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Reviewed by Jamie Michele for Readers' Favorite
Matthew West-James’s Burning Salt begins with the Jaka, an ancient civilization that has learned to cross between universes through the Nexus after earlier expansion nearly destroyed them. When a rupture starts sending three-dimensional matter into a planar universe, every crossing tears through the two-dimensional environment as heat and radiation. The Jaka trace the source to Universe 1294BB7, where a glowing breach is attracting local life. Their survey teams begin studying two organized species near the rupture. Species X occupies an earthen settlement and reads chemical trails across the ground. Species A lives inside an aerial structure and sends information through movement. As the Jaka use local biological constructs to enter each society, they begin questioning whether their own definitions of intelligence are capable of recognizing what they see.
Matthew West-James’s Burning Salt is brilliantly written, and the alien viewpoint gives the book its strongest pull because the author never lets human assumptions decide what counts as intelligence. I love first contact fiction that makes the contact genuinely unfamiliar, and this book does. The science is fantastic. Nexus-field vessels can enter hostile universes inside temporary pockets of negotiated physical law, while local-material constructs let Jaka researchers inhabit bodies built from the matter of each universe. The Species X experiments are my favorite, especially when an artificial food trail needs greater signal strength before the colony begins improving the route for itself. Species A is just as fascinating when wing-generated heat first protects the brood, then becomes a weapon against a raider. Well written and highly inventive, readers who enjoy first contact science fiction will appreciate this book.
