Author: Cheryl Morgan

You should not need telling by now that Amal El-Mohtar writes beautifully. If you are one of the few people in the speculative fiction community who has not yet read This is How You Lose the Time War, go out and buy it straight away. Amal has been quiet since then, but this new book is every bit as lyrical, if much more conventional in structure.

The River Has Roots is a modern story based on a bunch of folk motifs. It concerns two sisters who live close to the border with Faerie. A river runs through their property and, at the point upstream where it passes two giant, old willow trees standing like guardians on either bank, it exits that magical realm.

The Hawthorn family, of whom our two heroines are the only children, trade in willow wood. No, not Those Willows, obviously. There are many other willows lining the banks of the River Liss downstream from the border with Arcadia, as El-Mohtar has named her faerie land. Willow wood is used for many things, but perhaps most importantly for making magic wands for magicians. Willows growing on the lands of the Hawthorn family, along the banks of the Liss, are by far the best source of wood for this purpose.

The elder sister, Esther, is being courted by the heir to a neighbouring estate. She does like him. He is dull and boring. Worse, he seems less interested in her and more interested in how much money he could make were he to acquire the Hawthorn lands by marriage. In any case, Esther is already in love with another. The only problem is that her beau is not exactly human.

You know how folk tales go. I don’t have to tell you any more. What I do have to say is that this book is not just a folk tale. It also contains a fair degree of musing on the matter of magic, words and song, because magic is gramarye and words are magic, especially when put to song.