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A review by mburnamfink
The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez
5.0
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 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.
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 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.