Review: The River Has Roots

Page-count–wise, there’s not a lot to this novel­la by Amal El-Mohtar. The sto­ry isn’t quite a hun­dred pages, and some of those are full-page illustrations.

Sto­ry-wise, there’s plen­ty: sis­ter­ly devo­tion, unre­quit­ed love, racism^[1]Or is it speciesism if it’s human ver­sus fae?, shapeshift­ing, witch­craft, bak­ing. Truth, lies, and con­se­quences. Wil­lows. Grammar.

Esther and Ysabel live near the edge of Faerie, where the riv­er Liss runs between two giant wil­lows called the Pro­fes­sors. Esther is court­ed by a local farmer, but her heart has been cap­tured by a per­son from the oth­er side of the line, an inhab­i­tant of Faerie. This lit­tle love tri­an­gle^[2]Pos­si­bly a rhom­bus by the time the dust set­tles. has far-reach­ing consequences.

I enjoyed the sto­ry, even if it’s not long or ter­ri­bly com­pli­cat­ed. There’s plen­ty of emo­tion here, and the lan­guage El-Mohtar wields is pret­ty. (I expect­ed that, giv­en my pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ence with her prose, This is How You Lose the Time War.) She acknowl­edges a debt to Lud-in-the-Mist, which I should re-read.

Should you read The Riv­er Has Roots? Yes, if you like sto­ries that are tight­ly told and full of consequence.

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There’s a bonus sto­ry, here, too, from a forth­com­ing col­lec­tion of El-Mohtar’s short fic­tion. “John Hol­low­back and the Witch”, about a young man with a scoop tak­en out of his back and the witch who promis­es to mend it, is a melan­choly nar­ra­tive about truth and con­se­quences. I enjoyed it, too, though I think I pre­ferred The Riv­er Has Roots.