Song of the Saltings  Rachael King

                                                                                                   

                                                                               

Song of the Saltings
Rachael King
Allen & Unwin
Novel
336 pages, Paperback
ISBN 978 1 99100 665 3

 

 The main character in this marvellously-imagined novel is the isolated island of Brack. ‘Even the name lingers on your tongue like the musty taste of stagnant water.’

 Rachael King has drawn together the power of myth, the bleak truths of ancient folklore and the grim history of small, closed communities to create an utterly convincing story of a world where life seems a daily struggle for survival. Completely cut off from the rest of the world by a hostile ocean, most of the island folk live in the stone houses of the village built by their ancestors and survive by subsistence farming.   

 

The landscape bounded by cliffs and salt marshes dominates their lives, as the Prologue makes brutally clear:

‘Out, beyond the village, the moors are wide open spaces where the wind howls at you all year long and the ground wants to suck at your boots with every step. Where makeshift stone huts shelter lonely shepherds, where barrows house the bones of the ancient dead, and the lights from the bog lure weary night-time travellers to their death.’

 And you haven’t even started Chapter One yet!

 Sixteen-year-old Lotta, first encountered riding a horse across those moors, has a dramatic past. The Council, which rules the island, has a long tradition of an annual sacrifice of a child to the Glimm, a creature of the salt marshes. This ensures good harvests. Eight years earlier, however, Lotta had been chosen to be the victim but her pony sprang to protect her and the Grimm consumed it instead. Since then, the Council has ordained that a horse will be sacrificed instead of a child.

 

As a result, Lotta is regarded with a mixture of awe and suspicion, especially as recent storms have led to poor harvests. Some think she may be to blame.

 

Ironically, Lotta now works as a groom caring for the horses belonging to the Judge. The Judge heads the Council which oversees both the legal and spiritual lives of the islanders, operating in a cult-like manner. At weekly services the villagers are urged in sermons by the Judge to tithe their food and goods to the Council.  Sinister masked riders enforce the Council’s rule and punish miscreants.  

 

 Out on the moors, Lotta comes to the rescue of a horse which is sinking into a bog. Her rapport with horses enables her to get the horse free but at the same time Lotta becomes aware of a supernatural bond between herself and the land.

‘She can feel it through her feet; she can hear its song in her dreams.’

 

 The horse, named Hannah, belongs to Moss, a member of the reviled outcast group known as the Hidelings. Shunned because, in the past, they hid their children to avoid them being sacrificed to the Glimm. Now, Hidelings live out on the moors, gathering peat to sell for a living.

 

The relationship between Moss and Lotta gets off to a bumpy start partly because of her mixed feelings about Hidelings and partly because of Moss’s strong sense of the injustices laid upon his people.  They have to depend on each other when it seems there is a vindictive plan to make Hannah this year’s sacrifice. 

Together, Lotta and Moss have to venture into the forbidden northern reaches of the island where they make a series of deeply disturbing discoveries. But will they be able to use their knowledge to change the island’s way of life? Or will the forces ranged against them prove too powerful? Especially now that the Council is planning to re-introduce child sacrifice.

 

Rachael King has written a richly atmospheric supernatural thriller with special appeal for young adults. The characters are believable and the setting is fully realised. The supernatural theme is well handled and the action keeps the pages turning.

 

Reviewers are comparing this novel to works by Susan Cooper (The Dark is Rising) and Alan Garner (The Owl Service). My preference would be for Margaret Mahy, except that Rachael King is rapidly putting herself in a class of her own..

 

Trevor Agnew

4 Aug 2026  [Review 3859.]