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 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. ( )

This book was difficult to get into and to read, mostly due to the style of writing, but it was novel and had a good story overall. Many of the characters seemed a bit thin. ( )

I had to read the Wikipedia plot summary of this to understand what I had read once I finished. The story is very engrossing, and even though in the moment I could follow the action, there are so many layers to the story that I couldn't quite connect them. This is an amazing story of love and war in a fantastical land, and it's very well written. I think a re-read would help make sense of the use of every first, second, and third person voices. ( )

My mind has been blown by The Spear Cuts Theough Water. This is one of the most incredible novels I have read in a very long time. Six out of five stars.

This is a book that, superficially, tells the tale of two young warriors, who are given the task of carrying a spear through a mythical land, with the goal of giving it to a soldier. All they know of this person is a name, and nothing more. While we are reading the story, it is also simultaneously taking place in the Inverted Theater, located out of space and time. And we are also reading about the descendants of the people of this country who are also telling the story.

Yes, the plot sounds confusing., but the unique structure of The Spear Cuts Through Water brings all those strands together. The beauty of the writing just took my breath away many times. As other reviewers have noted, the book requires patience. This is not a book for someone looking for a quick read. But the reward is the pleasure of reading a novel that brings a sense of wonder and amazement, and brought me joy in the discovery of a superb novel.

My tanks to Random House and to Netgalley for an ARC of the book. ( )

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 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. ( )