I was particularly struck by the moment she first observes male-bodied people and the way she attempts to describe them, having no reference point for the human body other than herself and her mother. Peretur’s initial encounters with people other than her mother are invigorating-she watches them from the woods, and she becomes a sort of forest spirit in their minds when she starts stealing their possessions and leaving other items for them to find. I savored the richness and texture of that experience. These early sections are where the novella is at its most engaging: Griffith’s prose is syntactically dense and peppered with proper nouns, which forced me to re-read many sentences multiple times before I could fully parse them.

Peretur grows up in the woods under the care of her mother, but she is a precocious and adventurous child who pokes and prods at the boundaries of her world. Spear is a genderbent take on the story of Peretur (who you may know as Parzival or Percival) and the Holy Grail. Spear lacks the emotional heft of a full novel but harbors its own pleasures. It has been almost a decade since the publication of Nicola Griffith’s Hild (which I haven’t read-I know, I know!-despite having owned it for nearly that long), and while the sequel is still forthcoming, Spear serves as a self-contained fantasy interstitial for those awaiting Griffith’s next work of historical fiction, or as an introduction to her diverse oeuvre for newcomers such as myself.

I received an ARC of Spear from Macmillan-Tor/Forge in exchange for an honest review.

Spear nicola griffith review