Amal El-Mohtar (The River Has Roots) collects her acclaimed prose and poetry for the first time in Seasons of Glass and Iron, a volume packed with fantastic worlds, profound yearning, and gorgeous imagery.
The collection opens with the titular story, which won Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Awards in 2016 and follows two women who meet at the top of a glass mountain and find a love that will free them both. The pieces here are not organized by genre or chronology, but with an eye to variety and flow. This isn't a work to read in one sitting, though some stories demand to be gulped rather than sipped. Instead, it unfolds beautifully with stories to savor and poems to revisit.
El-Mohtar follows folk- and fairy tale traditions to speak about gender-based and colonial violence in stories such as "The Truth About Owls" and "John Hollowback and the Witch," while "The Lonely Sea in the Sky" brings a bit of science fiction to the collection. Another highlight is "And Their Lips Rang with the Sun," in which a priestess of the sun falls in love with an acolyte of the moon in the ultimate star-crossed romance. El-Mohtar adeptly creates a detailed, emotional world and plot in just 13 pages. Her poetry is also striking. "Song for an Ancient City" feels like warmth on skin from the sun in Damascus, while "Qahr" is the bone-deep grief of Gaza.
By turns dream-like, fierce, and romantic, this collection is a must for lovers of folklore. --Suzanne Krohn, librarian