Faith and reality are pushed to the breaking point when an ancient power stirs in the gripping, inventive apocalyptic fantasy novel The Salt King by Natasha Pulley (The Bedlam Stacks; The Lost Future of Pepperharrow).
A wheelchair user visits the English salt-mine village of Hreodwater and suddenly regains the use of his legs but, days later, transforms into "a person-sized stone that glittered ruby where the light shone through its crystalline places." Young Jesuit priest Avelyn is dispatched to Hreodwater to determine whether the occurrence was a miracle, a hoax, or something more sinister. Avelyn knows Hreodwater well, having grown up in its closed society until a mining accident took the lives of his family. He has spent the years since devoting himself to a God he cannot feel and adjusting to a world that doesn't revolve around the Salt King, a powerful being the Hreod people believe sleeps below their mine shafts. Avelyn's return dredges up unwanted memories and kindles inconvenient new feelings when he meets the village's attractive doctor, Jericho. The pair work together as tourists around them are healed before "halifying" into salt rocks; meanwhile, strange phenomena at salt mines across the globe signal that something old and dangerous is waking.
Pulley takes belief's ability to shape human perception of truth literally, creating a meditation on the nature and power of faith. Theology, folklore, and science spark off one another in this eerie descent into a perilous adventure where faith may save or doom the world.--Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads