Review: Song of the Saltings

Award-winning author Rachael King’s first YA novel, Song of the Saltings, draws on her love of Scottish folklore to craft a world steeped in myth and menace. While her middle grade novels The Grimmelings and Red Rocks transplanted Celtic myth into New Zealand settings, this novel unfolds instead on a fictional island.

The prologue’s opening lines establish the island as a force in its own right: ‘The island of Brack. Brack. Even the name lingers on your tongue like the musty taste of stagnant water. You can feel it in the air as you breathe, thick and heavy.’ The reader is transported to a brooding world of salt-soaked marshes, windswept moors and treacherous bogs. The island’s sea‑bound landscape and the monstrous Glimm are so tightly intertwined that the ground seems to pulse with the creature’s presence. 

Survival on Brack depends on an ancient, unthinkable bargain – each year, to appease the Glimm, a child must be sacrificed. Eight years ago, the lottery chose Lotta, but in an inexplicable twist, it was her pony who was taken instead. Since then, the islanders have offered a horse in place of a child, and what was once an annual event of terror and mourning has morphed into a time of uneasy celebration.  Lotta, marked as ‘other’ by her brush with sacrifice, and by the uncanny connection she seems to share with the land, now tends the Council’s horses.

Sharing the island are the hidelings, families shunned for hiding their children from the sacrificial lottery. Lotta first meets Moss, a hideling boy, when she rescues his horse Hannah from the bog. When Hannah is subsequently selected for the upcoming sacrifice, Lotta and Moss embark on a daring mission to save her, seeking out Jenny, the dreaded bog witch and venturing into the island’s forbidden reaches. What they uncover there threatens to upend everything they and the villagers believe about the Glimm and the yearly sacrifice that has shaped life on Brack for generations.

The pacing is tight, particularly in the early chapters. The choices the young protagonists face at each step, drawing them deeper towards disaster with the same oppressive pull as the island’s bogs. A smothering sense of approaching disaster tightens with each turn of the page. Readers will want to urge Lotta and Moss to keep their heads down, feeling the certainty of tragic consequences looming.

The protagonists’ motivations are convincingly drawn. One of King’s strengths is her ability to craft characters who feel fully realised, believable, and beyond that – likeable. For all her carefully engendered prickly edges, Lotta never tips into an unlikeable character, and Moss, who at first appears to be a fairly unimpressive underdog, quickly proves courageous and fierce as he confronts mounting challenges and loss.

Threaded throughout the book are themes of loyalty and trust, exploitation and power, and the desperate lengths people will go to protect those they love. Song of the Saltings is perfect for readers drawn to stories rooted in folklore and wild landscapes. Fans of books like Martin Stewart’s Riverkeep will find a similar pull here, as both are novels of water bound fantasy where the natural world is not merely a backdrop but a sentient, shaping force. Song of the Saltings carries YA readers with Lotta and Moss through rising danger, gently unfolding romance, and a desperate mission to save a horse’s life and restore a community fractured by fear.

About this reviewer:

Barbara Uini is a teacher, writer and artist. She has a BA in English, History and Māori Studies and a PGDip in Learning and Teaching from Massey University, and a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Auckland.