Seasons of Glass & Iron: Stories by Amal El-Mohtar is 208 page collection of short stories and poems published by Tordotcom in 2026.

Genre:

Fantasy

Blurb:

Full of glimpses into gleaming worlds and fairy tales with teeth, Seasons of Glass and Iron 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 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.

My Thoughts:

When I read Amal El-Mohtar’s The River has Roots I thought it was fine, but I actually enjoyed the short story from this collection featured at the end, John Hollowback and the Witch, more. I was excited to check out the rest.

This book contains fourteen short stories plus four poems. Full disclosure–I am not much of a poetry person, and I skipped those entries. Sorry, sorry!

But most of the short stories were a success for this reader (favorites include The Green Book, Madeleine, and, of course, John and the Hollowback Witch). The author is very skilled with a pen/keyboard, and so even the few tales that didn’t really hit with me were still not a hardship to read. As El-Mohtar explains in the Introduction, several of these pieces were commissioned for specific projects with a core thematic or demographic concern (witches, steampunk, fairytales; Arab, women, queer). All of the stories have a fantasy element to them, and recurring themes include birds, flowers, gemstones, female friendship (sometimes more), and women fighting back against the patriarchy.

Short stories don’t often resonate with me as well as novels do, but there was still much to enjoy in this lyrical, otherworldly, analytic work.

My thanks to NetGalley and Tordotcom for the eARC in exchange for my unbiased review.

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