Yesterday, I touched upon my preference for beautiful prose. Consider me shallow, but I find the better stylists among SFF authors to tell a superior story, because well-crafted prose creates more depth and nuances than straightforward prose in service of a plot or character development. Yes, the latter two matter in general, but superior writing starts with excellent prose. An author with a grasp on how to write with a magical ease is Amal El-Mohtar, which she displays in her fantastic but too short “The Honey Month”.

As far as I know, “The Honey Month” remains El-Mohtar’s single stand-alone work, but she has several appearances in magazines such as Apex, Weird Tales and Sybil’s Garage and anthologies such as Book of Apex, Steam-Powered and Welcome to Borderland. I don’t know whether Amal considers writing a novel, but I would very much hope she has such aspirations because she has a beautiful approach to storytelling as demonstrated in “The Honey Month”. I have become such a fan, I have marked all her publications to date and hope to read them at some point.

What makes “The Honey Month” so extraordinary is the collection’s concept. El-Mohtar picks a particular honey for each day of the month, offers a brief description and impressions of its taste before she uses it as an inspiration to craft either a short story or a poem. Writers have translated sights, sounds and sensations to the page, but have rarely focused on taste as primary inspiration and the resulting works enchant the senses with its delicate beauty. Continue reading »