Alma Boykin’s just released another blue-collar fantasy, from a working medieval man’s view of the world. In this case, a profession lost to history and mining machinery, that once the fate of cities and empires depended on… a salter!
The source of the salt for a man worth his salt, the source of sal for salary…
Without salt, man and beast cannot live. Without fire and tools, man cannot prosper.
Tarno Halson and the other salt makers of Halfeld Fluss must have wood for the fires to boil spring water into salt. Farmers, builders, smiths, tool-makers, bakers, and all the other trades demand wood as well, and tensions have risen among the trades. Tarno, a widower, also seeks a wife. One of the woodworkers offers—insists on Tarno taking—his daughter’s hand. The arrangement might bring peace between two of the trades.
Danger unifies Halfeld Fluss, yet also divides it. When Korvaal’s Son dies, and winter grows harder, obsession and anger simmer like boiling brine—and prove equally deadly.
Book Six of Merchant and Empire, but can be read as a stand-alone, get White Gold of Empire today!
Mad Genius Club 
That sounds like an interesting take on the genre.
Wow, I didn’t realize that boiling brine to get salt was a thing, but a moment’s research on the history of salt shows that, yep, unless you happen to have lots of sun or you luck out with a really pure salt deposit, boiling brine is the way you do it, with enough demand for wood to cause deforestation. Amazing what you can learn from fantasy. Book bought.
Thank you. There’s a bibliography at the end of the book. I forgot to include Joachim Radkau’s book _Wood_, but it is an excellent source for information about the uses and conflicts concerning wood.
Thanks for the reminder! I’ve been meaning to give that series a try for quite some time now.
The “with explosions” part of A Perfect Day with Explosions got me to finally read that series. I didn’t know what I was missing. The blurb for Going Ballistic didn’t pull me in, so it just sat in the to-be-read pile. That was a mistake. (Amazon reviews posted.)
get White Gold of Empire today!
Ok, gotten 🙂
There is something amazing about this series that I can’t describe. “lovingly crafted world”, perhaps. I highly recommend it.
I love the descriptions of how stuff got done in the past. Salt here. Caravans, fur trade, smelting (and this one included clay working), what it took (takes?) to have a free city… The fantasy is charming but the information is as real as the salt.