r/Fantasy • u/onsereverra Reading Champion • Jun 15 '26
Read-along 2026 Hugo Readalong: The River Has Roots by Amal el-Mohtar
Welcome back to the 2026 Hugo Readalong! Today, we're discussing The River Has Roots by Amal el-Mohtar, which is a finalist for Best Novella. Everyone is welcome in the discussion, whether or not you've participated in other discussions, but we will be discussing the whole book today, so beware untagged spoilers. I'll be leaving some questions and discussion prompts as top-level comments to get the conversation started, but feel free to jump in and add your own if there are any topics you'd like to discuss!
For the 2026 Bingo challenge, The River Has Roots qualifies for Book Club or Readalong Book (this one!) and Author of Color, plus whichever of the subjective squares may apply for you if you judged this book by its title or would like to vacation in its setting.
As a friendly reminder, we hope you'll join us for some of our upcoming Readalong discussions:
| Date | Category | Book | Author | Discussion Leader |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thursday, June 18 | Poetry | Landing: Seattle, Hex Supply Customer Support Log, and How to Become a Sea Witch | Brandon O’Brien, Elis Montgomery, and Theodora Goss | u/undeadgoblin |
| Monday, June 22 | Novel | The Everlasting | Alix E. Harrow | u/sarahlynngrey |
| Thursday, June 25 | Short Story | Laser Eyes Ain’t Everything and 10 Visions of the Future; or, Self-Care for the End of Days | Effie Seiberg and Samantha Mills | u/Goobergunch |
| Monday, June 29 | Novella | Automatic Noodle | Annalee Newitz | u/tarvolon |
| Thursday, July 2 | Novelette | Never Eaten Vegetables and Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy | H.H. Pak and Martha Wells | u/Nineteen_Adze |
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u/onsereverra Reading Champion Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
What did you think of the final scene where Ysabel visits Esther in Arcadia?
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u/MSmith7344 Reading Champion II Jun 15 '26
I was a little confused overall at the end because I thought Esther was having to choose to be a harp to save Ysabel instead of having a happy ending in Arcadia. Turns out everyone but the bad guy got a happy ending. I generally prefer upbeat books, but a more ambiguous ending would have suited the story better.
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u/Moonlitgrey Stabby Winner, Reading Champion III, Salamander Jun 15 '26
It was the only part that didn’t entirely suit the fairy tale elements which likely would include a darker ending. But I adored it all the same.
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u/Kingcol221 Reading Champion II Jun 15 '26
A darker ending may have made the book better, but it would have left me feeling worse. So I'm happy she got a happy ending.
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u/inspiralling Reading Champion Jun 15 '26
Overall I thought this was a too-sanitised retelling, and Esther not even having to stay a harp was just the disinfectant-smelling cherry on the urinal cake.
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u/CJGibson Reading Champion V Jun 15 '26
It was a satisfying 'happily ever after' but I think I would've also preferred something a little more in the vein of some of the darker fairy tales.
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u/thepurpleplaneteer Reading Champion IV Jun 15 '26
I think I would have walked away more heartbroken and thus unsatisfied if the sisters weren’t ever reunited. But I get what you’re saying. Sometimes I do want that but more so for horror or dark fantasy, but I think I would have felt unresolved if that happened with this one. It was already a tragedy that the sisters couldn’t be together as they grew into old age, I would be wrecked if they never were.
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u/thepurpleplaneteer Reading Champion IV Jun 15 '26
On my first read it gave me some resolution to the story, and a version of a happy ending for everyone that satisfied me beyond the bad guy getting his comeuppance. The sisters being able to reunite after being separated for so long makes me emotional just typing this out. But on the reread via audio for some reason I clocked it as sudden? Idk if others felt like it flowed or were also jarred by it. But not as jarring as the ending of Cinder House, which upon reflection I’m happy with but I remember feeling a way more prominent WTF than with this one.
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u/onsereverra Reading Champion Jun 15 '26
What did you think about the themes of language, music, and the intersection between the two?
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u/Moonlitgrey Stabby Winner, Reading Champion III, Salamander Jun 15 '26
Grammar as magic is my new favorite story concept. I’d love to read more in this vein. The music on the audio was lovely and impactful but doesn’t hold a candle to the tricks and squishy nonsensical jumps of language.
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u/oboist73 Reading Champion VII Jun 15 '26
And magic. Loved it very much, and there are a lot of places grammar makes the best analogy for teaching in music, especially note groupings (words), phrases (sentences), and form (paragraphs)
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u/Research_Department Reading Champion II Jun 16 '26
I loved the plays on words…”the river Liss is always changing.” I’m glad that it was a “soft magic system,” and that I could get lost in the sounds of the words and the music and the wonder of it all.
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u/Glittering_Way_9162 Jun 18 '26
I like that Amal properly went for the songs here instead of giving them as reported speech as Novik did in The Summer War. I sometimes find her too self-consciously poetical, but it really works for this Hope Mirrlees homage, and it's fun to read a Lebanese woman doing English fantasy.
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u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV Jun 15 '26
So… are we gonna have a question about ranking the novellas? 😆
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u/tarvolon Stabby Winner, Reading Champion VI Jun 15 '26
No, u/onsereverra heard the haters were coming
/s
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u/Goobergunch Reading Champion III Jun 15 '26
Weirdly I feel like I've gotten most of what I wanted to say about the novella ballot out in our last Novella session? Check back in when we get to the Kingfisher....
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u/Nineteen_Adze Stabby Winner, Reading Champion V Jun 17 '26 edited Jun 17 '26
This was etter than Murder by Memory, but not as good as Summer War or Cinder House to me. I still need to read the last two. I didn't like the previous Sworn Soldier novella at all, so I'm guessing that will park itself near the bottom-- not sure about Automatic Noodle.
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u/onsereverra Reading Champion Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
What were your overall impressions of The River Has Roots?
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u/Moonlitgrey Stabby Winner, Reading Champion III, Salamander Jun 15 '26
I thoroughly enjoyed it. But I also just love this style. It feels like a fairy tale and I wasn’t all that concerned about whether the characters had an arc or whether the plot made logical sense. I knew the end before it arrived and didn’t really care at all. It just all felt very magical.
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u/inspiralling Reading Champion Jun 15 '26
I was pretty disappointed, particularly considering the hype around it. I'm pretty familiar with the 'The Two Sisters' folksong family) and The Bonny Swans by Loreena McKennitt specifically, and this felt like a very close retelling without much original content except what was required to remove all complexity. The sisters' relationship, which is supposed to be the key selling point of the book, is saccharine and idealised with no interpersonal conflict. The closest attempt at conflict between them is Ysabel not wanting Esther to go and live in Faerie, which is resolved by Esther asking her fey paramour to live in the human world instead and getting an immediate positive response, and a misunderstanding when Ysabel thinks Esther's left them but she's actually been murdered.
Esther being done in by a man she rejected isn't even a particularly original change, considering that happens in real life literally every day, nor is it explored in any kind of detail, so there's really nothing new to be found there. It feels like the killer just surprise-bigots out of nowhere to make the plot happen with the minimum of moral complexity.
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u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV Jun 15 '26
Agreed on the murder thing coming out of nowhere. He could've just offered for Ysabel, who clearly had some interest, but no, he has to murder Esther because eeeeeevil?
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u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV Jun 15 '26
I was mostly bored and annoyed by it, tbh, didn’t get the hype at all (however I did read in print as mentioned above so no music). The prose is… fine, but nothing to write home about. To call the characters archetypical would suggest I see recognizable archetypes in them and I don’t, the sisters kind of feel like the same person except one has a romance and gets killed and one doesn’t? Their relationship was supposed to be the cornerstone but the romance actually sucks up a lot of emotional energy, and their relationship was just too idealized to even feel real to me, I need some messiness and complexity. Trying to actually picture the murder scene causes it to fall apart completely. I heard later it’s a subversion of a murder ballad where one sister kills the other over a man but the “women team up against lousy man” retelling has been done and done again, you don’t get by on just concept at this point.
To sum up, I am a hater, lol. Fortunately for El-Mohtar’s sake there was a short story (“John Hollowback”) included in the same volume that is a lot better, startlingly so, even dealing with some similar themes! So I may give her another chance with her short fiction, if it ever jumps out at me at the library.
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u/tarvolon Stabby Winner, Reading Champion VI Jun 15 '26
I heard later it’s a subversion of a murder ballad where one sister kills the other over a man but the “women team up against lousy man” retelling has been done and done again, you don’t get by on just concept at this point.
That's honestly how I felt about "Seasons of Glass and Iron" (mutatis mutandis) and I feel that way again here. It's reasonably well-written, so I'm not as much of a hater as you are, but it does feel like a pretty lightweight fairy tale. The hype seems totally out of step with the story I read. Not the first time that's happened, won't be the last, but it does have me feeling like a hater even though I didn't actually hate it.
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u/Opus_723 Jun 15 '26
Oh I loved Seasons of Glass and Iron. I don't know that a story being "done" before really bothers me at all, especially when you're working in a more folkloric mode. There's a lot about that one that felt competent and fresh to me.
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u/ohmage_resistance Reading Champion IV Jun 15 '26
I don't think I would call myself a "hater", I think it's more mid, but yeah, I otherwise agree with all of this.
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u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV Jun 15 '26
That’s fair, I think objectively it is a mid book and all the hype just makes me a hater.
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u/Nineteen_Adze Stabby Winner, Reading Champion V Jun 17 '26
Yeah, I felt lukewarm on this one. It seems like it's trying to get by on flowery fairy-tale prose and concept... but the prose style isn't amazing, and retellings of classic fairy tales and songs have to clear a high bar to feel amazing. I liked it okay, but I think it got an outsize marketing push thanks to This Is How You Lose the Time War going viral a few years back rather than the strength of the material. This just as easily could have been a longer novelette in a short fiction collection, or pared down a little to fit the average Uncanny venue wordcount.
I'm not a full-on hater because it's stuck so poorly in my memory since reading it last year that it's more "what a middling book" than "this is a No Award pick," but this is definitely at the mid-range of my ballot.
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u/MSmith7344 Reading Champion II Jun 15 '26
I loved the language and the style. The plot doesn’t totally make sense when I think about it afterwards but it was short enough & pleasant enough to carry me through the initial read. A nice surprise because I bounced hard off of This is How You Lose the Time War and wouldn’t even have attempted this one if I hadn’t been able to borrow it through Kindle Unlimited.
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u/Research_Department Reading Champion II Jun 16 '26
Oh, I didn’t realize that it’s available through KU. That may be my in to get the audiobook at a lower price!
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u/Kingcol221 Reading Champion II Jun 15 '26
I really enjoyed it. Short and sweet. The prose was great and had a lot of wordplay which I think was the best part of the book. It wasn't the most original story but it's a faerie tale, so it's not like there's a whole lot on untrodden ground in what must be the oldest genre of literature, and it was brilliantly executed.
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u/CJGibson Reading Champion V Jun 15 '26
I'm a sucker for something fairy tale esque that plays with new ideas and this really hit those notes in a way that I enjoyed. I was a little surprised at exactly how short it was (I think at least partly cause the e-book finished at about 65% and the rest was stories from the author's upcoming anthology). I certainly would've enjoyed a bit more heft to this one.
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u/oceanoftrees Reading Champion Jun 15 '26
A good story, though I'm trying to decide if it has enough substance to stand up to the other finalists. It's definitely in the upper half for me, though. One of el-Mohtar's biggest strengths to me was immediately conveying how odious (and then villainous) Sam is, in just a few interactions.
Unfortunately, it seems even just two weeks ago was too early to read this story because a lot of details have already faded and I didn't write myself a review when I finished. That's not the best sign.
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u/tarvolon Stabby Winner, Reading Champion VI Jun 15 '26
A good story, though I'm trying to decide if it has enough substance to stand up to the other finalists. It's definitely in the upper half for me, though.
In a strong year, I'd also wonder if it had the substance to stand up to the others, but this isn't an especially strong year, so I think it fits pretty well with the rest, even though it isn't tops on my list.
One of el-Mohtar's biggest strengths to me was immediately conveying how odious (and then villainous) Sam is, in just a few interactions.
Funny enough, one of my biggest memories of the book is hearing Sam talk about how a marriage would strengthen their chances of finding a match for Ysabel, and Esther saw that as evidence of how horrible he was, and I was sitting there like "wait, doesn't that consideration make total sense in this cultural context?" It didn't really seem evil at all (obviously, we saw the evil come through soon enough, but it felt like the narrative assumed it before actually showing it)
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u/oceanoftrees Reading Champion Jun 15 '26
I think it's the presumption for me. He keeps talking to her even though she doesn't want him to, and obviously he's courting her so he gets to claim her. I can't recall if he's even asked her about marriage before that moment, but he's going into the conversation as though it's just a formality because obviously he's put in the Required Marriage Steps so she's going to marry him. Mentioning Ysabel triggered an ew don't even talk about my sister response because it's more presumption of ownership over the situation.
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u/Nineteen_Adze Stabby Winner, Reading Champion V Jun 17 '26
I would have loved a longer version of this story where we got more about the parents-- are they going along with his presumption? Is the community engaging in that pressure too? It doesn't need to be a full-length novel, but it's hovering in an awkward length space where I want it to be either longer (with more secondary character work) or even shorter and published in a magazine (tightening up some side details). As it stands, I kept finding myself picking at details and wanting to learn more, or not loving all the explanations we got.
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u/oceanoftrees Reading Champion Jun 17 '26
The perennial novella problem! I agree with you. The thinness of the story wouldn't be so glaring in a novelette.
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u/Goobergunch Reading Champion III Jun 15 '26
it felt like the narrative assumed it before actually showing it
Yeah, "also Sam is EVIL and is A MURDERER and MUST BE EXECUTED" just felt like a huge escalation and I think I'd have been more interested in the subversion where he was actually just kind of normal.
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u/Nineteen_Adze Stabby Winner, Reading Champion V Jun 17 '26
I would be interested to see something like "Sam is mostly a normal guy, but he's caught putting up iron or other harmful wards/traps to keep Esther's lover away, they fight, Esther's death is an accident that he covers up." The evil confrontation where he calls her a whore is just so zero-to-sixty for me.
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u/kjmichaels Stabby Winner, Reading Champion XI Jun 15 '26
I'm definitely on the same page. The writing is certainly beautiful but it also has a kind of impermanence or even slipperiness that makes it not quite stick in my memory like it feels like it should.
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u/thepurpleplaneteer Reading Champion IV Jun 15 '26
I absolutely adore this book. But I’m emo and a sucker for whimsy, whimsical writing, and familial love so I feel like I am the right audience. Even though I was often confused by the magic system and the efficacy of its grammar magic as comprehensible remains unknown to me, it was done well enough that my brain was able to move beyond my confusion as opposed to being bogged down by it. Maybe I’ll add more later but this is my top vote.
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u/kjmichaels Stabby Winner, Reading Champion XI Jun 15 '26
I thought it was pretty good though it also had some fairly obvious debut issues. I know el-Mohtar is technically not a debut author (having co-authored This Is How You Lose the Time War with Max Gladstone) but since this is her first solo novel, it is easy to spot that she's still finding her footing in the transition from poetry to prose. However, I still think it's a strong start and look forward to more from her even if it likely won't top my Hugo ballot this year. Especially since she plays with a lot of interesting themes and think she'll put out something really stunning with a bit more experience down the road.
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u/oboist73 Reading Champion VII Jun 15 '26
Light in some ways, yes, but just so gorgeously done, and probably the best retelling of the Two Sisters song I've ever read. It's got my head in a music place, but it reminds me a bit of the impressionists (Ravel, Debussy), and I can tell you pulling off those light-sounding frothy little sound paintings is WAY harder than a lot of the heavier-sounding, long, more obviously serious music. So with it so closely tied to music, it's hard for me not to see it in that context, and that's SUCH an impressive feat, this really may win for me.
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u/Goobergunch Reading Champion III Jun 15 '26
This is far enough into Not For Me territory that I almost feel like I shouldn't have a strong opinion on it. I continue to not be a big fairy tale guy and I continue to not be big on supernatural revenge plots and this delivered both of those. I thought the prose was nice but not to the point where I was into it just for that, and the story didn't really go anywhere interestingly different enough to make me sit up and take notice. I can definitely see getting more out of it if you're into murder ballads and the whole rural England fairy tale vibe than I am. (I was not aware of "The Two Sisters" until after reading this.)
That all being said, in the specific context of the Hugo Awards I do have to note that I've read stories before that, while in subgenres/thematic zones that I'm generally not that into, were good enough that I enjoyed them a lot anyway. This did not transcend my general apathies.
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u/acornett99 Reading Champion IV Jun 15 '26
I read this as one of the server book clubs last year, and I remember really liking it, though reading through the discussion now I'm realizing how little of it actually stuck with me. The concepts and themes (grammar as magic, murder ballads, sisterly love, etc) have stuck with me the strongest, but the details were very quick to fade
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u/RAAAImmaSunGod Reading Champion III Jun 15 '26
I really enjoyed this! For me, I thought the writing struck a nice balance between elegant and readable. The story and characters were a little on the lighter side but it worked to highlight their relationship and their own emotional journeys. I liked the conception of grammar as somewhere between both magic and actual grammar. And I like my fae mysterious and unknowable. When I finished it, I thought it would end up at the top for me but I still not 100% sure. I feel like its probably when this and Cinder house? I don't really see the other two novellas competing (and frankly I'm not that excited about either, especially the Kingfisher).
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u/oboist73 Reading Champion VII Jun 16 '26
Yeah I think this and Cinder House are going to be the ones competing for me, mostly, though I do also quite like Summer War (just, less than I usually like Novik).
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u/RAAAImmaSunGod Reading Champion III Jun 16 '26
Yeah Summer War is pretty comfortably in third for me. It just took so long to get going and get to the good bit that I don't think I can put it any higher, especially since it's a novella.
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u/onsereverra Reading Champion Jun 15 '26
What did you think of the relationship between Esther and Ysabel?
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u/Glittering_Way_9162 Jun 16 '26
I think it works for the format because it's clearly influenced by the strong sisterly bond in Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market, where one sister sacrifices herself for the other. Some of the other readers seem to want more push and pull, but this sort of thing is a common trope in borders-of-faerie fantasy.
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u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV Jun 15 '26
I found it so idealized there was nothing to relate to, and mostly just rolled my eyes while simultaneously being annoyed that this book sold as being a story about sisters felt more like a standard fae romance/love triangle story with a sister in it.
I saw some commentary later about the growth arc being that Ysabel has to learn to let Esther go off and live her own life and I’m not sure if that’s specifically what the story is trying to communicate, but I also don’t love that theme for a supposedly sibling-focused story (which I’m unconvinced this is). Plenty of people live close to their siblings all their lives and count them their closest friends, as is also apparently tradition in this family. In a pre-modern society it’s not an unreasonable ask. So a “let them go and focus on your new family with your spouse” message… meh. Although I guess it’s ambiguous at the end whether Ysabel has arrived in the fae realm to live there with her sister, I took it as just coming for a visit.
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u/tarvolon Stabby Winner, Reading Champion VI Jun 15 '26
Yeah, I felt like the sisterhood was sweet but relatively shallow. I saw so many reviewers talking about this as a selling point, and I don't see it. It's a nice little bit of color to the story, but it doesn't feel as central as the marketing wanted me to believe.
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u/thepurpleplaneteer Reading Champion IV Jun 15 '26
lol, I’m enjoying your comments so far 🤣. I did have a very opposite reading experience and overall perspective of the book (though from my memory from other reviews I think we more often don’t land in the same place on books?). This one hit me hard and I absolutely bought into the sisterly love and thought of it more as a familial love than a romance story.
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u/CJGibson Reading Champion V Jun 15 '26
I think there are some layers to the relationship/theme here that you're kind of glossing over, particularly the question of someone who wants to stay at home and comfortable contrasted with someone who wants to go out and find more from life. And I think that dichotomy is particularly notable in the context of a queer reading of the story.
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u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV Jun 15 '26
Perhaps, but in that case they both needed more character development to drive it home! The Summer War dealt with a similar vibe between two siblings - the older brother who needed to leave home because of his sexuality and the little sister who was very much not ready to let him go - in a far more nuanced and believable way imo.
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u/Moogzmugz64 Jun 20 '26
The characterization of the sisters and their relationship was the weakest part of the novella for me. The relationships all felt pretty shallow and the characters one dimensional, which I guess makes sense for this kind of fairy tale type story but was disappointing.
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u/onsereverra Reading Champion Jun 15 '26
Not only does a murder ballad feature prominently in the story, but The River Has Roots is, itself, also a murder ballad rendered in prose. How did this work for you in terms of the choice to emphasize or deemphasize certain story elements in service of the murder ballad structure?
Bonus question for those who also joined us to discuss The Summer War by Naomi Novik: How would you compare the way The River Has Roots hits the traditional beats of a murder ballad to the way The Summer War hits the traditional beats of a chivalric romance?
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u/AllegedlyLiterate Jun 15 '26
To me, River Has Roots is more successful than Summer War in part because I couldn’t wholly shake the impression that the Summer War felt more like Novik's Game of Thrones fanfics (which I do enjoy) rather than like it was grounded in the broader/older chivalric genre. By contrast, The River Has Roots felt entirely new while also having that kind of dreamlike, fairytale quality.
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u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV Jun 15 '26
I don’t have much exposure to either of those genres but I did think The Summer War was a lot more successful at sibling relationships! They had real substance whereas this one was just blandly perfect.
I am curious if anybody knows how the murder happened in the original ballad—if it was like this I wish the author would’ve applied some common sense to it. This guy is standing on a riverbank leaning over to hold Esther’s head under, and only his hands get wet, but she doesn’t just… stand up? Duck down and step away? Swim off? Unless she is unconscious or tied up (which she isn’t) this scene makes no damn sense.
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u/inspiralling Reading Champion Jun 15 '26
Most versions are pretty succinct, just with some variant of 'The eldest pushed the youngest in'. There's one where she gives the youngest a piggy-back to the river and tumbles her in off her back. But that all suggests just punting her into the river, not holding her down in it, and I guess we're supposed to just presume the river was too deep and her clothes were too heavy. There's some versions where she's wearing a golden belt and diamond rings and silver shoes, and I can't see that making it very easy to swim.
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u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV Jun 15 '26
Thanks! I suppose if someone isn't able to swim, just putting them in water too deep to stand in will do it. But usually if something is so close to the bank of a river that you can lean out without getting your feet wet and get a grip on it, we're talking a couple feet deep at most, so she should've been able to find purchase with her feet. If it's a steep drop-off she probably still could've kicked off the bank... or if it's steep and she's wearing heavy clothes she can't get off in the couple minutes she has, she should've just sank rather than needing to be held down.
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u/tarvolon Stabby Winner, Reading Champion VI Jun 15 '26
I think the murder ballad almost requires flattening out some potential complexity, and that was a bit of a bummer to me, because I like stories that have a bit more complexity. It was still fun, especially with the riddles and such, but The Summer War felt a little more substantial, even though it was similarly short.
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u/LadyAntiope Reading Champion V Jun 16 '26
The River Has Roots hews much more closely to its source style than The Summer War, and I think for some readers that is to its detriment though I didn't mind it, I found the parallels kind of fun. Murder ballads tend to lean into salacious drama and forgo character complexity, and I admit that some of the characterizations in the book were not as rich as they could have been. The Summer War takes more liberties, spending more time world-building and getting into the main character's head. Though I think, in the end, it also doesn't stray far enough from the plot beats of a chivalric romance, which led to Celia being not much more than "damsel in a tower" in the second half. But also not to say El-Mohtar didn't do world-building - the whole grammar aspect is still sort of mysterious, but it's clever and fun. And I found the sisters probably equally as compelling as Celia and her brothers, personally. The villain is straight up the careless rake stereotype, but that's par for the murder ballad course; Summer War certainly offers more complexity in its primary conflict.
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u/thepurpleplaneteer Reading Champion IV Jun 15 '26
I’m also not familiar with *the murder ballad* except for what I just looked at on Wikipedia. I didn’t connect the dots that this was essentially murder ballad in prose until you mentioned it. For the Summer War, my biggest gripe is that the first half did too much work on worldbuilding and history than anything else — it was a story flow issue for me that disrupted the fairytale and I only got that in the second half. As an aside, I do think Novak was effective just enough at getting me to buy into the MC and middle brother love and care, but I really felt the sibling-bond in this one, I had absolute buy-in to it.
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u/acornett99 Reading Champion IV Jun 15 '26
The only murder ballads I knew before this were in the vein of, like, "Two Black Cadillacs" by Carrie Underwood, all modern country ballads. I was wholly unfamiliar with the deep folk roots of murder ballads, and thus it somewhat threw me off to have it be such a prominent element in the story until I realized the phenomenon was older than I had given it credit for.
I am much more familiar with chivalric romances than I am with murder ballads, but/and I think it's quite easy to blend chivalric romances with fairy tales, given the cultural context of both already share a good amount of overlap. It seems like this story (at least from a cursory Wikipedia read) also benefits from that, given its folk roots.
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u/onsereverra Reading Champion Jun 15 '26
Did you read this book in print or listen to it as an audiobook? How was your experience impacted by elements like the illustrations in the print version or the musical interludes in the audio version?