Seasons of Glass and Iron - Stories by Amal El-Mohtar
Publisher – Arcadia
Published – Out Now
Price – £16.99 hardback £9.99 eBook
Full of glimpses into gleaming worlds and fairy tales with teeth, Seasons of Glass and Iron: Stories is a collection of acclaimed and awarded work from Amal El-Mohtar.
With confidence and style, El-Mohtar guides us through exquisitely told and sharply observed tales about life as it is, was, and could be. Like miscellany from other worlds, these stories are told in letters, diary entries, reference materials, folktales, and lyrical prose.
Full of Nebula, Locus, World Fantasy, and Hugo Award-winning and nominated stories, Seasons of Glass and Iron: Stories includes 'Seasons of Glass and Iron', 'The Green Book', 'Madeleine', 'The Lonely Sea in the Sky', 'And Their Lips Rang with the Sun', 'The Truth About Owls', 'A Hollow Play', 'Anabasis', 'To Follow the Waves', 'John Hollowback and the Witch', 'Florilegia, or, Some Lies About Flowers', 'Pockets' and more.
I do enjoy a short story collection as it’s a bit like an album. The good ones know how to create balance and when to shake up the pace, build up to something epic or drop in something short and sharp. They help show the themes an author will chime with the most and can show the progression of an author’s skills over time. I had the immense pleasure of treating myself to Amal El-Mohtar’s new collection Seasons of Glass and Iron and this is very much a work of beautiful storytelling that pulled me into reading it into one session but like the best albums I can see myself returning to time and again.
With the title track ‘Seasons of Glass’ and Iron it was pleasure to re-read a story I’ve read prior. El-Mohtar seamlessly merges two fairy tale characters and tales a young woman trapped on a glass hill no suitor can reach and another young woman just halfway to wearing iron seven league books around the world. It’s a wonderful starting point for the collection and what El-Mohtar will do in subsequent stories with using myth and folklore as a frame to build the characters living in these worlds as real people and a refreshingly different story. Here our two very different characters meet, trade their stories and discover their own bond with each other. Poignant, romantic and magical the idea we can move on from our self-appointed duties is a powerful message perhaps adults need to hear in their own fairy tales more.
El-Mohtar can change format and in ‘The Green Book’ we have an author we have a magical book that has the writings of many others into it. Slowly a student explores why their master is behaving so strangely and within the act of reading a book and its peculiar handwriting builds in only a few pages a much longer tale and hints at the wider world this book is part of and what it means for the student. It looks simple, but the craft to create all of this within the levels of writing is really intricate.
I absolutely loved ‘Madeleine’ and its fairly relevant Proust quote suggests that memory is indeed going o be important. Here we have a woman meeting her therapist and I the sessions we find out she is having the side effects of a new drug that pulls her intensely into her own past. The fluidity of time and he experience that this creates is powerfully explained but the emotional heart is why our narrator opted for this and slowly we see she is trapped and a corporation is also involved. The story then morphs again with eh arrival of a stranger in these memories and a powerful bond that starts. This is a story that explores memory, grief and finding new hope and is a gorgeous read I thoroughly recommend.
A much darker tale awaits in “the Lonely Sea In The Sky” where we initially meet a character being moved from their wok due to an apparent obsession with diamonds which is a medical condition. This tale builds into a mosaic of news clips, scientific summaries and interludes a tale of a wondrous new scientific development that boosts humanity’s ability to travel but has unseen side effects. It’s a very subtle horror story that reveals its dark intentions gradually but builds up a sense of looming disaster coming but for whom the reader will want to see.
I really liked the style of older legend told in “And Their Lips Rang With The Sun” it starts with a tourist being told of the particular chosen ones of a city who bring forth the sun every day but again intricately what seems a simple city legend becomes a more focused story on the one of the troupe who falls for someone from the moon and both passion and despair then ensue. Just when we think this is just a cautionary tale linked to the legend leads to a final revelation pulls all these elements together that really warmed my heart.
With “A Tale of Ash IN seven Birds” we get one of those short sharp shocks of a tale that I mentioned. Mysterious creatures flee the world and are at the peril of a wizard nation and each time the two clash a new form of bird and fresh battles begin. On one level magic and wonder but also a tale that explores with metaphors having to find a new homeland and deal with how the world can try to absorb or reject you for not being a native citizen of a place.
Myth and magic are part of “The Truth About Owls” but in another favourite here they more support this contemporary story of a Lebanese teenage girl travelling to Glasgow after war. We see the pain she feels about moving, her fractured relationship with her parents and her trying to fit into a new life where people stare at someone they view as Other and able to be tormented. The girl’s fascination with owls allows the myths of owls and the girl’s own sense of her magical powers to build together but the ultimate resolution and release of the truth is a wholly human story that hits home beautifully and suggests healing can finally begin.
Another short tale within tale awaits in ‘Wing” where a girl reads a book with a book around her neck and gets interrupted. Magic clearly awaits but this story also explores meeting people sharing, trusting and seeing ultimately who is the person you’re going to allow to read your own inner story. A short but delicately carved tale.
Magic and the theatrical collide in “A Hollow Play” two queer work-colleagues strike up a bond and our Canadian narrator is invited to watch a cabaret show where her friend’s two partners are going to be there. However, it soon becomes apparent the singer is not quite human. This is a tale of hidden truths, lost friendships, insufficient love, unspoken feelings and the need to know. The human and non-human find stories that chime together and although a revelation is found it may not be ever the one you really want to know. This tale is lush with imagery, emotion and magic but the emotional beats are what I’ll carry away with me the most.
The longest tale is “John Hollowback and The Witch” A man seeks a witch’s help to find the lost memories of his love that have left his body physically hollowed out. This tale appears a simple fairy tale of good deeds but unusually the hero’s motivations are questioned, the truths are sought and refreshingly an adult rather than simply cruel resolution is eventually found. Getting what you asked for may not make you feel better but may just perhaps make you wiser and appreciate you were not doing the right thing.
There are also other tales and poems that are plenty of fun to read but I do think its appropriate to end this talking about ‘Pockets’ a young woman keeps finding strange and unlikely items of many sizes in her pickets. The story is bright and breezy even with some fun science experiments but then we get an answer but mischievously at the end we get a little message to readers that it is finding the strange and unusual where we least expect it is where author and reader connect in fascinating ways. Stories are a delightful way of sharing the world and how people see it. This collection will do just that and is strongly recommended as a consequence!
