Charlotte Kersten

Summary

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.

Review

There are a lot of reviews that already do a great job of talking about this book and I’m feeling a little daunted as I sit down to add my two cents. Many of the reviews I’ve read discuss the book’s beautiful and inventive writing, especially the use of different perspectives and the overall narrative framing of the story being presented to the spirits of relevant “characters” in the inverted theater. I love these writing choices because of how brilliantly they help convey the deeply personal story of Keema and Jun that also touches many lives and has a massive historical scope/importance at the same time. The multiple perspectives, especially the small interjections from the voices of passing characters throughout, help make the book feel so humanizing and intimate as it explores widespread injustice, suffering, and the simultaneous importance and insignificance of our lives as time passes. The head-hopping is also used really well as we learn more about the Moon and the bond between Keema and Jun develops.

There are so many parts of this book that are incredibly dark and horrific but manage to end up also being beautiful and moving somehow: the Defect tortoise’s grotesque life and death lead to it becoming a kind of herald to its fellow tortoises who are still alive; the Third Terror’s abuse creates a combination of innocence, desperation for affection, and raw brutality that broke my heart as it was depicted; Shan saves a horribly maimed man from his prison and makes his final days as peaceful and enjoyable as possible as he delights in the rain.

All of this – the hugeness and smallness of the story and the cruelty intertwined with hope and a deep regard for life – made reading this book really emotional for me and also amazed me because of how deft it felt, for lack of a better word. In my opinion it is deserving of all of the praise it has received and more. This book could have fit a number of 2025 bingo squares but I chose it for the LGBTQ square because, of course, The Spear Cuts Through Water is “a love story to its blade-dented bone.”