The Spear Cuts Through Water: A Novel

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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. 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 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.

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. Okay, so this book is really hard to talk about, so bear with me. Nominally, this is a book about a pair of fugitive young men who are tasked with shepherding a dead god (who still talks) across a fantasy landscape filled with obstacles, and it is also a love story. But that very brief summary in no way conveys the actual *experience* of reading this one. The style it's written in, aside from the actual prose, is pretty experimental and a little hard to get ahold of at first. But once you do, it is so incredibly effective at playing on your emotions and telling the story in a way that makes your brain light up in pleasure. Jimenez structures his story like a matryoshka doll, nesting one story in another, in another. And the way he navigates between them is like this fluid little magical dance. I don't even know what that means, but it's what came out as I was typing this, and it seems right. The Spear Cuts Through Water is remarkably rich. . . . This novel is an astonishing feat, one that lovers of sophisticated story won’t want to miss.” —Chicago Review of Books This is a story with many layers. It’s a story of a goddess fallen from the sky trying to right the wrongs she caused. It is the mythical story of two young men and their quests. It is the story of the person invited to the Inverted Theater to witness and then forget it. It is ambitious and experimental and beautifully told, masterfully intertwining first, second, and third person POV. It attempts to touch on themes of of redemption and identity and imperialism and family. It should have been just up my alley. But the past hungers for them, and when it catches up, it threatens to tear this makeshift family apart.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. The dying Moon goddess enlists two young warriors to kill her tyrannical sons and return her bones to the sea. thanks to the publisher for granting my (first ever) wish on NetGalley! i received an ARC in exchange for an honest review. 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. 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.

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.trigger + content warnings: violence, gore, death, torture, grief depiction, depression depiction, loss of a loved one, mentions of loss of children, captivity, vomit, talk of defecation, ableist language (negative light), homophobia in past, blood, animal deaths, mentions of suicide, suicide ideations, intrusive thoughts, war themes, colonization, fire, cannibalism, captivity 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.