Anthologies Fantasy Fiction Science Fiction

Seasons of Glass and Iron: Stories

Name: Seasons of Glass and Iron: Stories
Rating: 4.15 (26 reviews)
Author: Amal El-Mohtar

Amal El-Mohtar March 24, 2026

4.15 26 Ratings

Ongoing Status

40 Views

Start Reading

Synopsis

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

Books similar to Seasons of Glass and Iron: Stories

Local Heavens

★ 4.08

K.M. Fajardo

A corporate hacker. An elusive billionaire. A society trying to survive the American Nightmare.

New York City, 2075. Filipino American Nick Carraway has just moved to the heart of the fractured New Americas, where he’s struck by the city’s contradictions—shining corporate towers casting bleak shadows over the slums of a crumbling middle class.

When Nick meets alluring, new-money Jay Gatsby, he falls for Gatsby’s frank charm and confident aura. But in a city where the wealthy flaunt tech-enhanced bodies to cheat death, surfaces aren’t all they seem—and as a corporate-sanctioned cyberspace hacker, Nick knows that no secret can stay buried forever. He’s the reason they don’t. And his latest assignment? Investigate Gatsby himself.

As Nick becomes entangled in the dark affairs of the elite—and the devastating fallout of their actions on the city’s most vulnerable—he must reckon with the limits of compassion and accountability across class and status. What takes Love or truth? Heart or soul?

A brilliant reimagining of Fitzgerald’s classic tale of glamour, desire, and desperation, Local Heavens examines the guardrails of morality . . . and the price of desire.

In An Iron Cage: The Magic of Steampunk

★ 3.84

Danielle Ackley-McPhail

It's a Mod, Mod World! When there are gnomes among the gears, and the mists of magic mingle with the steam of tech, you know you've entered a realm where fantasy and science meet in an absolutely riveting collection of enchanting tales of steampunk adventure. In An Iron Cage: The Magic of Steampunk takes the best of both worlds and melds them into fiction that will absolutely transport you. With stories by: David Sherman, Brenda Cooper, Alma Alexander, C.J. Henderson, Elektra Hammond, Bernie Mojzes, Danielle Ackley-McPhail, Patrick Thomas, Stuart Jaffe, James Chambers, A.C. Wise, James Daniel Ross, Jeff Young, and Darren Pearce.

Stitched to Skin Like Family Is

★ 4.13

Nghi Vo

2025 Hugo Voter Packet version (Best Short Story).

Uncanny Magazine Issue 39: March/April 2021

★ 4.14

Lynne M. Thomas

The March/April 2021 issue of Hugo Award-winning Uncanny Magazine.

Featuring new fiction by Catherynne M. Valente, Dominica Phetteplace, Caroline M. Yoachim, Carrie Vaughn, Rati Mehrotra, and Sarah Pinsker. Reprint fiction by Alaya Dawn Johnson. Essays by Tansy Rayner Roberts, Sid Jain, Marieke Nijkamp, and Jay Edidin, poetry by Tamara Jerée, Brandon O'Brien, Terese Mason Pierre, and Ali Trotta, interviews with Caroline M. Yoachim by Tina Connolly, and Sarah Pinsker by Caroline M. Yoachim, a cover by Paul Lewin, and editorials by Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas.

Contents:
The Uncanny Valley / Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas
The Sin of America / Catherynne M. Valente
The Perils of a Hologram Heart / Dominica Phetteoplace
Colors of the Immortal Palette / Caroline M. Yoachim
The Book of the Kraken / Carrie Vaughn
Eighteen Days of Barbereek / Rati Mehrotra
Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather / Sarah Pinkser
They Shall Salt the Earth with Seeds of Glass / Alaya Dawn Johnson
Deadly Frocks and Other Tales of Murder Clothes / Tansy Rayner Roberts
Seduced by the Ruler's Gaze: An Indian Perspective on Seth Dickinson's Masquerade / Sid Jain
Protector of Small Steps / Marieke Nijkamp
Please Be Kind to the Singularity / Jay Eddin
The Most Humane Methods Could Involve a Knife / Tamara Jerée
Lagahoo Culture (Part II) / Brandon O'Brien
Future Saints / Terese Mason Pierre
Of Monsters I Loved / Ali Trotta

Uncanny Magazine Issue 49: November/December 2022

★ 4.12

Lynne M. Thomas

The November/December 2022 issue of Hugo Award-winning Uncanny Magazine.

Featuring new fiction by Samantha Mills, Vivian Shaw, Matthew Olivas, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Iori Kusano, Anya Ow, and Emily Y. Teng. Reprint fiction by Catherynne M. Valente. Essays by Izzy Wasserstein, Jennifer Marie Brissett, Alex Jennings, and Karen Heuler, poetry by Eshqin Ahmad, Ewen Ma, May Chong, Taiwo Hassan, and Ai Jiang, interviews with Vivian Shaw and Iori Kusano by Caroline M. Yoachim, a cover by Maxine Vee, and editorials by Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas, and Meg Elison.

In The Issue

FICTION
Rabbit Test by Samantha Mills
Transference by Vivian Shaw
To Walk the River of Stars by Emily Y. Teng
The Other Side of Mictlān by Matthew Olivas
A Fall Counts Anywhere by Catherynne M. Valente
can i offer you a nice egg in this trying time by Iori Kusano
Earth Dragon, Turning by Anya Ow
Travelers’ Unrest by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

POETRY
A Dead, Divine Thing by Eshqin Ahmad
Crossing by Ewen Ma
Sang Kancil at the Protest by May Chong
I Am a Little Hotel by Ai Jiang
A Testament of Bloom by Taiwo Hassan

EDITORIALS
The Uncanny Valley by Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas
The Horny Body Problem by Meg Elison

ESSAYS
The Necessity of Trans Joy by Izzy Wasserstein
Thank You, Patreon Supporters! by Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas
For Your Re-Consideration by Jennifer Marie Brissett
Across the Afterverse: A Conversation with Afropunk SF/F Author Alex Smith by Alex Jennings
What Do the Dying Know? by Karen Heuler

INTERVIEWS
Interview: Vivian Shaw by Caroline M. Yoachim
Interview: Iori Kusano by Caroline M. Yoachim

The Vanished Birds

★ 4.07

Simon Jimenez

A mysterious child lands in the care of a solitary woman, changing both of their lives forever in this captivating debut of connection across space and time.

"This is when your life begins."

Nia Imani is a woman out of place and outside of time. Decades of travel through the stars are condensed into mere months for her, though the years continue to march steadily onward for everyone she has ever known. Her friends and lovers have aged past her; all she has left is work. Alone and adrift, she lives only for the next paycheck, until the day she meets a mysterious boy, fallen from the sky.

A boy, broken by his past.

The scarred child does not speak, his only form of communication the beautiful and haunting music he plays on an old wooden flute. Captured by his songs and their strange, immediate connection, Nia decides to take the boy in. And over years of starlit travel, these two outsiders discover in each other the things they lack. For him, a home, a place of love and safety. For her, an anchor to the world outside of herself.

For both of them, a family.

But Nia is not the only one who wants the boy. The past hungers for him, and when it catches up, it threatens to tear this makeshift family apart.

Locklands

★ 4.02

Robert Jackson Bennett

A god wages war—using all of humanity as its pawns—in the unforgettable conclusion to the Founders trilogy.

Sancia, Clef, and Berenice have gone up against plenty of long odds in the past. But the war they’re fighting now is one even they can’t win.

This time, they’re not facing robber-baron elites, or even an immortal hierophant, but an entity whose intelligence is spread over half the globe—a ghost in the machine that uses the magic of scriving to possess and control not just objects, but human minds.

To fight it, they’ve used scriving technology to transform themselves and their allies into an army—a society—that’s like nothing humanity has seen before. With its strength at their backs, they’ve freed a handful of their enemy’s hosts from servitude, even brought down some of its fearsome, reality-altering dreadnaughts. Yet despite their efforts, their enemy marches on—implacable. Unstoppable.

Now, as their opponent closes in on its true prize—an ancient doorway, long buried, that leads to the chambers at the center of creation itself—Sancia and her friends glimpse a chance at reaching it first, and with it, a last desperate opportunity to stop this unbeatable foe. But to do so, they’ll have to unlock the centuries-old mystery of scriving’s origins, embark on a desperate mission into the heart of their enemy’s power, and pull off the most daring heist they’ve ever attempted.

And as if that weren’t enough, their adversary might just have a spy in their ranks—and a last trick up its sleeve.

Shorefall

★ 4.04

Robert Jackson Bennett

As a magical revolution remakes a city, an ancient evil is awakened in a brilliant new novel from the Hugo-nominated author of Foundryside and the Divine Cities trilogy

Having narrowly saved the metropolis of Tevanne from destruction, Sancia Grado and her allies have turned to their next task: sowing the seeds of a full-on magical-industrial revolution. If they succeed, the secrets behind scriving—the art of imbuing everyday objects with sentience—will be accessible to all of Tevanne’s citizens, much to the displeasure of the robber-barons who’ve hoarded this knowledge for themselves.

But one of Sancia’s enemies has embarked on a desperate gambit, an attempt to resurrect a figure straight out of legend—an immortal being known as a heirophant. Long ago, the heirophant was an ordinary man, but he’s used scriving to transform himself into something closer to a god. Once awakened, he’ll stop at nothing to remake the world in his horrifying image.

And if Sancia can’t stop this ancient power from returning? Well, the only way to fight a god…is with another god.

Seasons of Glass and Iron: Stories

Books similar to Seasons of Glass and Iron: Stories

Local Heavens

In An Iron Cage: The Magic of Steampunk

Stitched to Skin Like Family Is

Uncanny Magazine Issue 39: March/April 2021

Uncanny Magazine Issue 49: November/December 2022

The Vanished Birds

Locklands

Shorefall

Welcome Back!