Fathers leave in all sorts of ways. Some of them leave in the dark. Some leave only in their heads, while their bodies remain, staring at the world around them forever distantly. Others fade out over time, like an old photo rubbed raw.
page 190, The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez
​
​Many, gone in an instant.
Table of Contents
Preamble
This week I return to another book that has been in my to-be-read pile for years. I first heard about The Spear Cuts Through Water two or three years from one of the booktubers I watched, most likely cari can read. I vaguely remember hearing that this book is Weird, in the sense that it is written in a way that is different from other books in style and form.
So when the library hold for this arrived, I prepared myself for a book that was potentially going to be another did-not-finish due to its unusual narrative and writing style. I don’t always gel well with what I would call “experimental” or non-standard writing styles but more recently reading Piranesi gave me a taste for the kind of weird I might actually enjoy.
First impressions of the book’s physical form – the cover artist Simón Prades did a fantastic job with the front cover. That cover art is gorgeous.
Now, let’s get into the book itself.
The Book
Every once in a while I read a book that makes me go “what the fuck did I just read?” – sometimes it is a compliment, sometimes it is an insult. The Spear Cuts Through Water is the former. Ostensibly the premise of the book is that one of two warriors go on a grand adventure in an effort to end the reign of a tyrannical royal family. On the surface this is the kind of high stakes one would expect from a epic fantasy novel.
Underneath the epic fantasy trappings lies a story unlike any I have read before. The first thing I noticed is the book’s use of the second person perspective. That by itself is a rare thing to see in fiction. The book switches between second person perspective and a more standard first/third person perspective and when it does it also switches timelines.
The second person perspective is an unnamed person far into the future watching the events of the story happen in a magical dream-like place called the Inverted Theater. The actions of the various characters in this story a stage play. You wonder if you actually enjoy stage plays more than you thought you did. The book tells you at the beginning that this is a love story. You wonder just how this is going to be a love story.
This is a love story to the blade-dented bone.
page 94, ibid
A lot happens on the journey that our two main characters – Jun and Keema – embark on. The aspect I enjoyed the most was the slow burn relationship development between them. The way their love for each other builds throughout the narrative makes this quite the love story indeed. Not content with one love story, there is also the love story of the two gods, the Moon and the Water that form the base of this narrative.
I liked the characters here, Jun and Keema get the majority of the character development and they are both complex and interesting characters. The villains of this story, the three Terrors are truly all terrifying in very different ways. The character of the ancient escaped goddess the Moon was perhaps the most intriguing. I have never seen an ancient god depicted in this way – frail, their powers waning; this is a world where the gods are powerful but not infallible.
The descriptor that keeps coming to me when I think of this book is – slippery. This book plays fast and loose with timelines, perspectives, inner monologue vs external dialogue in a way that makes this book hard to get a grasp on. Throughout my reading, my grip on the narrative was tenuous at best. It was a a challenge to read at times but also an oddly exhilarating feeling.
I was constantly pleasantly surprised by how the story unfolded. This was not a book where I could predict anything and that was a breath of fresh air. The description of this book on Storygraph says that is “like nothing you’ve ever read before” and that is very much an accurate description of this book for me.
Conclusions
The Spear Cuts Through Water is the most unique fiction I’ve read this year. It was an epic saga with well developed characters, a heart warming love story filled with yearning, terrifying villains and high stakes. It is also the most challenging fiction I’ve read this year with its unusual narrative style, blending perspectives, timelines and dialogue into a hard to swallow smoothie.
As such, I think only a small subset of fantasy readers will enjoy this book, someone who is tired of the same old fantasy tropes in their fantasy reading, someone who wants something unpredictable and who doesn’t mind a challenging read. If you are that reader, I I think you will enjoy your journey.
That is all from me this time, see y’all in the next one.
P.S – This is your irregular reminder that if you would like to follow what I am reading on any given week, you can find me on Storygraph here.
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