Thursday, October 27, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez

 



Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on August 30, 2022 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.

Simon Jimenez burst onto the SciFi/Fantasy scene with 2020's The Vanished Birds, which was an utterly fascinating book, even as it was kind of a bit more in the literary direction than my usual read. The story followed a number of characters who interacted with a mysterious boy, and dealt with the choices and sacrifices those people made for their professional and personal lives, among other themes, and featured some really great character work, even if its ending felt a bit rushed and the antagonist just felt kind of there. It was a really well done and interesting novel, especially for a first novel, which made me very eager to get to Jimenez' second novel, The Spear Cuts Through Water.

And The Spear Cuts Through Water is honestly my book of 2022 so far, even as it is a very very different kind of novel than The Vanished Birds. Told with phenomenal prose as if the story is a stage play of the past shown in a dream-like magical theatre (to an unnamed but not undefined narrator), The Spear Cuts Through Water is a love story, a quest story, a story of memory and who we are, of guilt and redemption, and more. It's a beautifully told story that had me gripped from its very beginning and while it takes its time getting to its main two protagonists, it never felt slow or tiring...and once it got to the protagonists, I fell slowly but deeply in love with them. This is going to be a difficult review to write because of the type of novel this is, but let's just be clear up front, this novel is fantastic and I cannot recommend more highly that you give it a try.


-----------------------------------------------Plot Summary----------------------------------------------------
Years ago, your Lola told you about the Inverted Theater, the product of the love between the Moon and the Water, which can only be reached through dreams, when the Theater issues its one and only invite during a person's lifetime. Now that invite is yours and you visit the Theater in a dream, where you are shown a story you vaguely remember your Lola telling you about long ago, a story about the Old Country, a story involving the Spear that you find yourself holding in your hands, that you know only as a family heirloom hung on the family wall.

The story features the legendary five days in which the all powerful Emperor, the Smiling Sun, blessed with the powers of the Moon, planned to make a pilgramage through the Country before taking a voyage towards immortality.

But Fate had other plans, and soon the Emperor is gone and the Moon escaped with the help of two young men - one covered in a mask and one lacking an arm - and on the run from the Emperor's three powerful Moon-blessed sons: the Three Terrors.

This is the story of these two young men, the Spear one of them carries, the Moon they flee with, and the Water who yearns for her, as the age of the Emperor comes to an end and a new era is born from their actions......
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The Spear Cuts Through Water is told in a fascinating way, with the story weaving in and out of the framing device - a person from the industrial-era future of this world seeing the story in a dream theater of a more fantasy/medieval (almost Asian inspired?) past - from section to section.  The prose features each chapter broken up into small sections, with each section introduced by the last few words of the last section blown up and bolded into a new section header, so that each section flows naturally from one part to the next.  And within each section the story is sometimes told in second person, or with first person plural "we" narrators occasionally serving as a Greek Chorus, but somehow none of this ever becomes confusing and the prose is just tremendous to read.*

*I say this, but one friend of mine who has Aphantasia found this difficult at the start to get into.  I have issues myself visualizing but do not think I have Aphantasia (even as I usually dislike descriptive prose), and found the prose did work for me and was more character based than descriptive based*

And so it leads to a fantasy story that is large in scope and yet at the same time quite small in its scope, as its two lead characters, Jun and Keema of the Daware Tribe, venture forth, first coincidentally on the same path as Jun tries to help the Moon/Old-Lady escape and Keema tries to fulfill his oath to take the Spear to its intended recipient. The two characters are excellently done, both with mysteries in their past that matter to some extent (and don't to others) which are revealed slowly, and their growing relationship, which turns into something more (M/M romance) is really really well done, culminating in one...not quite typical sex scene..but one that is quite spectacular. And the two are great characters on their own as they each struggle with their own vows and goals: Jun to redeem himself for what he sees as unforgivable atrocities in his past, and Keema to make something of himself by fulfilling the vows he made to those who didn't make it. And between the two of them, their eventual vow to help the Old Lady/Moon escape and end the nightmares her power caused through her sons the Three Terrors.

The story takes these two main characters through a world that is filled to the brim with people and factions and beings that are all incredibly well done and deep, like villagers who live among the water who wish for a chance to strike at freedom, or turtles that form a magical communication net, and noble merchant factions who wish to make their own claim at power, etc. etc. It's a world that feels tremendously real and painted, helped by the gorgeous prose, and even the parts talking about the industrial future, where war is waged for who knows what reason and families are torn apart by it, work well as a contrast. The result is a story that uses its quest to touch themes of who we are, how our pasts, our families and heritage, and choices define us, and where we can go from there, and what we all deserve as a result. And it's all done so well up until the ending that is just perfect - maybe a bit too easy, but perfect nonetheless.

It's just a tremendous novel, both in character and in prose, and I cannot recommend it more highly.   


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