For Spear, Rovina Cai has created five interior illustrations, all emotionally evocative: immanence, despair, loss, reaching out, and belonging. They complement the text beautifully. I can’t wait for you to experience them. Below, I have written about two of my favourites.
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At the centre of Spear is the nameless girl who becomes the young woman who in turn becomes the fierce and feared warrior known to legend as Peretur. The essence of my Peretur lies in her unique position, balanced between worlds; my version of Peretur’s story is her journey to the heart of her self, to find her power and to own her strength. It’s not an easy journey, nor is it simple; and to begin with, as for most of us, her sense of her path is inchoate. As she grows from girl to woman she feels change coming—something bigger than just the turn of the seasons—though she has no idea what that change entails:
“The girl… lay awake buffeted in her body by the same winds as the skeins of geese flowing in the river of air above. The autumn echoed and ran with wild magic; her fate was near, she felt it in her blood and bone and heartbeat, in the whirl of wet brown leaves and wingbeat overhead.”
In the book’s first interior illustration Rovina Cai captures that immanence, that embodied sense of fate, using just light and line. The season is there in the curling lines and upswept leaves and possibly snowflakes, and always our eyes are drawn up, to change, to what lies ahead. The future looms large—far larger than the present. Cai uses a simple silhouette backlit by a faint glow to show a young woman experiencing a vision of who she could be. That glow itself is a masterly hint of light from the otherworldly lake that lies ahead. And look at the girl’s body language—face uplifted, arms spread, head slightly back—an easily-understood but hard-to-define mix of surprise, recognition, and exaltation. I love this image.

There’s a lot of joy in Spear, a lot of hope—and daring and delight and discovery. But on the journey to become herself, Peretur faces many trials, and in one she comes very close to death. In this second image we have the opposite of exaltation: exhaustion and something very close to despair. Here Peretur looks down, not up. Again, using nothing but monochrome light and shadow, Cai gives us Peretur’s desperate determination, though this time the proportions of the split image are reversed. The reflection of what has just occurred is much greater, mirroring the monstrous effort, the mud and blood and sweat and tears, underlying her struggle. These are the hunched shoulders of a woman aware of how close she has come to losing everything, a woman for whom the prize is not triumph but simple survival.
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Spear
Nicola Griffith (she/her) is a dual UK/US citizen living in Seattle. She is the author of award-winning novels including Hild and Ammonite, and her shorter work has appeared in Nature, New Scientist, New York Times, etc. She is the founder and co-host of #CripLit, holds a PhD from Anglia Ruskin University, and enjoys a ferocious bout of wheelchair boxing. She is married to novelist and screenwriter Kelley Eskridge.
I am a total non-fantasy fan. Several times I have followed recommendations from Tor and tried to read praised fantasy authors. It would be disrespectful of me to name them, but with few, almost no, exceptions I have abandoned them for a digital refund. Don’t know why. Fantasy is not for me.
Mostly.
The audiobook of Name of the Wind was reduced on Audible. I gave it a shot and was really impressed. Great story. Fantastic characters. Believable dialogue. I tried repeating the experiment with other fantasy authors books. Nope. Refund land again. It just had to be Rothfus.
I had read somewhere a third hand story that a further sequel was unlikely. I really hope this is not the case.
Putting aside if Rothfuss will ever manage to finish his story or not (I’ve also read some convincing posts that he won’t, and also that in a meta way, in some ways it’s the perfect conclusion) I will say that for whatever flaws he had, he is one of my favorite authors when it comes to prose and every word having a meaning. Which is probably why it’s so hard to finish it. I don’t regret reading them at all, even if I’ve moved on to other things.
I also associate this with my kids, specifically my first born, since I was pregnant when the second one came out and went to a signing to have the first one signed (some friends convinced me to come/get into the series) and read the books over maternity leave :) We were also last in line durng the signing and Rothfuss took one look at me and said “you must be exhausted” (as I said I was VERY pregnant; this was very shortly before my son – now about to turn 10 – was born) and gave me some of his cookie lol.
Really dying for this book to come out. He and GRRM have a similar issue – each created a magnificent, complex world with inter-woven plot lines, and each remains in the mid-game before the plot lines narrow and focus for the close. GRRM is at least giving some updates, even if disappointing (i.e., he’s making great progress this year but still has more to do). I remain hopeful it will be done within a year. Pat gives nothing (or virtually nothing) and I’m truly concerned that he won’t finish any time soon. .
At this point I don’t really care about this series. He will finish it when he finishes it. But personally, I am done supporting Worldbuilders. If I chose to give to Heifer International in the future, it will be a direct donation.
Not here to complain about the wait. It truly doesn’t bother me anymore. I just wish I cared about an article like this. I wish I could rush to give my opinion to each of these questions, like I once did. It’s just sad that the wait has pushed me past caring. Most likely, these questions will never be answered.
Hi, all–it’s understandable that the initial comments here would focus on fan frustration/the wait for the third book, but it’s well-covered (if valid) ground, at this point. From this point on, let’s keep the thread focused on the questions/theories mentioned in the article above, or anything else about the content of the books that might be relevant. Thanks.
The four links in the second paragraph aren’t working for me – the others seem okay.
Thanks for the fun reminder of how much I love the Kingkiller story and world! I haven’t read the books since WMF came out and I don’t remember them well enough to weigh in on anything here…might be time for a re-read. :)
@7: Thanks for the heads up–those links should be working now!
@Alarpup Thanks for reading the post! If you’ve got the books handy, a reread sounds like just the thing. I pick up new things every time I’ve read the books. :) And it’s delightful to talk to other fans about theories!
@B0b Rothfuss has been a bit more candid about his writing process lately and he is revising Book Three. I think part of the problem is that he had it all condensed into one story and has had to separate and re-write so many things. I know he said that was an issue with WMF. I also LOVE the audiobooks!
I just don’t understand how he is going to tie up promised threads in one book. I don’t mean all threads. I am assuming that this story is a tragedy and does not have a happy ending. But the story has made so many promises to the reader that, taken in comparison to storyline pacing so far, I simply do not see how they get satisfactorily resolved