• The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar (Macmillian Audio, 2025)

By Paul Weimer: Two sisters, Esther and Ysabel, the Hawthorns, devoted toward each other, living on the borderland of faerie. A love story, not so much as between Esther and her lover from faerie, but a love story of sisters whose bond cannot be denied. A retelling of a murder ballad, and rich and resonant resonances to stories of Faerie.

This is the story of The River Has Roots, by Amal El-Mohtar.

El-Mohtar has written shorter fiction pieces alone, before, and of course, who of us has not read, or at least heard of her collaboration with Max Gladstone, How to Lose the Time War. The River Has Roots is not an overly long work, it’s in the middle of the novella size. It’s so short that to justify the audiobook, the audiobook of The River Has Roots includes an unrelated story, “John Hollowback and the Witch,” which takes about an hour of the audiobook, which makes it 4 hours long in total.

It’s the audiobook of the book that I read, and I want to look at this as an audiobook first. As I already said, it is short, aurally as well as physically, which makes it a self-contained and densely rich story.  The audiobook is listed on Audible as a “Macmillian Audio production” and that’s true, this is not just an audiobook read by Gem Carmella.  As per the Audible page. “This program features music performed by the author and her sister, Dounya El-Mohtar with Amal and Dounya on harp, flute, and vocals; and songs sung by the narrator, Gem Carmella.”

So is it really an audiobook, or is it a production of the book? And is there a difference between the two that is meaningful?

The actual text of the book does have excerpts from songs and music is an essential part of Esther and Ysabel’s story. So that is in the work itself. But the production as noted above includes music and the actual songs are sung by Amal herself. (Carmella does a really great job but Amal’s and Dounya’s musical singing voice is something else entirely, almost more faerie-like). In any event, the book is a transportative and immersive audio experience that helped me get through an otherwise dull and uninteresting drive across the Great Plains recently. When the road is endless and the landscape is utterly flat, listening to this audiobook was a certain cure from driving boredom and I was engaged and interested throughout.

But why do it that way?  Why not just read it as an audiobook? Besides the fact that they could, given Amal and Dounya’s musical ability, I think it is as an alternative to what the book has that the audiobook cannot have and that is the drawings and art in the book. The hardcover and ebooks have drawings and art throughout the book. Some of it is background and merely illustrative, some of it is distinctly plot related, such as a plot-important knot. The physical book is beautiful and that is something that audiobooks often lack (although there is no map in this one, the lack of a map also hurts audiobooks).

In the end, it’s a fair trade what they’ve done, to provide a different sort of wonder and magic in the audiobook as opposed to the print edition So, choose the print edition and get the art, or choose the audio edition, and get the singing and musical layering that makes it more than just a plain audiobook.  But of course, caveat emptor. If you prefer your audiobooks to be straight up readings from one author and hate full cast productions and audio dramas, then you are probably far better off with the print edition. Even aside from the songs and recitations, there is a fair amount of the use of that music to help set mood and setting throughout the book.

But what’s here? The story of Esther and Ysabel takes place in the village of Thistleford, on the banks of the river Liss. The river Liss flows out of the land of faerie (here called Arcadia) into the real world. And so magic. Grammar, flows out of faerie as well.  Drinking or immersing yourself in the river upstream of Thistleford in the direction of Arcadia upstream of two particular Willows is a very bad idea, it will inevitably change and warp you. But the power of Grammar is what helps bring the fortune of Thistleford as well.

So Thistleford is on the borders of Faerie, and those are always the most interesting of places, on the edge of the known and unknown, on the edges of the defined and undefined.  Borderlands are where interesting stories can happen, mixing magic and the mundane, the amorphous and the solidly real. The Modal Lands are a shifting, tricky place where you just might meet a powerful being of Faerie and fall into a love story (and a queer one at that).

Or fall into a murder ballad.

Ysabel, the younger sister, has a particular love for murder ballads, and while it is Esther who falls in love with a being of faerie (and vice versa) and precipitates the action, it is Ysabel’s love of murder ballads that is a seed that bears dark fruit further down in the story. For it turns out that this story is itself also a murder ballad, based on a real-life one, the “Bonny Swans” (or “The Two Sisters”).¹  The author removes the sisterly rivalry out of the ballad and transfers the murder to a different party entirely, and adds the faerie lover in the bargain. As a result, El-Mohtar changes this from a murder ballad of a jealousy between two sisters that ends in murder, into a love story between the two sisters that survives even death.²

There are other resonances as well. As is perhaps obligatory for any story involving lovers and faerie there is an element of Tam Lin here, as well. Readers who enjoyed the poetic nature of This is How You Lose the Time War will find a lot to love here in Esther’s story, even beyond the songs themselves.

The language is transformative and immersive (anyone who has read El-Mohtar’s short fiction will see that coming and yes, it works at longer lengths, solo). The bond between the two sisters and the world of Thistleford are depicted in a painterly style, after all, this is a place right on the border of faerie. It does seem to be in our real world, there are references to places like London, but the actual time frame is unclear. It might be that it takes place in the 17th or 18th century, as when the murder ballad in its modern conception was first written down.³  

As far as Arcadia, faerie itself, as always, less is more. How do you describe faerie itself, where reality and what one can count on can change at a moment’s notice? The amount of the story there is brief, like a very sweet bit of candle having too much faerie can be indigestible after a while. But the danger and perils of going past the modal lands and into Faerie are well known. Even at a young age, Ysabel and Esther are very genre-aware and know the dangers of the river, much less actually going into Arcadia itself.

But you, reader, should you spend 3 hours of your listening time (at least in the outside world) listening to this story? If you like Murder Ballads, or stories in the Borderland of Faerie, or want to be enchanted with the lovely immersive language that the author brings here, and if you not only tolerate but like productions of audiobooks that go beyond the straight-up reading of the book, then yes, go and journey to Thistleford and meet the Hawthorn sisters.

Just don’t drink the water upstream of the two trees.⁴

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¹ The Lorenna McKennitt Song “The Bonny Swans” pretty much gives you the original murder ballad.

² Maybe there is something in the water, because Lucy Holland’s recent novel, Sistersong, also uses “The Bonny Swans” as inspiration for characters and plot.

³ Thistleford feels a lot like a certain village in a certain book in that regard that I will not name but involves a Wall instead of two trees marking the border to another land entirely. It exists in our world but has a half foot in the other, and you can go there, and cross beyond, if you dare and find out how.

⁴ And that reminds me of the Spring of Hippocrene in John Myers Myers’ Silverlock, which can transform you into a poet, a creator…but no, the water of the Liss upstream of the Two Trees is to be absolutely avoided.