Simon Jimenez’s The Spear Cuts Through Water is a fantasy novel that lives up to the often trotted-out cliche of “transcending genres”.
The fall of a kingdom. A story told in a magical place of dreams and memories. This is your one chance to find out the true story your grandmother, your lola, has told you in fragments. This is the story of the Spear that has sat in your house for generations. This is a story of your history, your paternity. This is a love story.
This is a review of The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez that you are reading.
The framing device for this story is, indeed, the story of you, member of this family, learning the story of the titular spear, and the fall of a kingdom across the sea. That framing device, like many things in this novel, wavers between crystal clarity and indistinctness. You are listening to your grandmother tell some of the story, and then you are in the Inverted Theater, a dreamscape where the events of the movie are being enacted for the dreamer. (I was reminded, reader, of the visual device used in the movie The Adventures of Baron Munchausen throughout these proceedings, and perhaps you will be too ).
Perspective, point of view and what this story really is are at the heart of the book and what it is trying to accomplish, on top of a strong fantasy story and tale. The story and tale, again, made me reach for cinematic metaphors. In this case, given the complicated politics, the strong and vibrant characters, and the visuals signaled through the movie, my mind went to the films of Zhang Yimou, particularly Curse of the Golden Flower. We have a seemingly unbeatable Emperor, sons who are literally called “The Terrors”, an Empress who is locked away, and a culture and name taxonomy that invoked, for me, Dynastic China.
The novel would be a strong and solid work of fiction given its strong characters, evocative setting, and its plot, on its base. The Emperor is journeying to the coast, and beyond, and his progress and passage is seen by many as an opportunity. Noble families scheme, the three Terrors are moving and just WHAT is the Empress up to, imprisoned as she is? Add in sentient Tortoises, and more, and it’s a rich and vibrant world. It will not be a surprise that the Moon Dynasty of the Emperor is in for some rough times, and those caught in those rough times have to make often difficult choices in order to fulfill promises made, and the bindings and strictures of their own heart. If the novel was just this, it would be an above average, well written fantasy novel. However, I tell you, reader, I ate it up with a spoon.
But the novel reaches for much more than this. I already mentioned the framing device, of you, member of a family now living across the sea, which improbably has the titular spear that shows up in the narrative that your lola, and later, the Inverted Theater dreamspace, are relating the story of. But we see time pass in the house, as your family changes, and falls, and the sense of time and when things really are happening in the framing device become a little unclear, deliberately.
But the novel goes beyond that. The novel extends that second-person addressing of you to encompass a wide range of look-ins on points of view throughout the book. There is a lot of switching of point of view to get someone’s intimate perspective on an event or action we just witnessed. These switches are usually brief, but they make the events and actions always multisided, multivalent, and add to the intricacy of the novel. While in a novel, usually, a story is a much simpler thing than in the real world, by the use of these switches of point of view, by this parallax that Jimenez pulls off again and again, by the very nature of the framing devices, this is a novel that is about and engages with how stories are told. It engages with why stories are told, and what is told, and what remains outside of its bonds. This reminds me of R.R. Virdi’s The First Binding , which is all about the stories that make up who we are.
And the language in this book! I think I already hinted that by the visuals that this novel invoked in me, but the exquisite use of language goes beyond cinematic visuals of the world. It goes to the characters, the careful way characters are rendered distinct, especially with aforementioned “headhopping”. The audiobook of this novel just flows into your ear and you are never lost as to who (or what) is speaking, which is extremely important given the style of this novel.
Given the richness of this novel, though, this is a novel that both begs for you to pull through, to continue on the story and stories, and also, like a vivid sunset, like a rich chocolate cake, like the look in the eyes of someone you love, it is a novel that you want to pause and savor and fill yourself with. This would not be for me a novel I could run on endlessly on a road trip, because it would be like an overdose of sensation and evocation while driving, I’d want to stop time and again and reflect and imagine and immerse myself in what I just heard.
The thrust of the novel seems to make explicit something that we all know implicitly: The present, who and what we are, shapes, influences and molds the past of the stories we tell and how we absorb stories of the past. Just as those stories shape, alter, evolve us, we in ourselves change those stories, The Theatre framework engages with both sides of this dynamic. And yes, to quote the novel itself, “this is a love story to its blade-dented bone”. I don’t want to say much about it, this being a case of quaerendo invenietis (seek and you shall find) except to say that it is touching, queer, and extremely well done. It tugged at my heart.
So, yes, this is a fantasy novel, but this is a novel that engages with the meaning of love, the nature of stories and how they are told, and what those stories mean to us as people and what those stories do when we engage with them. It is a story in a fantastic land across the sea, and a long time ago, and yet for you the reader, the protagonist, it is the spear that is in your hand. It is what has shaped and made you what you are, even if you didn’t know it.
Had I read this in 2022, when it came out, more fool me, The Spear Cuts Through Water would have made my Hugo nomination ballot. It is not a perfect novel, and my own sensibilities did not like the lingering over cigarettes and smoking, and I found myself affected by the depictions of cannibalism in the novel. But these are minor problems, in a strong and unique work that is a fantasy novel, and so much more.
