With no intention to offend anyone, I TRULY do not get why books by this author are so praised? I’ve read both Nothing But Blackened Teeth and The Salt Grows Heavy now and thought they were both pretty bad. TSGH was better (NBBT is actually one of the worst books I’ve ever read). Khaw’s writing style is horrendous— too many nonsensical metaphors and too much scrambling to avoid phrasing anything simply. This sounds like how fanfic writers write to me (overusing epithets— “the former,” “the other man,” etc when we know the characters names. Also just avoiding normal vocabulary like the plague. For example, saying “dermis” instead of “skin.” It’s overly clinical and weird). So much of NBBT was not about the ghost story and instead about horror tropes and the author’s own social peeves. We get a whole speech from a character about how the white guy will likely live because that’s how cliche horror is (which isn’t even true because it’s typically a resourceful woman who lives). And the characters are ALL just so unrealistic and annoying. TSGH wasn’t as throughly frustrating but still had plot holes and dumb, overly wordy phrasing.
And I guess I’m just befuddled. The books are poorly rated on GR (especially NBBT) but I see tons of praise for them on social media and NBBT has won like 4 awards. Can someone give me their take on Khaw’s work? Do you like it? Hate it? What do you think the appeal is and why do you think people seem to have such different views on it?
by WisteriaWillotheWisp
1 Comment
I liked it. I didn’t love it. It was original.