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A review by beforeviolets
The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez
5.0
SOMEONE GET MIYAZAKI ON THE LINE IMMEDIATELY!!!
Do you ever read something so large, so impactful, that the work itself feels like a tsunami wave cresting over you? Its dazzling mass soaring above your head so that your vision is filled with nothing but its utter majesty, so that even the most blinding sunlight is fractured and scattered by its thick undulating form until everything is blue blue blue?
Well that’s how this book feels. Epic. Mythological. Tremendous. This is a work of art. This is a piece of theater wedged inside a novel. This is storytelling at its most profound.
This is a love story down to its blade-dented bone.
Our tale takes place in the Inverted Theater, a stage that exists between the planes of life, run by the love-child of the Moon and the Water, and upon which the greatest stories and greatest performances are portrayed. Mortals may attend this theater through their dreams and when they visit the theater, they will find themselves witness to the right story at the right time. But. They cannot choose the timing of their visit, and upon waking from their dream, the memories of their experience in the Inverted Theater will have dissolved into nothing but a vague feeling of satisfaction.
And as our main character finds himself in this liminal performance space, he witnesses the story of two boys transporting an ancient god across a broken land, determined to end the tyrannical rule of her descendants.
The story we then witness alongside our main character is unlike any other. Its cruelty is as haunting as its utter beauty. It’s romantic and tender and violent and ethereal. There’s something of a Ghibli quality to it, especially in the way it unravels itself as a gorgeous expression of love for people, land, culture, and the relationships between. I found myself listening to the Princess Mononoke soundtrack while reading it and fantasizing about the breathtaking adaptation Miyazaki would make if someone would do the honor of putting this book in his hands. (I HIGHLY recommend listening to the Mononoke soundtrack when reading this for a transcendent experience. I even more highly recommend telling Miyazaki to read this book.)
My overall experience with THE SPEAR CUTS THROUGH WATER was mystifying, like I myself was a dreaming visitor of the Inverted Theater, put in a trance and taken on a journey through a life-defining tale that would forever alter my world.
Thank you Simon Jimenez for reminding me why I love reading. For showing me what it can mean to thread myself into the tapestry of life and lose myself in the rhythm of the world.
As the tsunami of this story crested over my head and broke its way through my tear ducts and flooded down my cheeks, I knew–wracked with heavy sobs–that I would emerge from its depths to find myself forever changed. And for a moment, I was so certain I would find myself brought back to my own plane of existence to have lost the memory of this tale. That this story, like all others told in the Inverted Theater, would be one that only exists in the spaces it’s left behind. That its only relics would be the puddles of toilet paper tissues scattered on the floor of my room, the crowded rows of goosebumps like tiny headstones up and down my arms, and a hunk of negative space in my memory in the shape of something equally yearning and fulfilling. Oh, but how lucky we are, that Simon Jimenez has pressed the Inverted Theater onto paper so we may maintain its memory.
CW: violence, drowning, decapitation, blood & gore, body horror, death, grief, murder, cannibalism, war, animal death, ableism, drug use, emesis, death of grandmother, death of child, death of parent, suicide (mention)
Do you ever read something so large, so impactful, that the work itself feels like a tsunami wave cresting over you? Its dazzling mass soaring above your head so that your vision is filled with nothing but its utter majesty, so that even the most blinding sunlight is fractured and scattered by its thick undulating form until everything is blue blue blue?
Well that’s how this book feels. Epic. Mythological. Tremendous. This is a work of art. This is a piece of theater wedged inside a novel. This is storytelling at its most profound.
This is a love story down to its blade-dented bone.
Our tale takes place in the Inverted Theater, a stage that exists between the planes of life, run by the love-child of the Moon and the Water, and upon which the greatest stories and greatest performances are portrayed. Mortals may attend this theater through their dreams and when they visit the theater, they will find themselves witness to the right story at the right time. But. They cannot choose the timing of their visit, and upon waking from their dream, the memories of their experience in the Inverted Theater will have dissolved into nothing but a vague feeling of satisfaction.
And as our main character finds himself in this liminal performance space, he witnesses the story of two boys transporting an ancient god across a broken land, determined to end the tyrannical rule of her descendants.
The story we then witness alongside our main character is unlike any other. Its cruelty is as haunting as its utter beauty. It’s romantic and tender and violent and ethereal. There’s something of a Ghibli quality to it, especially in the way it unravels itself as a gorgeous expression of love for people, land, culture, and the relationships between. I found myself listening to the Princess Mononoke soundtrack while reading it and fantasizing about the breathtaking adaptation Miyazaki would make if someone would do the honor of putting this book in his hands. (I HIGHLY recommend listening to the Mononoke soundtrack when reading this for a transcendent experience. I even more highly recommend telling Miyazaki to read this book.)
My overall experience with THE SPEAR CUTS THROUGH WATER was mystifying, like I myself was a dreaming visitor of the Inverted Theater, put in a trance and taken on a journey through a life-defining tale that would forever alter my world.
Thank you Simon Jimenez for reminding me why I love reading. For showing me what it can mean to thread myself into the tapestry of life and lose myself in the rhythm of the world.
As the tsunami of this story crested over my head and broke its way through my tear ducts and flooded down my cheeks, I knew–wracked with heavy sobs–that I would emerge from its depths to find myself forever changed. And for a moment, I was so certain I would find myself brought back to my own plane of existence to have lost the memory of this tale. That this story, like all others told in the Inverted Theater, would be one that only exists in the spaces it’s left behind. That its only relics would be the puddles of toilet paper tissues scattered on the floor of my room, the crowded rows of goosebumps like tiny headstones up and down my arms, and a hunk of negative space in my memory in the shape of something equally yearning and fulfilling. Oh, but how lucky we are, that Simon Jimenez has pressed the Inverted Theater onto paper so we may maintain its memory.
CW: violence, drowning, decapitation, blood & gore, body horror, death, grief, murder, cannibalism, war, animal death, ableism, drug use, emesis, death of grandmother, death of child, death of parent, suicide (mention)