Aug 14

Aug 14 Spear

Author: Nicola Griffith
Publisher: Tordotcom
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

Click above to buy this book from my Bookshop.org shop, which supports independent bookstores (not Amazon). You can also find it via your favorite indie bookstore here.

Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.

Cover Description

The girl knows she has a destiny before she even knows her name. She grows up in the wild, in a cave with her mother, but visions of a faraway lake come to her on the spring breeze, and when she hears a traveler speak of Artos, king of Caer Leon, she knows that her future lies at his court.

And so, brimming with magic and eager to test her strength, she breaks her covenant with her mother and, with a broken hunting spear and mended armour, rides on a bony gelding to Caer Leon. On her adventures she will meet great knights and steal the hearts of beautiful women. She will fight warriors and sorcerers. And she will find her love, and the lake, and her fate.

TL;DR Review

Spear is a gender-bent, queer, Arthurian/Percival retelling that’s rich, stunning, and timely. It’s especially good on audio. I’m so glad I read it!

For you if: You like fantasy retellings that feel a little more literary, kind of like The Silence of the Girls.

Full Review

I’d never read Nicola Griffith before, but boy am I glad that Spear was shortlisted for the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize, because now I have and she is excellent. This novella is rich, stunning, and timely — and, bonus, it has a distinct but accessible literary feeling to it.

This novella is an Arthurian retelling focused on Percival, here rendered as Peretur. It’s also (wait for it) gender-bent and sapphic. Peretur was raised by her mother in a remote cave but soon leaves to seek her fate by disguising herself as a man, earning a name for herself, (making maidens swoon,) and joining the knights of the round table. But soon it becomes clear that there are mysteries to uncover and a quest to embark on when it comes to her own history and upbringing.

Gender-bent Arthurian retellings will always catch my eye, but what makes this book so stunning is Griffith’s prose. She leaves a distance between the text and the story to give you, the reader, plenty of space to exist in between. That makes this novella-length story feel not empty, but rich and full and literary (in fact, Tor published this book but they gave her an FSG editor, soooo if that doesn’t tell you everything you need to know!). Not a single phrase is wasted, and it’s not something to rush through but definitely something to get lost in. I think if you enjoyed the vibe in The Silence of the Girls, you might like this as well. (Also: genre is marketing!)

Finally, please do yourself a favor and listen to this one on audio (or tandem read print and audio, as I did). It lends itself beautifully to the form and Griffith herself narrates.

To Nicola Griffith’s backlist I go!