My review: The River has Roots, by Amal El-Mohtar

I read this (epub) on 12 and 13 May 2026.

This novella is up for a 2026 Hugo Award. If you become a voting member, you can download the voters packet and read it yourself.

I don’t like fairy tales. Funny, that I just said that in another review. It’s still an imperfect and inexact statement. Much like anything a fairy says, hm?

This book was enjoyable. My personal complaints about fairy tale consistency and deus-ex-machina were almost perfectly addressed by the deliberate way that magic was explained, as grammar. It is a fairly poetic (and esoteric) way of discussing wild magic and how it can be harnessed, but it does a great job of justifying the inherent power of names, and it allowed for a truly great line.

I photographed the whole page, but I love the idea that the river Liss’s magic relied on a pun. Normally I would object to the magic of wild nature (a river) being defined or reliant on human language, but this whole book does an excellent job of framing all magic as a matter of grammar.

The very fuzzy and lyrical nature of magic in this book makes it easy to accomplish whatever the plot requires, without being too wrapped up in being clever. There are no evil fairies, just the indifference of a world so far from the mundane.

It’s a sweet story with a happy ending. It’s nice. It’s… fine. The story didn’t feel as moving as some of the other novellas, but I did appreciate that the worldbuilding and fairy/magic system avoided all of my complaints with the others in this vein!