Secondly, this style of storytelling breaks my immersion completely. At no stage am I not completely aware that this is a story being told to me because it's clearly the story of the performance of the story being told to me. A beguiling fantasy not to be missed.”—Evelyn Skye, New York Times bestselling author of The Crown’s Game Keema and Jun return to their world, to the Divine City where the Third Terror lives. Keema and Jun meet Shan, Uhi Araya's daughter, and give her the spear. The emperor's bird appears and reveals that it is really the Third Terror, a shapeshifter. The Third Terror has fallen in love with Keema, but Keema rejects him. Jun and Keema lead the Terror away from the Divine City as a tsunami approaches the area. Keema challenges the Terror to a duel. The Terror wins, but allows Keema to live. Keema and Jun dance together. The Water crashes over Keema, Jun, and the Third Terror. It retrieves the bones of the Moon Goddess and spares the city. Speaking of characters, I was immediately invested in Jun and Keema’s dynamic and the pure yearning they develop for each other. I loved being opened up to their complicated personalities, from reluctant travel companions to their love for each other. That is the most tormented man that I have ever known. I'm in love with this man. But he doesn't know that. I never told him, because he can never love anybody since he lost his hand and his girl."

I myownself am an obligate librocubicularist. It was a little challenging at first, reading this magisterially paced polyphony while within easy reach of the off switches on all my lighting devices. I was lights-out far more than once in the first quarter, maybe because I wasn't sure this story was going somewhere I entirely wanted to go. Especially as there's a hefty salting of second-person narration to endure as the price for learning how love animates and exculpates both lover and belovèd. What one receives for this benison bestowed on the narrative is a story of the impossibility of eternal power, unending dominance, unchallenged imperium. In the end, glory is fleeting because humans are ephemeral. The Spear Cuts Through Water is many, many things. It’s a spellbinding tribute to oral storytelling and folklore. It’s a thoughtful exploration of identity and family. But more than anything, The Spear Cuts Through Water is a love story, and one unlike anything you’ve read before.” —Polygon “Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Books of 2022”What I didn’t much appreciate about this were the long chapters, as mentioned. And the violence, I’m still thinking if they were all necessary but hmm maybe that opinion would vary with each reader. In a fantasy, so often the focus is the hero's journey - their growth and feelings. Most everyone else in the fantasy world is fodder - bit players, wallflowers, NPCs. Commonfolk. Reading Simon Jimenez’s The Spear Cuts Through Water feels like dreaming an impossibly epic movie, cinematic yet fluidly surreal, a mythic tale of clashing gods that never loses its human heart.” —Indra Das, Lambda Literary Award–winning author of The Devourers

My Review: How do you read your books? Tree book, ebook, ear reading? Where are you when you experience the stories you consume...bed, chair, front seat of the car, public transportation? All of these factors will come into play while experiencing this read. This is definitely one of those books that require you to sit on it for a few days before deciding which rating you're going to give. And that is the ultimate truth of the spear, the artifact and symbol of the disempowered, the metaphor for power as it is transfered in the world of rank and division. It is, in its very nature, a symbol of what enables leaders to become dictators. It is supremely easy to pass the spear on through family lines. It is always the case that the spear is turned against its user. The plot was intricately woven and complex. I was honestly convinced the author’s brain was from another dimension entirely. Here rise the themes of power: what happens when it’s given to the wrong hands, and allowed to be used, allowed to prosper and endure in these wrong hands. I won’t deny that there isn’t a level of insanity here. If you’ve read The Vanished Birds, you’d be familiar with how insane things can get. Here it was relentless. But despite everything, I think the author “knots the threads” well. I think four very bright stars would be most suitable. I love many aspects from this book, from its beautiful prose/narrative, its unique storytelling of combining many POVs at once (mind you, it's fascinating to read!) and the endearing main characters who you'll immediately root for and got invested in.WINNER OF THE IAFA CRAWFORD AWARD • WINNER OF THE BRITISH FANTASY AWARD • SHORTLISTED FOR THE URSULA K. LE GUIN AWARD • SHORTLISTED FOR THE IGNYTE AWARD

Two warriors shepherd an ancient god across a broken land to end the tyrannical reign of a royal family in this epic fantasy from the author of The Vanished Birds. According to Chicago Review of Books, there are three layers to the story. The story of Keema and Jun serves as the novel's core and is a fantasy adventure. This story is explicitly told to "you", observing the story in the Inverted Theater. In the Inverted Theater, the story is told through dance, and parts are heard from ghosts or spirits. Interjections feel like "stage directions, or exclamations, or internal monologue." Additionally, the narrative often expands from the primary narrator of each section to allow other characters to speak directly, much like a Greek chorus. [1] Reception edit The Spear Cuts Through Water was everything I wanted it to be in more. I went in knowing next to nothing about the plot and that is definitely the reading experience I recommend. I am in awe of this book and there is no way that I can accurately capture my feelings in a review but I will do my best. We’re hit with the quote above at a point in the story where the narrator’s grandmother tells it to him and it accurately pierces the core of the story. We not only have a compelling and violent love story between the two protagonists but also see how love drives people’s actions, good and bad, and serves as a ray of hope. It’s brilliant how most of the characters are motivated by their want or scorn for love and Jimenez’s mind portrays the consequences for both in a fabulous way. The story alternates between first, second, and third person narration. In the second-person sections, the reader is cast as Araya's descendant and current keeper of the spear. [2]This book is told in a very strange way, with alternating omniscient second person and omniscient third person narration constantly interrupted by first person interjections from just about every side character that the principal players encounter, including some very obscure ones like the thoughts of the models from when a painting that the main characters are viewing. There's an in-story reason for this, and it's an interesting concept, but it didn't work for me at all. Gorgeously written, The Spear Cuts Through Water is unlike anything I’ve ever read before. It is a fable, a dream world, a love story, and a meditation on the nature of humanity all wrapped into one. Simon Jimenez has written the rare kind of book that changes the way you see the world, that makes you pause and appreciate the beauty in every small moment of life and, even, death.” —Evelyn Skye, New York Times bestselling author of The Crown’s Game First, it begins with an unnamed character (these parts narrated in second person). This person gets introduced to the cruel, brutal world Simon Jimenez created, through the stories of their Lola (do say it as loh-la, not low-la). Like Jimenez’s previous novel, this book starts as compelling as ever. Other books you’d describe as a movie playing in your head, but this one was a theater play. It was a performance through and through; it starts with the introduction of an Inverted Theater after all. A theater for dreamers, where the story of the two warriors gets acted out. And as it begins, the prose seems to follow a rhythm, seems to flow in tandem with the drumbeats in that theater. Echoes from a distant past? This story is. Explicitly. Designs for a present? This story is, not so explicitly though. It's decolonization writ personal; it's the massive machinery of culture caught in the tsunami of rage arising from inequality. It's deep, and very dark, and shot through with the awful truth of violence. It's just like, in other words, the real world around you.

Not recommended to: those who hate omniscient narrative style or get easily confused, anyone sensitive to violence and torture Through the unnamed narrator we witness the main storyline, about two warriors Jun, the grandson of the emperor and Keema, the disabled guard, who are roped into a quest to rescue a god from The Moon Throne, the tyrannical rulers of their land. With folklore woven effortlessly into the magic, action and setting of the story, The Spear Cuts Through Water has all elements of a fantasy world but the kind that’s surreal and unhinged in all those aspects. And a violent kind too, as the book definitely has gory themes but they perfectly fit into the characterization and world of the novel. Lyrical, evocative, part poem, part prose—not to be missed by anyone, especially fans of historical fantasy and folktale. And I hated almost every second of it. I had seen what happened to all of those sons I gave birth to. How they were molded by the world they had been given, for even the man who had started it all did not know why he made the choices he did. It is all a spiral that feeds into itself with the gathering weight at the center that we call Power.The beginning was unengaging, but then, beginnings often are, especially when I’m in no particular mood. I thought it’ll get easier and hook me eventually, but it never did. I was never particularly confused by what was going on, I’m used to confusing literary fantasy and going with the flow, but the main plot was incredibly boring until about 70% in and mediocre from there on, and the opaqueness of the style got in the way of even remotely connecting to the characters. The almost-grimdark level of graphic violence (though the book is, ultimately, in no way nihilistic) didn’t help my enjoyment either. A little on that in spoiler tags: It's this way because the narration is actually a magical play being put on in perpetual memorium of the forgotten warriors who sacrificed everything to save the world. But not entirely, because there are bits and pieces that are the actual Jun and Keema, because they discuss the play being performed elsewhere (or is that in the play too in some sort of Inception-scenario?). The interjections are coming from the players doing the bit parts to give them some character. There's also extended periods with the First and Second Terror to make sure that the audience understands exactly how they are monsters, and with the Third Terror, who while a monster in a more literal sense then his brothers, actually turns out to be somewhat pitiable.

Table of Contents

This is a book where time stretches and retracts, where all POVs (1st, 2nd & 3rd) and tenses (past, present & future) hopscotch with each other. You go with the flow, following the threads until you realize what a beautiful, intricate tapestry they've been weaving all along. The Spear Cuts Through Water is written in a unique narrative style that mimics oral storytelling. This structure is executed beautifully and really elevates the story. Multiple perspectives and times are woven together to create an intricate tapestry of love, sacrifice, power, and godhood. I could write a thesis on the way Jimenez plays with storytelling, perspective, and time in this novel. But I fear that giving any more details would spoil some of the incredible reveals. Every single detail of this story is important and the twists are some of the most satisfying reveals I have ever read. The Spear Cuts Through Water really appealed to my love of The Fifth Season and Harrow the Ninth. Finally, finally, after nearly two weeks of struggling, I am done with this book. I don’t think I’ve ever had such complicated feelings before, or struggled as much with a book I couldn’t help but see as excellent in many ways. I wonder if perhaps I might have loved it in another mood and another time, if it’s me or the book, but in the end, it’s no use. FINALIST for the second annual Ursula K. LeGuin Prize for Fiction. Winners were announced on her birthday, 21 October, last year, so might be again this year, but no formal announcement of that was made that I found.