The River Has Roots, Amal El-Mohtar’s highly anticipated solo debut novella, was released in March 2025. Like a ravening beast, I fell upon my preorder package and tore through the novella in a single sitting. It’s 100 pages exactly, from the very first beautiful linocut print to the last, so it isn’t a Commitment. I’ll get to El-Mohtar’s singular talent in just a moment, but first: context.
I fell in love with El-Mohtar’s writing when I—along with the entire rest of the internet—discovered This is How You Lose the Time War (credit where credit is due; thanks, Bigolas Dickolas!). That particular novella is both highly lauded and polarizing; I haven’t encountered an indifferent response to it yet. In the same vein, my undying, unchangeable, and potentially controversial opinion is that novels, or in this case, novellas, are at their finest when written by poets. Please keep this in mind when I state that readers should prepare themselves for a rare delicacy.
The River Has Roots is visually stunning in its illustrations and gorgeous in its depth of prose. From the very first page, El-Mohtar wastes no time in delivering a poet’s lyricism and musicality, asking, “What is magic but a change in the world?” The reader is immediately whisked away to this dreamy, folkloric world, where grammar begets magic and the narrator invites you into the tale: “But we were speaking of the Hawthorn family, weren’t we…”
At its heart, the novella is a tale of two Hawthorn sisters, Esther the dark-haired elder and Ysabel the golden-haired younger, whose love for one another is without condition or compromise. They sing magic to the ancient willow trees on the banks of the River Liss, whose waters brim with grammar.
Esther falls in love with Rin, a nonbinary inhabitant of Faerie. Rin sometimes appears as a beautiful woman, sometimes an owl or a storm, often indescribable: “They were utterly strange and utterly beautiful, in a way that Esther yearned towards because she didn’t understand it, the way she yearned towards horizons and untrodden secret paths in unfamiliar woods.” Side note: this is how I feel about The River Has Roots.
But a dastardly, grasping human suitor interjects himself, desirous of the Hawthorns’ land and the key to obtaining it: Esther’s hand in marriage. At one point, Esther delivers the hilarious and devastating line, “Demand better than to be worshipped by a crumb,” referencing the aforementioned dastardly suitor. This is solid advice for life.
If any of the above summary sounds familiar, it’s because El-Mohtar has written an incredibly satisfying subversion of a 17th century murder ballad known as “The Two Sisters.” There are almost two dozen versions of it in English, and it is well-known all across Europe. Wikipedia helpfully notes that there are 125 variants in Swedish alone. This deep history adds to the novella’s haunting, mythic appeal.
The River Has Roots murmurs to the reader and then pulls them in like the rushing River Liss. I was transfixed and rapt, unable to be pried from the novella. This is probably the part where I’m supposed to list some flaws, but reader, you can’t make me. This is one of the best books I read in 2025, and I am unable to find fault with it. This story struck a chord in my heart and I wish it had existed when I was a strange, lonely child. It’s utterly lush and wild. If you love poetic, sumptuous language and thoughtful, modern fairy tale retellings, this is the novella for you.
Susanne Salehi (she/they) is a queer Iranian American writer and editor happiest when reading, cross stitching, gardening, or accumulating silly tattoos—they’re particularly proud of the screaming possum. They’re a 2025 fellow of the Lambda Literary Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices & they write queer heroes. More at susannesalehi.com.
Warnings: Murder, misogyny
