65 pages • 2 hours read
The Spear Cuts Through Water
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Authorial Context: Simon Jimenez
Simon Jimenez is a Filipino American science fiction and fantasy writer who lived in the Philippines and Canada before moving to the United States. He earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing from Emerson College, during which time he began writing his debut novel, The Vanished Birds. He credits Dan Simmons’s Hyperion , Vernor Vinge’s A Fire Upon the Deep, and the works of David Mitchell and Gabriel García Márquez as primary influences on his writing (Denardo, John. “Simon Jimenez on His Remarkable Debut SF Novel.” Kirkus Reviews, 5 Feb. 2020). Despite his love of science fiction, however, he could not see himself in the published science fiction available to him, stating that his identities a gay man and a multiracial person of color were not represented in the science fiction he read (Jackson, Matthew. “Simon Jimenez: When Time Feels Like It’s Slipping Away.” BookPage, Jan. 2020). This inspired him to bring his own unique identity and perspective to the genre.
The Vanished Birds (2020) is a space opera that spans several millennia, following the lives of several characters including a scientist, a mysterious boy with the power to jump through space-time, and an ageless woman. The novel explores themes of anti-capitalism, exploitation, and the complexities of identity. It also establishes Jimenez’s prevailing technique of weaving together many character perspectives and voices to create an intricate narrative, which reappears in A Spear Cuts Through Water. The Vanished Birds was nominated for several awards, including the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the Locus Award.
Genre Context: High Fantasy and Metafiction
The Spear Cuts Through Water is part of two narrative traditions: high fantasy and metafiction. High fantasy is traditionally identifiable by its use of fictional worlds that are clearly distinct from the real world, often vaguely medieval or ancient lands with royalty, warfare, and magic. This magic often includes humans with special powers, fantastical creatures, and gods. Additionally, high fantasy often depicts multiple character perspectives and events that take place across far-reaching spans of time or geography. The Spear Cuts Through Water fulfills these genre expectations while also subverting these tropes to create a unique narrative. For example, the novel offers a unique spin on multiple perspectives by including not only major characters but also the second-person narrative “you” and a variety of minor voices interjected throughout the text like a Greek chorus. Moreover, the high-fantasy setting of “the Old Country” is framed by a narrative set in a more modern setting that includes references to technologies like the radio. The characters in this setting regard the narratives of gods and old-world heroes like mythic bedtime stories, resisting the suspension of disbelief that the genre requires.
These techniques also serve the purpose of constructing layers of narrative. These layers signify the second important tradition of which the novel is a part: stories about storytelling. The tradition of stories about the act and experience of storytelling, or metafiction, emphasizes its own narrative structures and constantly reminds the reader that they are reading fiction to explore such issues as language reception, or the interplay between story and reality. Metafiction can highlight the power of story and imagination for one’s sense of self, undermine the accepted fictions of history, or bring attention to the impact of media on life and perception. Some significant examples related in style or intent to The Spear Cuts Through Water include The Neverending Story by Michael Ende, Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny, Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, and Dahlgren by Samuel R. Delany.
Unlock all 65 pages of this Study GuidePlus, gain access to 9,150+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features: