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azzyrd 's review for:
The Spear Cuts Through Water
by Simon Jimenez
‘This is indeed a love story, down to its blade-dented bone.’
It certainly is. It’s a love story to storytelling traditions, everything layered and interwoven beautifully, joining and separating again like a tapestry. It’s a love story to folklore, a tale of gods and myth and creation and death. It’s a love story to place, to family, of belonging to somewhere, to someone, through time and tradition and culture, of self discovery as you realise what it means to be both of a land and not. Mostly, it’s a love story to humanity, with no character feeling more important than any other and even the unnamed given a chance to speak, to express themselves, to take their place in the narrative, however briefly.
What Jimenez has does with The Spear Cuts Through Water is truly remarkable. I’ve never read anything like this before - his approach to storytelling is so unique you almost feel as if you’re a part of the dream you’re reading about. The multiple tales in one and the constant switching between first, second, and third person does take some getting used to, but it’s absolutely worth it. This story will stick with me for a long time.
It certainly is. It’s a love story to storytelling traditions, everything layered and interwoven beautifully, joining and separating again like a tapestry. It’s a love story to folklore, a tale of gods and myth and creation and death. It’s a love story to place, to family, of belonging to somewhere, to someone, through time and tradition and culture, of self discovery as you realise what it means to be both of a land and not. Mostly, it’s a love story to humanity, with no character feeling more important than any other and even the unnamed given a chance to speak, to express themselves, to take their place in the narrative, however briefly.
What Jimenez has does with The Spear Cuts Through Water is truly remarkable. I’ve never read anything like this before - his approach to storytelling is so unique you almost feel as if you’re a part of the dream you’re reading about. The multiple tales in one and the constant switching between first, second, and third person does take some getting used to, but it’s absolutely worth it. This story will stick with me for a long time.