The Salt King by Natasha Pulley: Overwhelming darkness leavened by shining dialogue

The Salt King opens on the edge of Hreodwater, a lonely settlement on the East Anglian fens. The town is served by a distant railway station, but from there the traveller must walk an unsignposted path across the fields, until Hreodwater announces itself in the form of a custom house, lit by lamplight “glowing an orange patch onto the path and glittering in the salt that rimed the eaves and window ledges”.

For this is a salt town, lit by salt light, and this is a salt world: Hreodwater is in England, but it inhabits its own universe, and its people worship no god but the Salt King.

These opening lines of a spellbinding novel indicate a Victorian milieu – but readers of Natasha Pulley’s previous books know that the suggested world will be revolved soon enough, and shaken like a snow globe.