A few months ago, I had the pleasure of reading Amal El-Mohtar’s new novella, The River Has Roots (released in March 2025). Amal El-Mohtar is a Lebanese-Canadian poet and speculative fiction author. Though The River Has Roots is her solo full-length fiction debut, El-Mohtar is a prolific writer of speculative short stories and poetry, as well as the editor of the fantastical poetry magazine, Goblin Fruit. She has received the Rhysling Award for Best Short Poem three times, and her short story, “Seasons of Glass and Iron” won the Nebula, Locus, and Hugo Awards in 2016. She released her collection of short fiction, The Honey Month, in 2010, and has a second short fiction collection, Seasons of Glass and Iron, forthcoming in 2026. However, she is, of course, best known This Is How You Lose the Time War, a romantic science fiction epistolary novella co-written with Max Gladstone that swept the awards season in 2019, winning the Nebula, Locus, Hugo, BSFA, and Aurora Awards for Best Novella/Shorter Fiction. That novella is one of the most beautiful and moving pieces of fiction I have ever read, so I knew that picking up The River Has Roots would be a safe choice.
The River Has Roots is based on the traditional murder ballad known as “The Two Sisters.” Murder ballads are a sub-category of traditional folk ballads that tell narratives about crime, murder, and death, usually of a gruesome nature. Murder ballads most often originated in the areas of England, Scotland, and Scandinavia in the medieval period, and usually relayed both the murder and the justice or revenge that follows. In most cases, the murder victim in the ballad was a woman. The murder ballad of “The Two Sisters” originates in England or Scotland, dating to at least 1656. Several variations of the tale exist, such as “The Twa Sisters,” “Binnorie,” “The Cruel Sister,” or “The Bonny Swan,” among others.
The two sisters of the novella are Esther and Ysabel Hawthorn, who live near the town of Thistleford, where the River Liss runs from the Faerie land of Arcadia, carrying the wild magic of “grammar” in its water. Grammar has the power to transform what it touches and is governed by complex rules of meaning and wordplay. The willow trees along the river filter the wild grammar from the water with their roots, making the water safe and the grammar within willow wood usable by humans. Marking the boundaries between Arcadia and the human world is a wild area called the Modal Lands.
Esther, the elder, and Ysabel, the younger sister, are part of the Hawthorn family, who have cared for their grove of willow trees for generations, cultivating and harvesting the willow wood to be used in magical objects. Esther and Ysabel are tasked with singing to the trees, which strengthens them and keeps them happy. As is often the case in such tales, the elder sister is dark-haired and serious while the younger sister is blonde and playful. Yet, unlike traditional folktales, it is the elder sister Esther who captures the attention of a man, rather than Ysabel. The man, Samuel Pollard is wealthy and charming, but Esther will have nothing to do with him. Both because she finds him dull and obsequious and because she already has a secret faerie lover from Arcadia named Rin, a nonbinary shapeshifter who can appear as an owl as easily as they appear as a man or woman. When Samuel Pollard discovers that Esther has becoming engaged to Rin, his jealousy turns violent.
Though there are many variations of “The Two Sisters” murder ballad, the basic components stay roughly the same. The two sisters visit a body of water, usually a river, sometimes a sea, where the eldest sister drowns the younger sister in a bout of jealousy over a man. El-Mohtar’s version, however, defies the patriarchal themes of the original. Esther explicitly comments in the narrative that many such tales pit women against each other for the sake of man, and usually reduce the older sister to a cruel, selfish stereotype. Instead, El-Mohtar imagines two sisters who love and protect each other, placing a controlling and jealous man in the role of murderer.
This novella showcases what is clearly one of Amal El-Mohtar’s greatest strengths, her absolutely stunning poetic prose. Every sentence is so beautiful that I often simply had to stop reading and stare for a minute or two, admiring the skill, burning with jealousy of her mastery of language. There are some stories that I would be willing to make a deal with the devil in order to have been the one who wrote it. This Is How You Lose the Time War is definitely on that list (so are Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir and The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez, just name a couple). The River Has Roots is also on that list, because holy wow is it gorgeous. The prose is not only elegant and lyrical though. It is also filled with wordplay, puns, and metaphor turned literal, all of which highlight the primary theme of the novella: the power of language to transform human perception and even concrete reality.
Puns and double meanings appear from the first line of the first chapter, including the interplay of the magic of grammar and its etymological origins, as well as the double meanings inherent in the Modal Lands and elsewhere. By imagining grammar as a kind of transformational magic, the narrative heightens the figurative and symbolic power of language into a concrete force that has real, physical impacts on people and their world. Wordplay and puns quite literally have the power to transform Esther into a swan and a harp. There are, however, as many positive examples of the impact of language as there are negative. Just as words can be used to divide and destroy, they can also bring together. Riddles and wordplay facilitate Esther and Rin’s relationship, allowing them to cross the boundaries between their lands and cultures. Similarly, words, particularly riddles and songs, represent (and help create) the unbreakable bond between Esther and Ysabel, which is instrumental to the plot’s conclusion. The narrative proves again and again that language is a powerful force in the world, both literally and figuratively, that can impact lives for good or ill and must therefore be used with care.
Sisterhood is also crucial to the novella. It is the through the power of sisterly love that Esther and Ysabel defy the patriarchal oppression of Samuel Pollard (and the traditional murder ballad), and death itself. Though the romantic love between Esther and Rin is also an important, it is not the central focus. Instead, the narrative gives primacy to the sisterly love between Esther and Ysabel. Esther, in particular, explicitly rejects the formulaic role usually assigned to eldest sisters in folklore. She is not jealous of Ysabel, but protective, and is willing to sacrifice her life and happiness for Ysabel’s sake.
Because language is so crucial to this story, and because I simply could not stop staring at some of the prose, here are a few of my favorite passages (I could highlight the entire novella, but I’ll do my best to just pick a few):
“There was a time when grammar was wild–when it shifted shapes and unleashed new forms out of old. Grammar, like gramarye, like grimoire. What is magic but a change in the world? What is conjugation but a transformation, one thing into another?” (Page 1)
“When people say that voices run in families, they mean it as inheritance–that something special has been passed down the generations, like the slope of a nose or the set of a jaw. But Esther and Ysabel Hawthorn had voices that ran together like raindrops on a windowpane. Their voices threaded through each other like the warp and weft of fine cloth, and when the sisters harmonized, the air shimmered with it.” (Page 7-8)
“Most music is the result of some intimacy with an instrument. One wraps one’s mouth around a whistle and pours one’s breath into it; one all but lays one’s cheek against a violin; and skin to skin is holy drummer’s kiss. But a harp is played most like a lover: you learn to lean its body against your breast, find those places of deepest, stiffest tension with your hands and finger them into quivering release.” (Page 80)
“Rin might have said, The way is a riddle. How would Esther solve it?
They might have said, You sang your way out of Arcadia once; sing your way back in.
Or Rin might have said, If the river has roots, it has branches, too; learn to climb them, and find your sister.” (Page 98)
The River Has Roots packs a powerful punch into a fairly small package—one of things I love best about a good novella. With poetic prose and complex wordplay, the novella tells a haunting story of sisterly love, justice and revenge, and the power and magic of language. It is lyrical, poignant, and makes me insanely envious. Which, honestly, is my favorite kind of book.
Amanda Haimoto Rudd 