This is one of those books that not everyone is going to love. The first half of the book has a dream like quality to it, and is mostly the erotic desire of a queer male sea captain. It's his private diary of thoughts and desire leading up to the end. It gets reasonably graphic, but not overly so in my opinion. The second half of the book is a more factual journal of events, a captain's log of sorts. It was almost like reading two completely different books with the same premise.

The Route of Ice and Salt was a really well written book that conjured up a lot of imagery and sold the story of the sea captain really well. However, I found it really hard to get through, and I almost didn't finish it several times. I think this is because what the book was, and what I was expecting the book to be were two different things. I'm giving it three stars for being well written but also because I didn't love it, but I didn't hate it either.