Spear (Griffith novel)

Spear is a 2022 fantasy novella by Nicola Griffith. Drawing on Arthurian mythos, the book refashions the story of Percival and the Holy Grail but makes the character of Percival a woman.^[1] The protagonist of Griffith's version is Peretur, a girl raised alone in the wilderness by her mother, who develops a magical ability to communicate with animals. She sets out to explore the world dressed as a boy and seeks to join the service of King Arturus as a knight. At his court she becomes involved with his search for the Holy Grail and discovers that her own heritage is connected to it.

Griffith wrote Spear after being invited to contribute to an anthology of

Spear received critical acclaim, particularly for its prose, exploration of gender and sexuality and disability, and attention to historical detail. The Chicago Review of Books wrote that Griffith "threads the needle" by incorporating queer and polyamorous characters without couching their identities in modern language,^[4] while T.S. Miller of Strange Horizons praised the depiction of Llanza as a character with a limp who remained peerless in combat, as a "refreshingly casual" depiction of disability.^[3] Gary Wolfe of Locus praised Griffith's "luminous, rhythmic prose",^[5] while the Chicago Review called the book "an instant classic, born of classics".^[4]

Background, setting, and publication

The idea for Spear came to Griffith after she was invited to contribute to Sword Stone Table, an anthology of Arthurian retellings edited by Swapna Krishna and Jenn Northington.^[1] She began writing a piece intended to be a short story but which grew into a much longer work of fiction.^[2] Griffith wrote Spear while taking time off of writing a sequel to her 2013 novel Hild. The novelette was published on 19 April 2022, with illustrations by Rovina Cai.^[6] Spear uses a setting similar to Hild, being placed in a region corresponding to Northumbria during a period in which the English were being converted to Christianity.^[3] The book draws on Arthurian mythos but makes the character of Percival a woman.^[1] According to a review in Strange Horizons, the Welsh orthography of several characters' names, including Gwenhwyfar and Myrddyn, conjure a "Celtic Arthur", providing a geographic explanation for the presence of the Irish Tuath Dé.^[3] It also draws heavily on Celtic and European mythos.^[3]

Plot summary

In

Nimüe reveals that Myrddyn, the king's sorcerer, was seeking the treasures of the Tuath Dé. While powerful, these treasures will eventually corrupt their mortal owners. Myrddyn helped Arturus to find the Sword Caledfwylch as well as the Stone, which can seal things away from the mortal world. Nimüe was horrified by Myrddyn's lust for power, so she trapped him in a magical coma and sealed him within the Stone. Nimüe plans to remove the treasures from the world to protect humanity.

Nimüe and Peretur make love. Peretur learns that her father

Publishers Weekly noted that Peretur goes through a series of challenging encounters that hewed closely to stories in the Arthurian tradition.^[7] Miller writes that while Spear could be described as "the story of a crossdressing queer woman with a supernatural gift in combat" who sought to become an Arthurian knight, doing so would be a misinterpratation of the narrative.^[3] According to Miller, Peretur's childhood at first has more in common with the story of Grendel and his mother rather than many Arthurian legends; they live alone in a cave, cut off from contact with the outside world. Peretur journeys away from Elen's myths into the "real world" and then back into the mythic realm of Arthurian mythology.^[3] Peretur's ability in combat stems from an ability to understand animals and men, and thereby anticipate her opponents in battle: Miller writes that the story as a whole is a journey of understanding, of her past, of other people, and of the world.^[3]

Reception

Spear was nominated for the

Writing for Locus, Gary K. Wolfe expressed approval for Griffith's research into 6th-century Wales as the setting for the story.[5] Writing for the New York Times, author Amal El-Mohtar similarly praised Griffith's attention to historical detail and depiction of material culture.^[1] Miller echoed this praise, noting in particular Griffith's attention to the spread of the stirrup.^[3] Brookins wrote that Griffith's focus on describing the material aspects of her world both made the historical setting more real to the reader and made the magic in the book, most prominently Peretur's exceptional awareness of things around her, work well.^[4] Wolfe commented that the young Peretur's perspective on the world around her was "rendered in luminous, rhythmic prose" that was "elegantly paced".^[2] Brookins was also admiring of Griffith's prose, calling it "gorgeous". He drew particular attention to Griffith's use of alliteration and metaphor, as well as the use of references to stories outside the Arthurian mythos, which created an "almost effortlessly mythic" effect, which Brookins compared to the language used by Ursula K. Le Guin in the Earthsea books.^[4]

Wolfe also wrote positively of the slow-moving introduction to the novel, which allows us to familiarize ourselves with Griffith's version of many familiar characters. By the end of the novel, Wolfe writes that "it no longer feels at all like yet another iteration of familiar matters, but a marvelously concise epic that is entirely Griffith's own."