The Salt-Black Tree: Magical cars are cool

The Salt-Black Tree By Lilith Saintcrow

The Salt-Black Tree came out in 2023, three months after Book One of THE DEAD GOD’S HEART duology. Three things are obvious. One: This was written as one longer book. Two: it would have worked better if it had been published that way. Three: Magical cars are cool.

Book Two opens with a repeat of the final chapter of Spring’s Arcana. After finding another part of her arcana as the emerging goddess of spring, Nat Drozdova rejoins gangster-god Dima and they head west, still searching for the Dead God’s Heart. Maria, Nat’s mother and the current goddess of spring, lies dying in a New York City hospice, still frantically planning to sacrifice her daughter and extend her reign.

Soon, magic separates Nat and Dima, sending Nat exactly where she needs to go to get the next thing she needs.

This book had two highlights for me. The first were the magical cars. I was never that impressed with Dima’s car, but a second magical car appears for Nat, and it is loads of fun. Once I set aside any expectation that magic was going to be explained beyond “the world wants to obey,” the car’s endless abilities were a sheer, roller-coaster delight. The car’s name is Baby, but she bears no resemblance to the muscle car made famous in the TV show Supernatural.

At the other end of the satisfaction continuum, there is a confrontation scene in Maria’s hospice room at the end of the book that is hair-raising, chilling, and kind of like something from a film our own Sandy Ferber would review for Shocktober, and I loved every minute of it.

Basically, though, I had the same problems with The Salt-Black Tree that I had with Spring’s Arcana. Nat, who is the most developed character in either book, is still not a rounded character, and her thought processes seem to be trapped on a hamster-wheel. Maria is evil—just evil. Dima reads like a defiant teenager. In the second half of her road trip, Nat encounters several deities and demi-deities. She faces no real challenges until the very end. She gets given magical gifts with no strings attached. At one point, when she is driving through the Spring Lands, her mother’s spirit attacks her, but it isn’t scary. The scavenging shadows called those who hunger, who could theoretically consume her, never seem very real or very present.

As her quest continues, Nat ends up in Louisianna, in the bayou, confronting the salt-black tree of the title. The climax is very similar to the ending of American Gods. Given all the similarities to that older work, I think it must be intentional, with Saintcrow thinking to subvert the conventions of that book. For me, THE DEAD GOD’S HEART never fully achieved that, never stepped out of the shadow of American Gods.

I’m still giving each of these books three stars. I was disappointed in the story but impressed by Saintcrow’s prose. (Okay, “boot-toes” could have used a search-and-replace moment.) I loved the landscape descriptions, and I enjoyed the imagination of the divine world. I loved Baby the magical car. Both books work well as road trips. I just wish I’d bought a bag of Doritos to munch on while I read.