The Spear Cuts Through Water
by Simon Jimenez
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"Two warriors shepherd an ancient god across a broken land to end the tyrannical reign of a royal family in this new epic fantasy from the author of The Vanished Birds"--Tags
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Corinne-pixel Both employ storytelling and folktale to create a similar vibe
Member Reviews
Real Rating: 4.75* of five, rounded up for ambition and talent rewarding purposes
The Publisher Says: Two warriors shepherd an ancient god across a broken land to end the tyrannical reign of a royal family in this new epic fantasy from the author of The Vanished Birds.
The people suffer under the centuries-long rule of the Moon Throne. The royal family—the despotic emperor and his monstrous sons, the Three Terrors—hold the countryside in their choking grip. They bleed the land and oppress the citizens with the frightful powers they inherited from the god locked under their palace.
But that god cannot be contained forever.
With the aid of Jun, a guard broken by his guilt-stricken past, and Keema, an outcast fighting for his future, the show more god escapes from her royal captivity and flees from her own children, the triplet Terrors who would drag her back to her unholy prison. And so it is that she embarks with her young companions on a five-day pilgrimage in search of freedom—and a way to end the Moon Throne forever. The journey ahead will be more dangerous than any of them could have imagined.
Both a sweeping adventure story and an intimate exploration of identity, legacy, and belonging, The Spear Cuts Through Water is an ambitious and profound saga that will transport and transform you—and is like nothing you’ve ever read before.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
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.
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 roles we accept, and even eagerly seek, aren't unique to us. I think Jung was by far the closest to grasping the eternal truth when he posited archetypes, those massively misunderstood and mischaracterized patterns of being. But each of us seems to seek a pattern, a focus of individuation, and that seems or feels to us and to others as an inevitable end-point of a life-long search. Is it? It is for Jun and for Keema, whose story this (ultimately) is.
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.
Jun and Keema, the men whose love animates the story from beginning to end, aren't going to do the wild thing for your amusement. They are going to manifest for you the eternal story of accepting the love patiently offered you, in spite of believing you're not worthy of it. If you believe you're not worthy, you aren't; because the offering is not to you, but to the one you will become with the gift accepted.
That's not a truth I expected to see made so plain in a fantasy novel. A lot gets heaped on all the players in this astoundingly violent tale. It's shocking what hatred, spurned love, multivalent deprivation will drive a person to enact on the world. It's far and away the hardest of life's lessons to see that without one's own rage obscuring the real source of the problem. Othering and disempowering might be the means to gaining temporary, temporal acquiescence. They do nothing to improve the long-term odds of success for those who Other, who disempower, who use their own weapons against those they need to succeed. Those who use the weapon forget the other edge, the power of the spirit.
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.
Never forget that. Who lives by the sword, dies by it as readily.
But Jun? His Keema keeps him safe from the spear. In spite of everything they've seen, they've been to and for and against each other, Keema is the one whose patient offering of love never wavers even when it morphs. That's how you know it's the love Jun needs, and that's how Jun finally knows he is not Jun, but Keema's Jun.
No one who has the patience, the fortitude not to check out of its reality back into ours, to read this uniquely told story will leave it the same person as they entered it. That's the best thing I can thnk of to say about a story. show less
The Publisher Says: Two warriors shepherd an ancient god across a broken land to end the tyrannical reign of a royal family in this new epic fantasy from the author of The Vanished Birds.
The people suffer under the centuries-long rule of the Moon Throne. The royal family—the despotic emperor and his monstrous sons, the Three Terrors—hold the countryside in their choking grip. They bleed the land and oppress the citizens with the frightful powers they inherited from the god locked under their palace.
But that god cannot be contained forever.
With the aid of Jun, a guard broken by his guilt-stricken past, and Keema, an outcast fighting for his future, the show more god escapes from her royal captivity and flees from her own children, the triplet Terrors who would drag her back to her unholy prison. And so it is that she embarks with her young companions on a five-day pilgrimage in search of freedom—and a way to end the Moon Throne forever. The journey ahead will be more dangerous than any of them could have imagined.
Both a sweeping adventure story and an intimate exploration of identity, legacy, and belonging, The Spear Cuts Through Water is an ambitious and profound saga that will transport and transform you—and is like nothing you’ve ever read before.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
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.
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 roles we accept, and even eagerly seek, aren't unique to us. I think Jung was by far the closest to grasping the eternal truth when he posited archetypes, those massively misunderstood and mischaracterized patterns of being. But each of us seems to seek a pattern, a focus of individuation, and that seems or feels to us and to others as an inevitable end-point of a life-long search. Is it? It is for Jun and for Keema, whose story this (ultimately) is.
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.
Jun and Keema, the men whose love animates the story from beginning to end, aren't going to do the wild thing for your amusement. They are going to manifest for you the eternal story of accepting the love patiently offered you, in spite of believing you're not worthy of it. If you believe you're not worthy, you aren't; because the offering is not to you, but to the one you will become with the gift accepted.
That's not a truth I expected to see made so plain in a fantasy novel. A lot gets heaped on all the players in this astoundingly violent tale. It's shocking what hatred, spurned love, multivalent deprivation will drive a person to enact on the world. It's far and away the hardest of life's lessons to see that without one's own rage obscuring the real source of the problem. Othering and disempowering might be the means to gaining temporary, temporal acquiescence. They do nothing to improve the long-term odds of success for those who Other, who disempower, who use their own weapons against those they need to succeed. Those who use the weapon forget the other edge, the power of the spirit.
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.
Never forget that. Who lives by the sword, dies by it as readily.
But Jun? His Keema keeps him safe from the spear. In spite of everything they've seen, they've been to and for and against each other, Keema is the one whose patient offering of love never wavers even when it morphs. That's how you know it's the love Jun needs, and that's how Jun finally knows he is not Jun, but Keema's Jun.
No one who has the patience, the fortitude not to check out of its reality back into ours, to read this uniquely told story will leave it the same person as they entered it. That's the best thing I can thnk of to say about a story. show less
A lyrical fantasy set in a world that has the richness of folklore and the mystic symbolism of dreams. There are, in fact, worlds within worlds and dreams within dreams. A man with a family heirloom, an ancient spear, dreams of the Inverted Theater of the Moon and Water that his lola told him about in her stories of the Old Country. And in his dream theater, the story of his ancestors and the spear is played out. In this dream play, Keema of the Daware Tribe makes an oath to deliver a spear across the country and finds himself accompanying a warrior, the grandson of the despotic Eighth Emperor, as he helps the Moon goddess escape the emperor’s prison. They encounter a lot of cruelty, sadism, and violence along this quest, but also a show more quiet yearning for love and beauty. There are plenty of greedy, selfish, and wicked people, but also ordinary people just trying to get by, and one or two kind or noble people. It is beautiful, both an epic quest and an intimate personal story.
The art on the cover and endsheets of the hardcover is lovely, and even the acknowledgments at the end were sweet and fitting. show less
The art on the cover and endsheets of the hardcover is lovely, and even the acknowledgments at the end were sweet and fitting. show less
Holy. Shit.
That was incredible!
The Spear Cuts Through Water masterfully upends the fantasy quest in a triply layered story. From the outside in, a second person narrator grows up the child of a cloth merchant in a port city of propaganda posters, radio, an enduring war, and his grandmother's stories of the old country. In the next layer, it is a dream of the Inverted Theater, the place of mythmaking where the cast are the children of the Water and the Moon. And in the inner most story, it is that myth, of Keema of the Daware Tribe and Jun, striking out for good in a five day journey through a land gripped by evil.
In the Old Country, the people are oppressed by the magically gifted Emperor and his children, the Three Terrors. The land show more bakes under drought and festers with misrule. Soon, the Emperor plans a five day journey from his palace to the eastern Divine City, there to depart in a grand fleet and seek immortality. Of course, it all goes terribly wrong, and the emperor will never make that journey.
Instead, Keema and Jun must venture forth, dodging Terrors, their bloody pasts, and more mundane hazards, to complete a delivery. Jun is carrying a stolen goddess, who once blessed the emperor's line and now seeks to undo that action, Keema has a spear to delivery to a soldier in a doomed rebellion, and they are dragging a deathly ill telepathic tortoise.
The writing, characterization, and worldbuilding is lush, gorgeous, fecund. This book is a totality of imagination and style, a love story down to its dented bones (to steal a quote). I can't praise it highly enough.
Read it. show less
That was incredible!
The Spear Cuts Through Water masterfully upends the fantasy quest in a triply layered story. From the outside in, a second person narrator grows up the child of a cloth merchant in a port city of propaganda posters, radio, an enduring war, and his grandmother's stories of the old country. In the next layer, it is a dream of the Inverted Theater, the place of mythmaking where the cast are the children of the Water and the Moon. And in the inner most story, it is that myth, of Keema of the Daware Tribe and Jun, striking out for good in a five day journey through a land gripped by evil.
In the Old Country, the people are oppressed by the magically gifted Emperor and his children, the Three Terrors. The land show more bakes under drought and festers with misrule. Soon, the Emperor plans a five day journey from his palace to the eastern Divine City, there to depart in a grand fleet and seek immortality. Of course, it all goes terribly wrong, and the emperor will never make that journey.
Instead, Keema and Jun must venture forth, dodging Terrors, their bloody pasts, and more mundane hazards, to complete a delivery. Jun is carrying a stolen goddess, who once blessed the emperor's line and now seeks to undo that action, Keema has a spear to delivery to a soldier in a doomed rebellion, and they are dragging a deathly ill telepathic tortoise.
The writing, characterization, and worldbuilding is lush, gorgeous, fecund. This book is a totality of imagination and style, a love story down to its dented bones (to steal a quote). I can't praise it highly enough.
Read it. show less
I absolutely loved [b:The Spear Cuts Through Water|55868456|The Spear Cuts Through Water|Simon Jimenez|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1622813641l/55868456._SY75_.jpg|87081124] and expect it'll be one of my favourite novels of 2024. I can't remember who recommended it to me, but if it was you then many thanks! I was gripped from the very start by the vivid and original narrative style, which has a mythological air, emphatic section headings, and incorporates the thoughts of bystanders:
This style is positively sumptuous and has a lovely rhythm, which is sustained throughout. The tempo of the plot is also brilliantly done, with events taking place over five tumultuous days and building to a truly epic denouement. The worldbuilding combines fascinatingly horrible magic, clever political economy, and delightful details like the network of psychic tortoises both exploited and used as tools of exploitation. The main protagonists are two young men with very different trauma and a corpse that hasn't stopped moving yet. All three are original and endearing creations. The other characters are likewise memorable and vivid. There is a lot of brutal violence, including cannibalism, but it's in service of the plot rather than being gratuitous. The impact of violence on victims and perpetrators is interrogated cleverly. There is also a sweet and awkward love story to lighten what could have been a grim and dark novel. This ambitious combination of elements is executed with panache. I haven't enjoyed a speculative novel as much since [b:The Actual Star|56304414|The Actual Star|Monica Byrne|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1618279333l/56304414._SX50_.jpg|86058464]. I highly recommend it and plan to track down Jiminez' other novel [b:The Vanished Birds|45422268|The Vanished Birds|Simon Jimenez|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1562699959l/45422268._SY75_.jpg|70173100]. show less
The country shivered.show more
It was as though a finger had been run down the spine of the land of the moonless night. From the western mountains this shiver ran, all the way to the eastern shore. Not one of us escaped its
chill. It was a collective feeling, come over by all, from the farmers of the Yinn terrace lands to the dock workers in the Divine City. When it reached us, we woke up with a startle, thinking that the world was ending; that our bodies had finished their time on this Earth, and this shiver was the release of our spirit to the Sleeping Sea. The cry of woken babies scored this night of change. The gambling games in the pleasure barges put on pause as the old men and women playing dice now rubbed their arms, warming the small hairs that pricked up from some unknown fright. The fishermen of the Thousand Rivers peered out their boarded windows to perhaps catch sight of the culprit of this bodily premonition, a nightmare spirit perhaps, come to visit them from the water and sated only by the fresh salt tears of the young. But we saw nothing and no one. We had no explanation for the trembling of our body, which lasted for but one soul-freezing moment. [...]
The world had changed. The apes sojourning through the dark forest beyond the torchlight of man held one another as the shiver came and went; their eyes shining in the dark as they understood this portent; the days of great upheaval that lay ahead of them.
This style is positively sumptuous and has a lovely rhythm, which is sustained throughout. The tempo of the plot is also brilliantly done, with events taking place over five tumultuous days and building to a truly epic denouement. The worldbuilding combines fascinatingly horrible magic, clever political economy, and delightful details like the network of psychic tortoises both exploited and used as tools of exploitation. The main protagonists are two young men with very different trauma and a corpse that hasn't stopped moving yet. All three are original and endearing creations. The other characters are likewise memorable and vivid. There is a lot of brutal violence, including cannibalism, but it's in service of the plot rather than being gratuitous. The impact of violence on victims and perpetrators is interrogated cleverly. There is also a sweet and awkward love story to lighten what could have been a grim and dark novel. This ambitious combination of elements is executed with panache. I haven't enjoyed a speculative novel as much since [b:The Actual Star|56304414|The Actual Star|Monica Byrne|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1618279333l/56304414._SX50_.jpg|86058464]. I highly recommend it and plan to track down Jiminez' other novel [b:The Vanished Birds|45422268|The Vanished Birds|Simon Jimenez|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1562699959l/45422268._SY75_.jpg|70173100]. show less
Selten hat mich eine Erzählperspektive so kalt erwischt, und ich meine das als Lob. Jimenez baut eine Rahmenhandlung, die einen mitten ins Geschehen zerrt und zugleich wie ein mündlich weitergegebener Mythos klingt. Darunter eine Geschichte über Macht, Familie und den Preis von Loyalität, die nie bequem wird. Anstrengend im besten Sinn, und am Ende größer als die Summe seiner Kapitel.
I can't recommend this book enough to anyone who enjoys the fantasy genre - amazing worldbuilding, brilliant characters, gripping plot, and everything presented through a novel blending of oral history, theater, and a classic third-person-omniscient POV. Some of the book is given in the second person, and while it can be difficult to pull off, with the sheer strength of the opening paragraph I was immediately drawn into the viewpoint character's shoes. Despite the differences in our positions, I found myself more recognizing the similarities between us and the way we have felt; I also saw parts of myself in Jun, though he had much more horrible and bloody reasons to feel guilty than I.
I absolutely fell in love with this story, and am show more sad to be through with it - though, I am glad I will remember it, and may come back to it in future.
It's a love story, down to the blade-dented bone. And, oddly enough, I think it's true what the book said of the viewpoint character - the story is what I needed, right now. Four and a half stars. show less
I absolutely fell in love with this story, and am show more sad to be through with it - though, I am glad I will remember it, and may come back to it in future.
It's a love story, down to the blade-dented bone. And, oddly enough, I think it's true what the book said of the viewpoint character - the story is what I needed, right now. Four and a half stars. show less
This story starts with a frame story of a man dreaming himself into the Inverted Theater, which his lola told him stories about when he was a child. In the theater, the actors play out the story of the man's ancestors. In a kingdom suffering under the rule of the emperor and his three sons, Keema of the Daware tribe vows to deliver a spear to a soldier across the country. He ends up travelling with Jun, the youngest son of the emperor, who has betrayed his father and is working to help the Moon goddess escape her years-long imprisonment. As they travel together, Keema and Jun will face countless obstacles, see beautiful and horrible things, and make impossible decisions.
The structure and writing of this book are ambitious and admirable. show more The prose is beautiful and dreamlike, suitable for the Inverted Theater, and the world is unlike any other I can think of in a fantasy novel. The characters are well-drawn and interesting. Despite the technical proficiency and lovely prose, I felt like I was somewhat distant from the story, and found it a little difficult to connect. It was all very well done, but I was never fully drawn in and found it difficult to read too much at a time even though I was reading while on vacation and had plenty of time and attention to spare. I did find the tortoises fascinating and horrifying. I don't think I would jump to read more by Jimenez, but overall I am glad I read this one. 4 stars. show less
The structure and writing of this book are ambitious and admirable. show more The prose is beautiful and dreamlike, suitable for the Inverted Theater, and the world is unlike any other I can think of in a fantasy novel. The characters are well-drawn and interesting. Despite the technical proficiency and lovely prose, I felt like I was somewhat distant from the story, and found it a little difficult to connect. It was all very well done, but I was never fully drawn in and found it difficult to read too much at a time even though I was reading while on vacation and had plenty of time and attention to spare. I did find the tortoises fascinating and horrifying. I don't think I would jump to read more by Jimenez, but overall I am glad I read this one. 4 stars. show less
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- Canonical title
- The Spear Cuts Through Water
- Original publication date
- 2022-08-30
- Dedication
- This one's for me.
- First words
- Before you arrive, you remember your lola, smoking.
- Quotations
- But the image of the embrace would remain. It would become a thing he could return to in his mind when he pleased, elaborating on the details, giving life to the still image, and in this way it would become his, for this was ... (show all)the fate of all fantasy.
The creature pocketed the memory. The quiet river and the rolling clouds and the tall yellow grass. It pocketed the sweet smell and the light snoring of the small humans who flanked its shell. It pocketed the fiery sun and th... (show all)e green-gray water and the sound of directionless birdsong. Turned it into a memory worth keeping. And it promised itself that one day, when it was safe to, it would share with its brethren this memory of a beautiful morning; without chains, or hungry heart.
…the young men of your town, who hung out on street corners or balconies with cigarettes in their lips, their squints so performatively cynical it circled back around to sweetly earnest, though you still hurried past them o... (show all)n your way home. - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)And this moonlit body, bowing to you in thanks.
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