A review by nolemdaer
The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez

Did not finish book. Stopped at 17%.
gave up on this one with its intense, gory descriptions of cruelty - like we get it, empire bad, men mean, oppression sucks. it was like the radiant emperor duology but more "teehee this is ~experimental" overall and thus became grating. like WE GET IT i don't need to hear how another person was randomly brutalized in some creative graphic way to understand that the emperor sucks. it was giving torture porn lowkey and the tone of the whole book is so "fairy tale" (i guess) or, perhaps more aptly, "mythology" that this becomes a series of stock characters being tortured for the vibes rather than a true look into the viciousness of empire and evil. everything was told; the main characters had no discernible inner life at this point; and none of the victims were humanized any more than to make you feel bad when they died gruesomely. the whole book was like a cartoon of a commentary on oppression and was never tied down enough to make that mean something, if it was supposed to.

i didn't mind the perspective switches as much as i might have and didn't find them difficult to track, but eventually all the headings and the italicized first-person plural bits got more egregious than interesting. some bits were clever (the egg timer?) but all the frame stories dragged. nothing here felt real; nothing was anchored to an actual character or feeling. i wasn't going to sit through 400 more pages of pantomiming a story with something to actually say about violence and pain other than that they happen when your ruler is a nutso sadist
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