Itzá

by Rios de la Luz

In her debut novella, Rios de la Luz examines the lives a small family of water witches living near the US-Mexico border. Exploring issues of race and trauma along with beauty and magic, Itzá is a powerful reclamation of body and identity.

Genres: Horror, Fantasy, Fiction, Magical Realism, Novella, Latinx, Queer

143 pages, Paperback

First published September 12, 2017

Reviews

[Rodney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Itza is a novella whose story is conveyed through short glimpses into the life and legacy of four generations of women. It walks the line effortlessly between magic and reality. Fantasy elements are grounded in real life experiences and struggles. The writing is never overly-worded, yet brings an undeniable intensity.
The sentimentality of your oldest memories and dreams. The extreme measures you sometimes took to cope with your demons as a child. Fighting strongly as you come of age. Lessons and imprints from the ones you miss the most, and the adoration you experience toward and from them. Deep trauma that will always be a part of you but there is both the fight and the strength to move past it even so. Last, and likely most important, honoring your roots. Itza is not one to be easily forgotten. A standout book for many reasons.

[Sunny Lu · Rating 4 out of 5]

beautiful prose and imagery, dark and richly natural, water and earth

[Sadie Hartmann · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The house became a place of saying nothing that I meant."

I loved this. The story of a small family (Mom, grandmas, two daughters) as the narrator comes of age. Content warning: Sexual Assault (stepfather) & the aftermath of psychological trauma. Intimately told through the lyrical prose of a capable writer. I wish I didn't blow through it so fast but the chapters are about 1-3 pages and the story is so compelling. Peppered with humor and heartbreak and female empowerment, I can't recommend this enough.

Recommended for readers who enjoy:
-Vignette-style (mosaic) storytelling with short chapters
-Generational stories of women
-Coming-of-Age
-Sisters
-US/Mexico border towns
-Grief & loss
-Female resiliency
-Brujas (witchcraft, potions, rituals, traditions)
-Magical realism
-Working through childhood trauma/healing/overcoming
-Complicated family dynamics
-Cultural superstitions

[Iris L · Rating 5 out of 5]

Itzá es una palabra Maya para nombrar al encantamiento del agua o a las hechiceras del agua.

Este es un libro precioso que cuenta la historia de 4 generaciones de mujeres, en una línea de tiempo Marisol y Araceli nos transportan desde su niñez al lado de sus abuelas y hasta su vida adulta y a través del trauma, rituales, familia y reclamación de la identidad estas mujeres poderosas nos enseñan el poder de la sanacion generacional.

Un libro con prosa exquisita, con descripciones profundas, lleno de magia y espiritualidad y con un mensaje poderoso sobre el duelo, feminidad, racismo, colonialismo y opresión.
Un adentramiento a conocer a estas antiguas mujeres vivas en la riqueza de la cultura Maya.

“Maybe they prefer to be a mythological bodies. Bodies that could transcend space and time and what it meant to be dead or alive.”

[exorcismemily · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I wanted to become a fading star in the darkest night of the year. I wanted to step outside of my body as a ghost and watch my corpse decompose, with my bones leftover for coyotes to discover."

Itza was my introduction to Rios de la Luz's work, and I enjoyed this novella! This story is about a couple different generations of women in a family of water witches living on the border of Texas and Mexico.

I would classify this book as speculative fiction. It's not a chronological novel - it's a story of moments and memories across time. It was confusing for me at first, but I got used to it. I wasn't always entirely sure when things were happening, but it fed into the mystery of the story, and also showed that family is always around you.

Rios' writing is haunting and beautiful. Her writing has a dreamlike quality, and I was completely invested in her storytelling. Even if I'm not sure I always understood everything in the book, I never wanted to give up. I just kept wanting more.

I loved learning about the different generations of women, and I wish we had more time to spend with them (this always happens to me when I read a novella with solid characters). Many of them were so well-rounded for such a short book.

Itza is a coming-of-age story, and Marisol and Araceli deal with some difficult things. It hurt my heart to watch them go through things in silence. Their bond was amazing, and this was a magical story of family and sisterhood.

I wish there would have been more focus on the water witch aspect. I was quite curious about it, and would have loved to see more of it in the story. The topics in the book are important, so I understand why it wasn't in the forefront. There were a lot of good fantastical elements, so it was woven into the story, but I was just hoping for a little bit more attention on it.

Something I loved was that there was a Chihuahua gang in their town, and Marisol wanted to make them matching denim vests. This killed me. I have three Chihuahua mixes, and I would want to do exactly the same thing. It made me so happy.

I've thought about this book quite a few times since I finished it, and I highly recommend picking it up if you're looking for a thought-provoking, surreal, and gorgeous speculative fiction story.

[Holly (The GrimDragon) · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I wanted to rock back and forth in her lap, but she was more than a ghost, she was veins of lightning, she was white swirling clouds, she was pollen sticking to the legs of honeybees."

Itzá blew me away! I'm so in love with the stunningly poetic, savory storytelling from Rios de la Luz.

This novella about generations of water witches was haunting, beautiful and painfully raw. It was simply magical.

OOF. 

I highlighted so many passages that touched my soul. Itzá has become a new favorite!

"We are not defined by our traumas."

[Diamond · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm still processing all my thoughts and feelings, but this is a beautiful, episodic, dreamlike novella that's full of magic, trauma, and powerful women. It reads more like poetry or a dream than prose, and although it feels so surreal at times, it is rooted in truth and reality. I want more stories like this in my life, and I can't wait to share this with my nieces when they're older

[V. Castro · Rating 5 out of 5]

I want to be a water witch
Identity. It’s a beautiful unique thing we are all born with, but who we are changes over the course of time through good and sometimes tragic life experiences.
You aren’t children so I don’t have to tell you life can be a motherfucker that will chew you up and spit you out.
@riosdelaluz explores life from a child to a woman through the lens of the Chicanx experience. There is as much magic in being a woman as there is pain. I wish I could express all the ways this story spoke to me but I want you to read it!
Itza made me smile, conjure memories of my own upbringing in a Mexican American household, I felt anger, and it made my heart weep.
Her writing style is poetically heartfelt leaving you to wanting to know more about the secret world of water witches. Count on Abuelita to inspire you when you need it most. Rely on those that give you a back to lean on.
Required reading right here for all women.

[Stephanie (Books in the Freezer) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This short novel packs quite a punch. The prose is dreamlike with episodic chapters. We follow sisters Areceli and Marisol and their relationship with their abuelita. I loved the spirituality and how the women viewed the world and their place in it. This novel has its dark moments and we see how Marisol lives with traumas from her childhood. I will say this book is light on plot, so if you're looking for a straightforward narrative, you won't find it here. I enjoyed this story; I lost my own Abuela earlier this year, and kept thinking about her own quirks and love of telenovelas.

[Tracy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I sit in awe. Review up today on www.scifiandscary.com

My friend Emily sent me this book for my birthday. She read it and loved it and gambled that I would, too. She was right. Why did she think I’d like this? Perhaps because Itzá is dark and disturbing. Or maybe because it’s a coming of age tale focusing on a pair of sisters. Perhaps because de la Luz can and DOES write her ass off and this book is beautiful. Yeah, all of those.

I went into this book without having read de la Luz before or reading any other reviews. As a book that’s been out for almost two years, I was worried about spoilers so I avoided them. The synopsis above is simple – this is really all you need as far as prior knowledge. I read this book in one day, on a car trip to and from a family gathering. I probably could have finished this in one sitting, but the content is heavy and these words deserve to have time to soak in.

“He was treated like an exceptional being amongst a house of brilliant feminine spirits. He left his shadow behind and it was dragging Marisol towards cracks in the earth.”

Sisters Marisol and Araceli are vibrant and gorgeous characters. They withstand things that hurt my soul and reacted together and separately in ways that made my heart overflow with love and pain. This family of strong women, of water witches, take the life they have and the community they are in and dig, claw, dance, and persevere. Sometimes. Sometimes life sucks and de la Luz pulls NO punches. There are raw, real feelings on these pages.

Do not go into this book expecting clear, linear plot lines and rigid, exact language. To me, this is a story of soul, of heart, and the surreality of de la Luz’s prose fits this perfectly. At times I was a bit lost, but that’s okay. The story does follow a progression and sometimes we hear from Araceli and at others it is Marisol, both stories are part of the greater whole. I also dig that the author melds horrible life experiences like rape and racism with the strong and beautiful lives of these girls. The politics and trauma are there; they are an inextricable part of their lives and de la Luz shies away from none of it.

I can think of friends of mine who would love this novella. In general, if you are looking for a genre-bending, elegant yet surreal, blast of emotion and coming of age tale, all told from a viewpoint you may have never considered, this one’s for you.

[Andrew Stone · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is both wonderfully magical and beautifully tragic. It invites us into to lives of a family of water witches, exploring they daily life and the traumas they must work through. It's about coming of age, taking control of your body, and using it as best you can. And at the end of each day, what do we have but our bodies?

I absolutely loved this book, one of my favorites of this year (and any year) guaranteed.

[Julia (Shakespeare and Such) · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5/5 stars

Plot: 2.5/5 - The problem with this plot, in my eyes, is that it under-delivered in what the reader was promised (a story about a family of water witches), offered up instead a very different but equally interesting premise (a coming-of-age tale that deals with trauma and identity), and also under-delivered on that plot. This is perhaps the nature of the beast with a novella- that the reader is often left wanting more- but I personally feel that if the author had chosen to focus on one of these two plotlines there could have been a more satisfying, fleshed-out story. Though I was intrigued by the idea of the water witches, halfway through the book I found myself wishing I was instead reading an entire YA novel about the "part two" plot. No really, if anybody wants to write a longer book about a Mexican-American girl who needs to escape from her mother's abusive boyfriend and moves to Colorado with her butch aunt who signs her niece up for karate lessons and takes her to sing karaoke I'M HERE FOR IT.

Characters: 4/5 - The characters by far were my favorite part of this novella and the only reason I marked this down was because I wanted to get to know all of them even more. I particularly would have liked more time with abuelita and abuela, who seemed the quirkiest and witchiest of the family. I enjoyed that we got to meet the many generations of women in the family but found their timeline confusing (re: pacing).

Pacing: 2/5 - This pacing was so off to me. There were many sections that didn't seem chronological, which is FINE, books don't HAVE to tell their stories chronologically, but least clue me in as to when we are talking about or how old certain characters are. I'm also a huge fan of short chapters but these were too short for me to even get into the dang stories. Some were two/three pages.

Writing: 2/5 - This section I will admit is perhaps the most subjective (even more than enjoyment, which sounds crazy). de la Luz's writing felt a lot like poetry, which is usually a compliment except I'm one of those sad souls who just can't seem to jive with poetry. It had this We Were Liars quality to it that made me often pause trying to figure out if her language was being literal or figurative (i.e. wtf did she just actually pull a fire ant out of her lady parts or is that a metaphor for sexual abuse? Was abuela actually wearing a goblin mask or was that like.. her expression? An avocado facial? The world may never know). And even if all of this suited me fine I STILL would have taken issue with the utterly nonsensical narration changes. Chapters would alternate from being written first-person, to second-person, to third-person with NO rhyme or reason and it exhausted me. For a while I had invented a character who didn't exist because I was trying to make sense of the narration. I couldn't tell what the point was and the farther I got the more it annoyed me.

Enjoyment: 2/5 - Sadly, this just wasn't my cup of tea. I think there were some excellent ideas and I definitely recognize that there were many important subjects addressed in this story, but that's about all I have to say in favor of it. Also a hinderence to my enjoyment was the really explicit mentions of bodily functions. I mean I get it, we all burp and fart and pee and poop... we all have mucus and saliva and blood. I don't think they need be shamed. I just don't want to read about them every ten pages. Ew.

[Kelby Losack · Rating 5 out of 5]

ITZÁ is the debut novella by Rios de la Luz, author of the Wonderland Award-winning collection, THE PULSE BETWEEN DIMENSIONS AND THE DESERT.
ITZÁ is about four generations of brujas living in a border town. It is the story of fighting to exist while discovering what that existence is. Aside from being the most relevant and powerful book I've read all year, it is one of the most lyrical and vividly imaginative books I've read, ever.
There is magic in these pages--a magic of language, of imagery, of emotion. There are authors who like to make up stories, and then there are people who are only authors because they have stories trapped inside of them, scratching and screaming to get out. Rios de la Luz is the latter type of author.

[Nathaniel]

I’m so glad we’re at a point in time where people can write stories that feel personal and dive into whatever topics and discussions the author wants. Art is only art if it includes the freedom of expression. This is a book that I imagine the author felt the need to exist. In that way, I respect it a lot. The author is a talented writer in that their words made me feel a lot. I really enjoyed the writing especially in the second half of the book. The plot wasn’t…for me, but that’s the point. This isn’t a story FOR anyone. It’s a story that is and I think it’s well done. I look forward to reading more from Rios de la Luz.

[World Literature Today]

"The novella follows four generations of women as told through the experience of Marisol. Simultaneously entrancing and harrowing, Itzá captivates readers with a rebellious, testimonial form living in the hybrid boundaries of fiction, science fiction, and fantasy. By using first-, second-, and third-person voice as well as writing outside of linear time, the novella acts like a crystal releasing its vibrations, which come through in the voice of a child, a sister, or a disembodied grandmother." - Marilyse V. Figueroa

This book was reviewed in the Mar/Apr 2018 issue of World Literature Today magazine. Read the full review by visiting our website:

https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/...

[ThatBookish_deviant · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5/5

“We accept a societal structure that teaches our brown children to hate themselves. We accept borders as an excuse to dehumanize those who are not in the same side as us. Resistance is critical. It is a necessity.”

[Gabs · Rating 5 out of 5]

what a book. kinda ashamed i relate so much to it.

[Jo Quenell · Rating 4 out of 5]

A magical novella about family, trauma, and the ties that bind. Much like her past work, Rios De La Luz has a writing style that is simple yet profound. Her prose is uncluttered and she strays from two dollar words. Yet she catches so much emotion and detail in her sparse sentences that I found myself re-reading passages to ensure I got everything I could from this. Itza us strongly recommended.

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think I'd like to reread this before giving a star rating. Currently in the middle of 4 and 5.
I read this in one sitting on an airplane. It was super engaging and dark and kind of weird in that great way. I fully plan to read again before the year is over and will likely highlight so many amazing parts.

[Thomas Joyce · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my first Rios de la Luz book and it is AMAZING. Equally heart-breaking and heartwarming, de la Luz's style is magical and poetic, forcing the reader to feel every emotion on the page. The traumatic events of Marisol's childhood at the hands of a terrible adult are unflinching and brutally honest, and I often had a lump in my throat. But, also, the love shared between Marisol and her sister, and the love they had for their abuelita and abuela shone throughout and gave this reader hope. I hope Marisol found peace in the end.
Rios de la Luz is clearly a writer of incredible talent and I can't wait to read more of her work.

[Tyra · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m pretty sure some of the metaphors went over my head but this book still managed to move me. Ríos de La Luz writing is very poetic. Trigger warning for sexual abuse, I didn’t know that going I . I also wanted for magic scenes with the water witches. That’s what it was marketed as. Part 2 was the only part of the book that really stole my heart. Overall solid read.

[B.R. Yeager · Rating 5 out of 5]

A gorgeous example of narrative as grimoire, or grimoire as narrative. Magic here emerges equally from culture, family, and individuals, is constructed from both joy and grief, and becomes enacted through rituals both age-old and newly formed. Lovely.

[B · Rating 5 out of 5]

A favorite of the year. After many books that left me “meh”, this one finally reminded me how wonderful, beautiful and magic reading can be.

TLDR

✨ Trauma, healing and reclaiming the body
✨ Grief, heritage and inhabiting a brown body
✨ Borders, boundaries and fluidity

✨ Episodic
✨ Sparse
✨ Magic realism
✨ Natural imagery
✨ Poetic writing

✨ Literary Fiction
✨ Experimental
✨ Easy Read

I would recommended if you liked:

🧡 The Waves, by Virginia Woolf
🧡 The Vegetarian, by Han Kang
🧡 On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

Sinopsis

The sinopsis can make it look like fantasy genre-fiction but it’s not the case. This is a literary fiction/magic realism book.

Marisol is the oldest daughter in a family of four generations of water witches living at the border between US and Mexico. The book is an account of her life across the years, focusing on her relationship with the other women in the family and her journey healing from grief and trauma and reclaiming her body and heritage.

Narrative & Style

The chapters are really short and episodic, following a sparse and sometimes uncertain timeline (think The Waves by Virginia Woolf). And the narratives switch between first, second and third person. Somehow, all this works seamlessly and the books ends up being simultaneously quite experimental AND very easy to read.

We get lost in it. But in a good way. Is like floating in the ocean or having a dream. We follow along unsure of where the narrative is leading us, but marveling with every scene as it comes, feeling like we are in good hands and can trust the writer to take us where we need to go.

The writing is B E A U T I F U L. Poetic without overdoing it. Dream-like and full of natural imagery

Trauma & healing

For me, the thing that this book was able to do like no other, was to approach trauma in the most delicate and profound way.

Quite often books either fall into a simplistic “feel-good” portrait of grief, trauma and healing that is full of condescending platitudes, or into bleak/brutal accounts that end up being re-traumatising. Itzá, however, is able to avoid all of that.

👉 In part taking advantage of magic realism, it avoids graphic accounts of acts of violence and focuses instead on the experiences of the victim
👉 It engages deeply and honestly with the non-linear nature of healing and recovery
👉 It focuses on the kindness and beauty that still awaits for survivors in their lives

[Matt Neil Neil · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply one of my favourite books. I've read it three times over the last couple of years, but never felt able to do it justice in a review. I still don't, but...

Itzá is the story of four generations of water witches living in the borderlands of America. It opens with the magical description of the family's great-grandmother found dead in her bed in the middle of a forest, and shows us the family in life, death and the afterlife.

This is a book of pain and joy, told in plain language with poetry and simple wonder at its heart. Parts of it are hard to read they're so raw, but they should be raw, because they deal with sexual abuse, with racism and oppression, and with the trauma of being born into a body - a brown, female body - that others seek to denigrate and destroy. There's also a lot about the love between siblings, and between grandparents and grandchildren, and, finally, for oneself. There's a journey in this book towards healing, and the first steps of that healing are as painful to read about as the abuse, but there's enormous strength there too, with rage expressed without the need for approval a key element in that healing.

Rios de la Luz is an extremely gifted writer, and I'm continually confounded as to how she doesn't have a wider audience. I can heartily recommend her collection of SF-tinged short fiction "The Pulse between Dimensions and the Desert", where you can see the seeds of this novella. In the age of Trump, the last desperate dice-throws of the Patriarchy, and the global rise of fascism, this book really ought to be required reading.

I look forward to more work from Rios. She has a way of writing that transcends borders of all kinds, and that's what the world needs right now.

[Luna Itza · Rating 4 out of 5]

Since the first time I learned about the existence of this book, I immediately gravitated towards it for the obvious reason. The title is my middle name. My most beloved name, of all my names. Y con el acento tmb; que lindo.

I was gifted this book shortly after, on my birthday and I couldn’t be more elated. No matter what the story In this book entailed, I was going to love it. I just had a feeling.

Awhile back, I did a bit of research to see what my name truly meant. Or, translates to. So I traced the origin back to where my father was first inspired to gift me that name. Chichén Itzá. A land surrounded by beauty and nature. Inhabited by the Mayas. I first learned that Chichén, means: Edge of the well. And, Itzá, are a group of Mayas. The ‘well’ in this context most certainly refers to the vast amount of cenotes located in that area. Having the opportunity to have been submerged in one, I can confirm that the land is absolutely magical.

~At the Edge of the Itzá’s Well~

I felt so much love reading this story, page by page, discovering all of the tender souls who altogether kept their spirits alive, long past their existence. The gentle use of prose to deliver these short stories really spoke to me. The way the author seamlessly connects her world to her reality. The love of her abuelas. The pain from her trauma. The gifts from her ancestors.

~Water Witches~

I’m so happy I came across this book that not only told the stories of my people but also in the language that I grew up with. Spanglish. It’s beautiful dialect we created in response to the two colonial tongues forces onto us. Many people don’t accept it, much less respect it, but it brings me so much joy to see it in print. We need more stories like this. Thank you for gifting this one to the world, Rios de la Luz.

[Gillian Rea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh my word. I was immediately entranced. The prose is lyrical, almost hypnotic, and the imagery is honestly breathtaking. It’s written in vignette chapters and every passage is just so exquisitely done. It has a poetically haunting rhythm and I kept having to pause to reread certain lines - I was really deeping it.

There is a witchy theme to the book, with a matriarchal family of brujas, and with spells and rituals woven through the story in a way that blurs the line between real memory and imagination. At the start, the childhood recollections of the Abuelas feel enchanted, shaped by the intensity of a child’s perception. As Marisol grows older and becomes deeply traumatised, those same otherworldly elements begin to feel like part of her fractured reality, both metaphorical and lived. This shifting sense of what is real and what is imagined gives the novel a haunting, dreamlike quality.

It is a dark, unflinching exploration of trauma, sexual assault, family, sisterhood, grief, and racism. It also examines the treatment of South American immigrants in the United States, which feels painfully relevant in 2025.

Marisol, our queer protagonist, taking back her own story and ownership of her body is devastating and incredibly powerful. The photoshoot chapter was just wow.

Every now and then I stumble on a book like this and can hardly believe a human imagination could produce something so profound and beautiful. The author’s voice is one of the most captivating I’ve encountered in a very long time. Probably since I found Jacqueline Harpman in Feb of this year. I know I’ll be thinking about this book forever. Wowee.

[DannyReadsThings · Rating 5 out of 5]

Itzá is a modern folkloric wonder that is lush, haunting, and utterly spellbinding. It follows a small family of water witches living near the U.S.–Mexico border and unravels themes of race, trauma, and survival through magic that feels both otherworldly and deeply rooted in our reality. Indie author Rios de la Luz writes with a voice that is singular and luminous, her phrasing sharp and strange and beautiful in a way that only enhances the book’s enchantment. She blends lived experience with prose that is lyrical, modern, and unmistakably her own. You can feel the catharsis she speaks of in her TikTok videos seeping through the pages, and you can feel that this story, though fiction, hails from a deeply real place. This book is a dream and a memory, a wound and a healing, a spell and a reckoning.

[Edward Rathke · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great little book. Visceral and full of visions of violence and beauty, of magic and madness. In many ways, it feels more like a collection of flashing memories. She plays with voice, perspective, point of view and touches on colonialism, postcolonialism, racism, jingoism, systemic violence and oppression, and the brutality of growing up poor and brown and female and different.

I don't have a lot to say about it. I think the writing's uniformly great, but I was hoping things would sort of coalesce into a more specific statement about character. It's not bad that it doesn't, but it keeps it from being a favorite, for me.

Still, definitely worth checking out. Short, beautiful, brutal--what's not to love?

[J · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. I enjoyed this, but I won't re-read it. It's a story about the innocence and pain of growing up in a difficult environment. Some of novel features the socially-aware commentary of a future adult version of the narrator, and that took me out of the story as it clashed with the magical realism and the child's perspective. The language is beautiful, and the images dazzling. The shifting between first, second and third person confused me for a good portion of the book and it wasn't until the author explicitly stated that something major had happened to THAT sister that I understood an important part of the plot. Otherwise, it was an interesting experience, more like reading a prose poem than a book. I appreciate the author's daring and originality.

[Teresa Ardrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was unsure what to expect from Itza, I knew it was witchy based on the summary, and I really tried to make this my Winter of the Witch where I caught up on my books about witches. But, Itza shattered my expectations. It is beautifully rendered, with almost vignette style stories that all interlink to form the over all mosaic narrative. You get little snippets here and there, changing POVs so it takes a moment to realize whose eyes we are looking through, all slightly askew so you never really know what is happening, but knowing you want more. At times caustic and depressing because no one really does get away from their past unscathed, but beautiful and redemptive because our past is what makes us who we are.