This book stood out with its unique narrative style, offering a fresh perspective. The characters felt relatable and authentic, making it easy to connect with them. I especially loved the strong bond between the sisters, which added depth to the story. The world was immersive, pulling me in completely, and the enticing plot kept me engaged from start to finish. Overall, it was a great read.

Every aspect of this book is stunning. That’s it, that’s the review. Okay fine you got me I’m jk haha. But forreal, the cover? The title? Gorgeous. It also has interior illustrations, which along the writing style truly make this book feel dreamlike and fairytale-like. When I read This Is How You Lose the Time War, I was 99% sure Amal El-Mohtar would be a favorite author. 99% only because Time War was co-written. After reading The River Has Roots, I’m at 100%. I love her lyrical style of prose, and how both books are brimming with love. This book has romantic love but is mainly about the love between sisters. I loved both sisters and loved reading their story. I don’t want to give too much away since this is a novella and therefore short, but please please pick this up.

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.

This book was enchanting! I loved the portrayal of the relationship between the sisters. It was so moving. This little book has so much atmosphere and the type of faerie depiction I love. This is the kind of novella you can curl up on the couch with and read for a cozy afternoon. I want to meet the sisters at the River Liss and sing to the trees!

My only wish is that I could have spent more time with Esther, Ysabel, Rin, and the spectacular settings. The magic of grammar and song! The folding of worlds! This was such a beautiful fable, I fell in love so quickly. And then it was over, because it’s a very short novella.

The River Has Roots is such a perfect little novella. It follows Esther and Ysabel, two sisters who live on the outskirts of the faerie realm and tend magical willow trees with their singing. When one of the sisters takes a faerie lover, a jealous human man threatens the futures of the sisters.

If you like stories of the fair folk that read like old fairy tales, I’d definitely recommend picking this up. The writing is absolutely beautiful! This is also a book for fans of riddles and wordplay. Magic in the town of Thistleford is called "Grammar" and it's users are called "Grammarians" -- how wonderful is that? The story is bittersweet and lovely. It’s part The Darkest Part of the Forest, part Corpse Bride. I’d also recommend it if you’re a fan of House of Spirits by Isabel Allende!

The prose is beautiful, the magic system of verse/lyrics/riddles was interesting, and the world was unique. The relationship between the two sisters was one I rooted for. That being said, something felt like ti was missing for me. I was stoked about the solo debut, but I think I was expecting something a little closer to This is How You Lose the Time War, which is my fault for the preconcieved expectations.

“What is magic but a change in the world? What is conjugation but a transformation, one thing into another? She runs; she ran; she will run again.”

Normally I don’t read a lot of short stories or novellas but because El-Mohtar is a co-writer of one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read (How you Lose the Time War) I eagerly requested this ARC.

I was absolutely not disappointed. Stunning STUNNING prose and a haunting, fairy tale-like story that had me raptured to every word.

I cannot wait to read more from El-Mohtar. Thank you so much to Tor for letting me read an early copy of this in exchange for an honest review.

Wowowowowow. I LOVED this. This novella was such a beautiful experience.

The vibes: folktale/love story/bond of two sisters/music. If you aren’t into pretty vibes and prose, maybe not for you- this isn’t a book for picking apart the plot and magic system- it’s poetry. It felt like someone was telling me a story around a campfire. I loved the sisterly bond between Esther and Ysabel, and how the character Rin was the embodiment of fluidity. There’s so much clever wordplay. I loved this so much.

This was an ethereal fairytale with such beautiful writing. I really enjoyed the world that was crafted in this short novella. The “magic” of grammar was an interesting concept that the author explored in a few specific cases. I would have loved to see more of this, but it was not instrumental in exploring the tragic story of these sisters.

“Every conjugation is also a translation,” she recited dutifully. “But not every translation conjugates. Transformation implies movement, but things can move without being transformed.”

Amazon and B&N reviews submitted
Blog post goes live April 8th
Imgur link goes to Instagram image scheduled for March 9th
Will be covered in Friday Reads 3/14 on Youtube

**TL;DR**: A beautifully written and imaginative fairy tale about sisters and being broken apart.
**Source**: NetGalley, thank you so much to the publisher!!

**Plot**: The Hawthorn sisters keep the willows between Faerie and the Mortal lands till a persistent suitor change everything.
**Characters**: Lovely characters, though mostly used for the point of the story.
**Setting**: The setting was beautiful, Amal El-Mohtar can really paint a picture with her language.
**Romance/Fantasy:** The romance was subtle, but necessary and I enjoyed it. The magic of the world was the big sell though, I’d love to see more of it.

**Thoughts**:

The River Has Roots reminds me of the old stories and wives tales my Mamaw used to tell me as a kid. That is impressive as I’d completely forgotten about many of them but after finishing this I recalled several. Both the novella and many of those stories feature around rivers and what is within or beyond, especially in regards to magic or mystery. This short novella follows two sisters who sing to the willows who stand between the mortal and the faerie realms.

There is love and greed in the story, making it feel very much like a classic fairy tale. A persistent suitor tries to take what isn’t his, something that has to be freely given, and the sisters have to find a way back to one another. It was a sad, but then lovely story about the bond of sisterhood. How they will find themselves back to one another no matter the cost.

If you love fantasy romance novellas this is a great pickup. The language and writing is stunning, if you’re prepared for the overly purple feel of it. The story is engaging and fresh, while also mimicking old fairy tales you’ve likely heard. All and all a pickup I don’t think you’ll regret.

There is no doubt El-Mohtar’s writing is beautiful and lyrical. There are a lot of magical elements to it, and it reads truly like a fairytale. The bond of the sisters was done so well. The magic system is very unique yet never quite explained. I think El-Mohtar manages to accomplish telling the story she set out to tell but the downfall is that the rest of the world she creates is so intriguing that I was left wanting it to be a full length novel. I really hope El-Mohtar revisits this world in future writings.

Every so often I read a story that reminds me why I love stories and why I love reading in particular. Film and television are great—I watch a lot of both—yet there’s something about the collaboration of imagination between writer and reader that makes a book absolutely magical for its ability to transport the reader elsewhere. I read the eARC of The River Has Roots curled up on my couch on a Sunday afternoon, curled up on my couch under a blanket. It’s not a long novella. Yet I was present for every moment of it, and when it was finished, I immediately emailed my local bookshop to preorder a hardcover edition—I hear it has fancy illustrations! Amal El-Mohtar has written something exquisitely beautiful here, and I won’t stop singing its praises.

At its heart, The River Has Roots is a faerie tale, a cautionary tale. It’s a feminist one, for it is not only a cautionary tale about the vicious avarice of men but also about how sisterhood and solidarity can stand up against patriarchal pressures to conform. It’s a story steeped in story, succumbing to sadness only to lift us up back into grace and, ultimately, hope.

I’m not usually one for extensive exposition at the beginning, yet I didn’t even mind it here. The narrator’s introductions to Esther and Ysabel, to Thistleford and the Professors, to the very concept of Faerie and the eponymous river that wends its way through title and book alike … as I said above, El-Mohtar’s descriptions captivated me and transported me to this place. I love how the actual setting is incredibly ambiguous: it’s vaguely English, of course, but not in any identifiable way, and in this way it remains true to the powerful ambiguity of faerie tales.

What’s unambiguous is the love between Esther and Ysabel, which is the driving force of the entire novella. The way Esther transcends what she experiences purely because of her love for her sister is beautiful. El-Mohtar reminds us that sometimes bad things happen to people who don’t deserve it—and sometimes we bear costs we ourselves did not incur. Yet at the end of the day, we always have choices. Ours is not to control completely our fates but rather to make the most of what we are given, and Esther displays that admirably here. She takes her turn of tragedy and instead of turning inwards or despairing instead resolves only to go on as she did before: by loving Ysabel and staying true to her promise.

The anxiety between the sisters really hit me. I could see myself in both Esther and Ysabel. I have been the one who clings on to a friend, demanding we’ll be together forever, even though they can’t possibly promise me that. I have been the one who finds myself discovering new levels to my life, never quite outgrowing or abandoning those around me yet certainly … changing the way I relate to them. In traditional faerie tales, the characters are archetypes, and it is their static nature that makes them suitable vessels. Despite this story’s short length, El-Mohtar allows the Hawthorn sisters to change and learn, and it ultimately deepens the bond between them.

In contrast, the romance between Esther and Rin feels like a perfunctory item at best, but as an aromantic person that’s how all romance feels for me. I’m actually grateful that romance takes a secondary role to sisterhood and friendship in this story. Indeed, Esther and Rin’s entire attraction is so unconventional and removed from the physical and the material, and I appreciate that so much. Whether or not El-Mohtar had these considerations in mind when writing, what she’s done here is tell a love story that doesn’t make me, as an aroace person, feel erased or unimportant. I might not express my affection for someone in the same way Rin does for Esther; however, I can identify with the intense significance they place on Esther’s existence. I can project my own feelings of love on Rin and Esther’s love in a way seldom available to me in more conventional stories, and this was an unexpected and beautiful bonus.

Likewise, I was surprised by my visceral reaction to Samuel’s sudden and explosive violence against a woman who dares defy him. I don’t know if it’s the setting or whatnot but it reminded me of Tess of the D’Urbervilles. We are so desensitized to violence against women that even though I saw his actions coming, I was still shocked by the cold and calculating brutality of it. And of course as the river changes course and takes Esther on to her next chapter, as Rin searches for her madly and finds her only to realize they have to let her make an impossible choice … I found myself crying. Crying for Esther, but more broadly, for what men so often do to women, and the choices they force us into making.

As the title implies, connection to the land is also an incredibly important theme herein. It’s the land and water that save Esther. The magic of the land, singing to the land, is what sustains the Professors and blesses Thistleford. Samuel is a villain not just for his misogyny but for his settler-colonial attitude towards the land, viewing it only as something to be tamed and parcelled up and bought and sold and divided again for profit. He is everything the traditional European folktales championed, and El-Mohtar subverts that here cleverly and creatively.

It’s all these threads that make The River Has Roots so beautiful. The way El-Mohtar embraces the aesthetics of European folklore while breaking out of its tropes in favour of a cornucopia of postcolonial and feminist ideas from across different cultures. The playfulness of the prose. The promises built into each page, finally delivered at the climax and into the conclusion. The openness and fluidity of this narrative, its characters, its ideas.

I really hesitate to throw around words like “perfect” in my reviews. It feels hyperbolic and suggests a kind of absolute kind of reception that no story can hope to achieve. All literature has flaws or readers it won’t reach, and that is OK.

But … damn. The River Has Roots is as close to perfect a story as I think I have read in a long while. It’s easily in the running for one of the best stories I’ll read in 2025, and we aren’t even a quarter into the year! If anything I have said in this review resonates remotely with you, then do yourself a favour and run—don’t walk—to a copy of this in your library or local bookshop. It is sublime and beautiful, and it might destroy you, but it will restore you as well.

i loved this short, sweet book! fairytales are one of my favorite things, and even more so if they're about sisters. this is a teeny tiny read but i found so much to like in it.

I know it's only March, but I'm calling it now- The River Has Roots is going to be one of my top books of the year. I've been eagerly (obsessively?) waiting for this book since it was first announced. El-Mohtar is my current favorite short story writer, and I was really excited to see what she does with a longer format. I wasn't disappointed. This bite=size-murder-balled=romance-sister-grammar book grabbed me from the first sentence and wouldn't let me go. There is no one out there who is using language the way Amal El-Mohtar does. This is a book that is going to stay with you long after you finish it. El-Mohtar is now an insta-buy author for me, and I can't wait for what she writes next.

The audiobook of this beautiful novella features harp and flute music recorded by El-Mohtar and her sister--especially appropriate since this is a story about sisters and music! Eleanor and Isabelle live alongside the river Lyss, their singing an integral part of keeping the magic of the willow trees that grow along it alive. But Eleanor's love for one of the fae from nearby Arcadia complicates her determination to never leave her sister--especially when another suitor becomes involved. I loved the concept of magic as "grammar" that is constantly conjugated. Definitely something I would love to see El-Mohtar explore more in the future.

A beautifully written fairytale about two sisters separated by death. An enchanted villages runs along a fairy river where two sisters grow up together. They sing beautiful songs and even make up secret ones that only they know. Esther the older sister is being pursued by a suitor but has already fallen in love with another from the fae lands. Her younger sister ysabel is thrilled to one day meet the fae lover but worries that Esther will be swept away to fairy. One night when Esther doesn’t return home Ysabel is devastated that her sister has run away to Fairy and abandoned her however something terrible has tried to separate the sisters.

In Which I Prattle on a Bit Too Much About Length
The River Has Roots is too short for one of my full reviews. But I’d already drafted this post by the time I realized that, so on we go. I sat on my couch one afternoon after work and started reading in Kindle. After not too long, I was surprised to find I was already 50% in. I was doubly surprised when the book ended at 72%. Goodreads says the physical copy is 144 pages – I guess 28% of that reduces the page count to 104. I imagine the pages sparsely populated. I would love to know the final word count. I am curious to see a finished copy for myself. Anyway, that’s enough of that. Moving on!

Just kidding. After I wrote the above paragraph, I found out the word count: about 20,000 as per the author. I dunno, I’ve never thought, “I want to read something this length.” I find it an awkward length. I admittedly prefer my novels on the shorter side. I enjoy a good fantasy novella as much as anyone else. But this is cutting it a bit too fine. Does anyone know the word count on the Singing Hill novellas? I feel like those may be similar length, but to me it feels like those have more story to them. (They’re listed at about 100 pages as well… hmm…)

Folk Story Adaptation
All that is to say – The River Has Roots gently expands on the Scottish murder ballad “The Two Sisters”. (I didn’t recognize that myself – thanks to The Gothic Librarian for noting the source tale). This version repairs and strenghtens the sister relationship and incorporates fairies with a touch of magic. If you’ve ever read original folk or fair tales or listened to a traditional ballad, you’ll know such stories are quite sparsely written, often just a few pages long. You get the bones of a story as best suited for oral storytelling. In this novella, there’s not much change or expansion to plot (there are some characterization changes, given the positive relationship between the two sisters), just mostly expanded description. One distinguishing feaure is the non-human/nonbinary love interest.

Magic System?
The talk of ‘grammar’ as a magic system is is the other distinguishing feature, though the slim length and focus on other things means it’s barely explored. I found it served as a little bit of window dressing but all you could skip all references to grammar the story would have had the same impact, imo. The atmosphere would be slightly adjusted, but its removal wouldn’t have any impact on the plot or characters. And perhaps that’s not fair of me to say… I’m sure the author put that stuff in there for a reason! But for my view, it wasn’t worth much.

But It’s a Fine Read, Really!
This is one of those books where the ‘negatives’ (which really aren’t that serious) were easy to write about it and the positives are easy to gloss over. I didn’t dislike this book. The writing style and locale apeal to the fairy tale lover in me. It just wasn’t nearly as fleshed out as the sort of the stories I like to spend my time on. If it was more fully developed, it could have been a favourite. But for me it wasn’t meaty enough. The story is just fine.

I would definitely be curious to read the opinions of folks who have read both This is How You Lose the Time War and The River Has Roots…

Well, look at that. I’ve written a ‘full review’ after all.

The Bottom Line 💭 A fine fairy tale fantasy, The River Has Roots makes for a pleasant if unmemorable read, given its lack of depth. If El-Mohtar pens a full novel one day, I will be sure to check it out.

Am I glad I read it? In short: Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes. Sometimes you read a book that hits just right, that feels so perfectly suited to your tastes that it feels like a privilege to have read it. That is how I feel about THE RIVER HAS ROOTS. It's a stunning re-working (a conjugation, if you will) of The Twa Sisters murder ballad set just on the human side of the gates to Faerie. The magic, which is so cleverly written into the prose that the book itself feels otherworldly, is less a system built on grammar and more that grammar IS magical. And that's just a lovely, lovely thought.

Highly recommend (and I can't wait to do so to a couple specific friends). I want to immediately listen to the audiobook.

Rating: ♥️ (loved)

A thousand thank yous to Tor Publishing and Netgalley for the advance copy of this title.

sadly i was not able to complete this by its release date, but i cannot wait to dive into this story and seeing how it is only a little over 200 pages, i am certain i can find the time this month to read this 💫