Reviews

The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez

Only show reviews with written explanations

justinies's review

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my loan expired oopsie will have to pick this up again

pwig's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I couldn’t get into the story because of the way the narrative jumps around between multiple narrative lines. The character development was much too slow to hook me. I really wanted to like this book but reading it made me feel insane.

chess__bored's review

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adventurous challenging mysterious reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

some of the best writing I’ve ever read!! the structure and narrative arc is super unique

frankierhiannon's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional mysterious

Loveable characters? Yes

4.75

sasubrr's review

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adventurous emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

3.0

aceinit's review

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2.0

Goodreads reader Para sums up almost exactly my feelings on the novel when they write:

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.

And I hated almost every second of it.

This is the kind of novel that readers are either going to fall over themselves to praise, or find infinitely frustrating. I am definitely in the second group.

To me, it simply felt overlong, overly ambitious, meandering, and too chaotic with the constant changing to tenses from first/second/third person, and the constant (and I do mean constant) interjections of one or two lines of what I'm going to call "voices from the voiceless," which are just narrative breaks for barely-mentioned bystanders, some of whom are long, long dead, to insert their thoughts on something, bemoan their cruel fate, or otherwise butt into the already exhausting narrative, only to immediately disappear again.

leelabee's review

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adventurous dark emotional funny reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

The writing is overall fantastic. Based on the premise, I thought I would enjoy it a bit more, but I found it difficult to connect with some of the characters and found it slow at times. I enjoyed the relationship between the two warriors and wish we got more of that.

While I liked the rich and descriptive writing style, sometimes it was a bit much. The italicized inner monologue sentences woven throughout the book sometimes felt unnecessary. There is also a lot of violence in the book that didn’t always seem necessary. You become a bit desensitized to it after a while, even though I think the author’s goal is for you to feel the gravity of it in every scene.

Overall though, this was one of the most unique novels I’ve read and I do recommend reading it! I’m excited to check out the author’s other book, The Vanished Birds.