scene – he was about to shoot the selkie protagonist ‘cause the latter set the Kraken aflame, but his pistol exploded killing him instead – and the scurvy sea dog falls into the flames of his burning ship. Given how little he had mattered in the previous chapters, this sort of a deliberately written-out death scene is surprising and kind of stands out. Anything else?

The ‘Road’ quotes often pieces of ‘Child Ballad 113’ – one that is about the Great Selkie of Sule Skerry, except that one of those reference points has a typo and claims that it is ‘Child Ballad 133’ instead. It isn’t, for that ballad is about Robin Hood and his latest face-off with the Sherriff and you can be certain that neither Robin nor the Sherriff appear in the ‘Road’ – it’s a different story altogether. More importantly, it shows that while ‘Road’ is presented beautifully, complete with a lot of illustrations by Ms. Bonnie Helen Hawkins, there were some mistakes and issues in making it – the typo regarding the ‘Child Ballad’ is one of them, and the re-write is the other.

Now, I do not know what got re-written by Ms. Harris – the last part of the novel where the Captain died so dramatically and the selkie girl disappeared, only to be replaced by ‘the Star’ and her girl power, or the first part, with the selkie girl being an important part of the novel and the Captain is a non-entity, barely more than a placeholder. In either case, ‘THE BLUE SALT ROAD’ is a very impressive-looking book, beautifully illustrated and talking about not just the evils of whaling done in a fairy-tale-like manner, but also about the relationships between men and women and marriage, (as Flora’s grandma says, they don’t call it ‘wedlock’ for nothing, emphasis on the ‘lock’, cough), and about freedom and captivity within a relationship as well as about love, (though again, that element vanishes in the last part of the novel, only to resurface, sort of, in the epilogue-monologue, pun intended). Yes, there is the gender inversion of the stereotype, in the folklore canon, the selkie is usually the wife that is married to a human husband and once she gets her seal-skin back, she leaves for the sea and never comes back. There are gender-flipped versions of it, but again, once the selkie gets the skin, they leave forever. Here, though, it is Flora’s father leaves with the baby Star, and Flora and her husband get a second chance to get it all right between them. Let us wish them luck!

And as for us back in real life? It sucks and sometimes you cannot even control it, because of reasons. Therefore let us at least enjoy ‘THE GREAT SALT ROAD’, as it is a fun book, especially if not taken too seriously, (kind of like the second ‘Frozen’ film, remember?).

…This is it for now, see you all soon!