I started reading „The Spear Cuts Through Water“ by Simon Jimenez because a blurb on its back compared it to N.K. Jemisin’s The Broken Earth Trilogy. So the stakes were pretty high. But once I started reading I soon had to admit: Jimenez delivered with this one. The world building, the softness of the narrative, the characters, the hidden meanings of the text, it all made me fall in love with the story (and ugly cry a few times while reading).

It’s a story about to men who are on a journey to free the land of its despotic emperor and also a very tender love story (eventhough quite a few heads were chopped off in between which is always a plus if you ask me and there's also some cannibalism going on) that also explores questions of trauma, colonial violence and how to deal with people who harmed others on a big scale in a transformative way.

This book is unbelievably well written, the story is captivating and touched me in a lot of different ways. I am already excited to read it again in a few years because the story is so rich that I am sure there’s a lot of text and subtext I missed the first time around.