- The Good: Sisterly love; poetic prose; a pastoral murder
- The Bad: Too short; magical system isn’t paid off
- The Literary: A lyrical fairy tale of music and grammar
In the small town of Thistleford, on the edge of Faerie, lives the Hawthorn family. Sisters Esther and Ysabel grow up tending to and harvesting the enchanted willows by the river Liss. In thanks for the willows’ magic, the sisters honor an ancient compact to sing to them.
This short novella has already won the Locus and Nebula awards this year and is likely to win the Hugo as well. It’s a beautiful fairy tale, ethereal and dream-like, with magic and rivers and forests and faeries. The prose and atmosphere shine. It’s no surprise really, as Amal El-Mohtar is a poet and author who previously won a bunch of awards for This is How You Win the Time War, co-written with Max Gladstone.
Esther and Ysabel are a love story among themselves, proving that a sisterly bond can survive even death. There’s also a minor romantic love story between Esther and a fae, and a mortal man she rejects, who changes their lives forever. But the plot isn’t so much the point here.
I do have one regret, which is that the magic system sets up strong but doesn’t quite deliver. There’s a parallel drawn between grammar and transformation. The willows channel from the river; the river can change the direction it flows; the sisters’ songs bring life to both the trees and the faeries. It’s lovely imagery that I wish I understood more.
Highly recommended for fans of Time War, and really anyone who loves prose done well!
There was a time when grammar was wild—when it shifted shapes and unleashed new forms out of old. Grammar, like gramarye, like grimoire. What is magic but a change in the world? What is conjugation but a transformation, one thing into another? She runs; she ran; she will run again.