The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar (coming March 4) is lyrical in many senses of the word, beautifully expressive and imaginative, and with songs and poetry playing important parts, not just accentuating but sometimes driving the plot. The prose is luscious and lovely, and it luxuriates in lingual ludi. Maybe my last sentence lapsed into laughability, but I’m a little drunk on words. But that’s totally fair, since the novella takes care to caution readers about the potential pitfalls of exposing oneself to grammar/gramarye; after all, words and magic can be equally transformative, often in unexpected ways.
This novella is El-Mohtar’s debut as a longform solo author, but she’s been winning awards for her poetry and short fiction since at least 2009, and she rocketed to viral stardom in 2019 with the co-authorship with Max Gladstone of This Is How You Lose the Time War. So The River Has Roots has been hotly anticipated by many speculative fiction fans. I am happy to say that it fully lived up to my hopes!
The novella is a retelling of a reasonably well-known fairytale murder ballad, so alert readers may anticipate some of the story beats. There are two sisters, and a suitor, and a warning from beyond via music. But even if a reader has an idea of where the story is going, there are bends in this river of a plot. There are also elements here that aren’t in any versions of the murder ballad that I’ve heard, including more characters who play important roles, and considerable use of wry humor.
Anyway, although the plot is very important as a framework, it’s the wonderful way in which this story is told that makes it both heart-wrenching and heart-warming. I’ve already sung my praise of the language, but it’s not only the descriptions; there is witty verbal fencing between opposing interests (with multiple reasons that people are trying not to let themselves get put under obligations), and although the beginning is lush and languorous, there are also some sharp scenes and impassioned passages. There is grief in this story, but I’ll spoil the plot just enough to say that there’s also a fairly happy ending (because it’s both a murder ballad AND a fairy tale).
There’s also a lot more about magic in this novella than in the original. The girls live on a farm that a river runs through, but it’s also on the edge of the Modal Lands that border Arcadia (basically, Faerieland). The willows from which the family harvests leaves, bark, and wood drink in magic from this border river through their roots, which is why these products (and the farm) are highly prized. Parts of the story do cross the perilous border (unlike many unwary travelers, the story does make it back to terra cognita). And although this novella hugs the border closely enough to stay well within comprehension, I love the hints of how much wilder Arcadia can get the farther you get into it (but I also love that it isn’t fully explained).
Obviously, this novella is a fantasy tale without a hint of a time war or any other science fictional elements. But for any reader who adored TIHYLTTW partly for its amazing use of language and partly for its love story, you’ll find plenty of that in The River Has Roots. I thought it was amazingly good, and I highly recommend it.
Content warnings: Jealousy, covetousness, threats, violence, stuff I don’t want to spoil.
Disclaimers: I received a free copy of the ebook from the publisher via NetGalley. Also, I worked as the audio editor for an actual play podcast in which Amal El-Mohtar was one of the players, and worked with her and others on scheduling the games, but that campaign concluded months ago.
