Peretur finds herself attracted to several different women and has both sexual and emotional relationships with them. What I loved even more were the queer relationships in the story. I’ve always enjoyed stories like this-a woman proving she can do anything a man can do-with the added bonus that her being discovered or outed plays little to no part in the tale. Though she still identifies as a woman, she spends the rest of the book pretending to be a man, working first as a byre boy to take care of the horses and then eventually as a knight.

The mystery wasn’t behind her, per se, but she was finally moving forward, discovering who she was as a person outside of her mother’s influences. Once Peretur ventures off on her own, I found myself much more invested in the story. She’s seen knights on horseback fighting in the name of an illustrious king, and she wants nothing more than to join them.Īgainst her mother’s wishes, the girl leaves their hidden home, now burdened with the knowledge of her true name-Peretur. We see her grow and rebel against a mother who is kind and loving one minute, then tortured and enigmatic the next.Īll of this mystery, coupled with the fact that her mother wants to keep her on a short leash, makes the girl even more curious about what’s out there. This part of the story is told from a distance-years of the girl’s life experienced over the course of a few pages, stopping on a moment here or there that she will look back on later. We see her running through the forest as though she were a sprite, communicating not only with the animals around her, but the very earth itself. We don’t know why, only that the little girl is special. The book begins by introducing us to a young girl whose mother keeps her hidden away from the world. I’ll be honest and say I don’t remember much about Percival, but if the stories I’ve read before Spear had been anything like this, I would’ve paid more attention. And that’s all before you get to the author’s note and her meticulous list of citations. Not that it matters-because even a layperson such as myself recognizes the amount of time, devotion, and research Nicola Griffith put into writing this book. I know the basics of Arthurian legend-the sword in the stone, Merlin, the Lady of the Lake, and all that-but I have to admit that any deeper knowledge I may have once had (if I had any at all) has been lost to the annals of time.

Our Spear book review dives into Nicola Griffith’s lush queer retelling of Arthurian legend’s very own Percival.

Spear by Nicola Griffith