Seasons of Glass and Iron: Stories

From Nebula award winner El-Mohtar (The River Has Roots) comes a collection of 14 stories and four poems that shine both individually and as a whole. Blending fantasy, magical realism, and speculative fiction, and often rooted in history, myth, or legend, these tales range widely across time and place but are connected, as El-Mohtar writes in her introduction, by her love of women: “I love women talking to each other. I love women... offering up the stories of themselves to each other’s tender scrutiny. I love women being friends and being lovers, in all of their shapes, across the breadth and depth of their lives.” Indeed, her wonderfully unique heroines are drawn with depth and compassion. In “Madeleine,” the eponymous heroine, grieving the death of her mother, who had Alzheimer’s, participates in an experimental anti-dementia drug trial and begins to have intense flashbacks in which an unfamiliar figure becomes a new friend. “Florilegia; or, Some Lies About Flowers,” follows a Blodeuwedd, a woman constructed out of vegetation drawn from Welsh mythology, who has been brought into existence by magic to be an ideal wife. Meanwhile, the poetry, presented in both English and Arabic, delves into real-world struggles while still showcasing El-Mohtar’s characteristic lyricism and striking imagery. There’s not a false note here. (Mar.)