River Has Roots

I had high expectations after "This is how you lose the time war", and even though this is completely different, the writing is beautiful and poetic. The story is quite short, I wouldn't have minded if it had been a full novel actually.

A solid fairytale story of two sisters, songs, and a murder. Amal El-Mohtar's writing here is excellent as always, and the world and characters felt fresh.

(This is unrelated to the writing itself, but a general gripe about book length meta expectations and publishing choices. I would really prefer if half of this ebook was not filled with a preview of other works. The murderer in this story was unmasked """halfway""" through the book and I was suddenly wondering about the pacing and where the story was going to go from there, but it just ended instead. If anything, my expectations left me with some bonus disappointment. It would have been a worse story for sure had it not ended where it did, but I was intrigued by the possibility.)

This book felt like jumping into a raft on fast river knowing you'd be picked up and carried home at the end, but surprised over and over along the way.

It's a quick fairytale and a satisfying story, and while at first I didn't appreciate some of the strangeness of the world-making, by the end it sits right and will stay with me.

The characters are somewhat flat, but in that way it's more of a fable than a novel or even short story, so it works.