The River Has Roots
The River Has Roots is the latest publication by Amal El-Mohtar, the author known for This How You Lose The Time War, co-written with author Max Gladstone. Critically acclaimed and loved by fans, El-Mohtar set a standard that would be hard to follow up her sci-fi LGBT Romeo and Juliet.
Thankfully, she was successful. She pairs a queer romance with a beautiful tale of sisterhood and magic. And, she weaves into her story my favorite element of all.
Translation.
In this story, magic is not just waving a wand and casting a spell. It is grammar. Grammar is transformation. It is movement. And it is the flow of a river whose course may even reverse…
The Professors are two willow trees that run along the River Liss, where the Hawthorn family resides and prays, thankful for the magic from the trees that let their business flourish. Esther and Ysabel are the two sisters of the Hawthorn family and share a tight bond and a love for singing. They sing to the Professors daily, and their devotion to their sacred duty is honored.
But when Esther gets constantly followed by Samuel Pollard, the boy who cannot take a hint of her rejection for love, the tale takes a twist. For Esther has been seeing in secret an Arcadian named Rin, the faerie that lives outside of the safety of the Modal Lands and Thistleford. They live in the place beyond the river, where time and grammar shapes things… differently.
Rin is the snow, Rin is the fragrant woodsy atmosphere, they are everything in constant movement and everything at stillful peace. Rin takes different forms to visit Esther in her lands, and her sister Ysabel is eager to meet him. But Ysabel is also wary of Esther’s desire to return to the land of Arcadia where they once became lost as children. And Rin may be who leads her away.
While their past venture into Arcadia was filled with fear, Esther still gazes towards the land with longing, and Ysabel keeps her distance. And while Ysabel favours murder ballads to gleeful songs of sun, she does not wish for any harm to come to her sister from Arcadia, or from the mysterious Rin who poses to her the greatest threat of all.
Final Thoughts:
The River Has Roots is poetic, mystical, and a perfectly crafted tale of intrigue and folksy magic in a bookish era of cut and dry elven lore. Compared to the mass of fantasy romance trends in the past decade, El-Mohtar refreshes the genre with poise and queer love. And the unique translation of grammar magic in accompaniment of the beautiful prose El-Mohtar births is more than satisfactory in this tale of love, murder, and sisterhood.
For anyone who loves swans, harps, or mythology, you already know which book to choose for your next read.
And bonus: it’s less than 100 hundred pages.
“But that is the nature of grammar—it is always tense, like an instrument, aching for release, longing to transform present into past into future, is into was into will.”
—The River Has Roots
The River Has Roots
Author: Amal El-Mohtar, known for This How You Lose The Time War (2019)
Genre: Fantasy
Illustrations by Kathleen Neeley. Instagram: @kathleep
Illustrations by Kathleen Neeley. Instagram: @kathleep