This is a tough one for me because I love the concept and the idea and I don’t think the writing is bad by any means but it is just so hard for to get into. Like this writing style just does not work for me in the reading it with my eyes format. Which is unfortunate. I kept trying to push myself through because I wanted to know what was going to happen but it ended up feeling like a chore. I do think this is one that I will revisit as an audiobook.

So this is a soft dnf for me at 25 percent. I know this will work for a lot of people and I can see it even making it to people’s favorite books of the year lists!

The Saint of Bright Doors is the debut novel of Sri Lankan Science Fiction/Fantasy author Vajra Chandrasekera, who has written a whole bunch of SF/F short fiction for various outlets. This is my first experience with Chandrasekera, but the novel got some hype on twitter from authors I enjoy, so I was very interested when I got an advance copy on NetGalley. The novel features a man named Fetter, raised by his mad and possibly magically powerful mother to assassinate his cult leader father, who now just tries to live in peace in a City filled with all kinds of people, while he gets therapy along with others who have moved on from having been chosen or "unchosen" as special by various cults and religions.

If that was all The Saint of Bright Doors was about, I might've liked it more, but Chandrasekera fills the book with so many ideas its pretty much bursting at the seems. So you also have a city which is in some ways socialist in how it provides for everyone but is also a Big Brother-esque incoherent caste system-oriented bureaucracy-led city where pogroms and plague are always on the horizon. You have demons only the protagonist can see, and mysterious bright painted doors that can't open, appear mysteriously out of real doors, and appear only throughout the city. You have revolution, colonization, refugee camps, cults of personality, and more. There's just so much happening here, and some of these ideas feel kind of contradictory, with the book moving from one idea to another, that none of it really lands and any message that's intended just comes out muddled.


----------------------------------------Plot Summary----------------------------------------------
Fetter was raised by his mother, the magically gifted Mother-of-Glory, to be a killer. Specifically, Fetter was raised not just to kill those individuals who betrayed Mother-of-Glory (who essentially rules the city of Acusdab and its mass of demon-summoning doctors), but his father, the man known as the Perfect and Kind, an incredibly powerful, prestigious and well followed cult leader who betrayed his mother long long ago. Fetter's gifts - his mother cut away his shadow, seemingly allowing him to float/fly and, unknown to his mother, he can see demons and spirits that others can't see or require a summoning to try to see - are meant to aid him accomplish that task. But after a childhood of killing, Fetter walked away from this destiny, settling in the nearby city of Luriat.

Luriat is a strange place Fetter doesn't quite fully understand. It's a place that provides for all its people and doesn't require anyone to work, but at the same time is run by a mix of contrasting and borderline incomprehensible factions, each with its own strange and unfathomable legal systems, is occasionally beset by pogroms and plagues, and perhaps most strangely, is filled with the mysterious "Bright Doors" - doors that led to nowhere that emit a strange presence, which are painted brightly and worshipped and studied by various people throughout the city. Fetter doesn't really care about all that - although he's curious about the doors and the odd feeling he gets from them - but just tries to get by in the City and spends his days helping those new to Luriat get their bearings in this strange city. He also finds himself in a support group for other people who were "unchosen" - once supposed to be possibly the central figure of a cult only to be cast away.

But the world won't let Fetter simply exist in peace. For a splitaway schism of his father's cult is plotting to bring his father, The Perfect and Kind, to the City and the young nobleman Fetter is dating is interested in seeing him. Meanwhile the leader of his support group is plotting revolution, and Fetter finds himself drafted into an effort to ingratiate himself with some nobles in support of that goal. But when the nobles lead Fetter to both a research project dealing with the Bright Doors and a plot to both bring his father into Luriat and to possibly give him harm, Fetter finds himself on a course of action that will throw him into disarray and put him back into the center of things like he never ever wanted....
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This novel begins with what is essentially a prologue chapter from Fetter's childhood, before jumping forward in time to his adult self for the rest of our full main plot. And this works pretty well as a setup for what seems like how the story that this book is aiming to tell: Fetter's life as an "unchosen" person - a person who has rejected or been rejected by a cult from a leadership position and has to figure out what to do next with their life. This concept, and the the support group of fellow "unchosen" members that Fetter attends, is really interesting and a full book could easily come out of the concept, especially with Fetter still seeing remnants of his old life, like the demons/spirits that only Fetter can see that still wander around (although there are less of them seemingly in Luriat) and the strange whispering presence he feels whenever he gets close to one of the city's Bright Doors.

But The Saint of Bright Doors tries to handle a lot more ideas than that, for better or for worse. So the novel deals with the fact that the City is run by a bureaucracy that is crazy and ridiculous, with two separate justice systems run by different contrasting peoples that are absurd and no one can figure out how they work. And it deals with how the City and its Empire has constant pogroms against outsiders and others, fears plague greatly, and all of this is for reasons that Fetter can't quite understand and probably no one can understand. Add in a revolution plotted by one of our Unchosen members, and well you have a Catch 22-esque novel here as well....but the Book doesn't focus on that either. So we have the different sects of the cult led by Fetter's father, the Bright Doors and how they are researched, a past history of questionable veracity dealing with colonization and stolen powers, the horrors and absurdities of refugee camps....there's just so so much here in this novel. And to the author's credit, the narrative never gets boring or dry and Fetter's character as he wanders through all these incidents remains generally fascinating to read about, as he learns and encounters all of this and has to figure out how to act...even when he doesn't want to. Fetter and a bunch of the side characters he encounters are generally fascinating, and all of them have their own stories going on on the side that I enjoyed reading about and would certainly be willing to read more about.

At the same time, all of these ideas kind of muddle and the plot just wanders at times such that it kind of feels hard to take any sort of full message from this novel - that is, if the author is trying to argue a point, it's hard to see what it is, and as a complete story from beginning to end it's hard to feel satisfied instead of feeling at the end like just "huh, that's a thing." There's some message at the end about how each person is their own world, as Fetter seems to gain his resolve finally at the end as to how he sees the world, but it's not developed well, and arguably hurt by a last minute plot twist that is only barely setup and just....well confuses and feels like something from another book entirely. Like I said above, each of these ideas is interesting to explore, but the book only tries to explore some of them before diverting to a completely new idea at times, sometimes in contradictory ways, like how Fetter wanders through a load of refugee camps/prison camps that surround the city for a whole act, which are so absurd in how they're administered and with no one knowing where to go or where they're assigned to go...only for Fetter to randomly find his way to the right place at the end of the act and to be then escorted out of the camp just....cause? There's a lot of this honestly, where seemingly long term plot arcs are up and abandoned, and character relationships and struggles (Fetter's attraction to a female researcher causing him confusion considering his relationship with a guy nobleman for example) just wind up not mattering or not being pursued.

The result is a book that I wanted to enjoy at the end far more than I did. The narrative and prose is done really well here, and again, all of these ideas are intriguing to read about! But it just feels like the author couldn't figure out what he wanted to stick to and kept introducing new stuff, such that this volume never feels like a complete whole.

Oh God i was so excited for this but I could not read more than 30% of it. The world was not well defined, it went from an awesome concept of flying and killing to some unopened doors and their back story was also super vague. I will try reading this book one more time. But I find it difficult to get past lack of information.

The writing for this was one of the standouts. Beautiful and poetic, it was a joy to read, and one of the reasons I took my time with this one: I wanted to savour it, and often found myself re-reading passages.

Another standout was the world-building. I found it so creative and expansive - the prison districts? Bonkers, in the best world-building way.

This is a book you have to pay attention to, it's not a simple read, it doesn't have a traditional plot, and you're just kind of thrown into the world in a lot of ways. But the beauty of it, the imagination, makes is so worthwhile.

<i>Thank you to the publisher, Tordotcom, and to NetGalley for the ARC.</i>

I tried, I really really tried! That first part with the shadow being taken away and him getting trained by his mother was amazing. If only the rest of the book stayed that way. In it's place I got a confusing world, and very over the top writing. Normally I'm all for this type of writing, flowery writing, purple writing or whatever you want to call it: I eat it up. Here however I felt like it just made everything sound pretentious.

Not for me sadly.

2.75
I found this book and story to be very interesting and it had me very intrigued from the first chapter on. I found the concepts really interesting as well and it very much gave me fabulism/magical realism vibes.
The reason why my rating ended up kinda low is not necessarily due to the book itself and more personal preference. I just didn't stay engaged with the book or the main character. And with my way of reading I constantly felt like I was missing information, which didn't really help my reading experience.

This was a fantastic surprise of a book that Tordotcom was lovely enough to pass along (thank you again!). You have what seems to be an epic framing to the story (a son who will kill his powerful father), but the fun bit of it is that the main character has absolutely no interest in being involved in it, and only comes into it reluctantly. You've also got the duality of traditional religion against the modernity of the city, group therapy as recruitment for revolutionary movements, and realizing how thoroughly you can be pulled into someone's worldview. The last few chapters do feel like a hell of a sharp turn out of nowhere, but it still works well. This is an incredibly well spun story, and I'll definitely take a look at whatever Chandrasekera publishes next. (And no, it is not a take on Peter Pan just because a shadow is involved for fuck's sake.)

I couldn’t enjoy this one unfortunately. There was such a jarring beginning that I could never get over. I didn’t understand what was happening and the beginning felt like a retelling of Peter Pan with the shadow. Not for me.

The Saint of Bright Doors, a debut novel by Vajra Chandrasekera, opens with an absolutely killer beginning (literally, as the very young main character is being trained as an assassin) that had me sure I was going to love this novel. But while I did love parts of it, and was in the end happy I’d read it, I can’t say it lived up fully to the promise of that beginning.

But oh, that opening:

The moment Fetter is born, Mother of Glory pins his shadow to the earth with a large brass nail and tears it from him. This is his first memory … It is raining. His shadow is cast upon reddish soil thick with clay that clings to Getter as he rolls in it … Mother of Glory dips her hands in that mud to gather up the ropy shadow of his umbilical cord and throttles his severed shadow with a quick loop, pulled tight … If shadows can cry out, that sound is lost in the rain.

See what I mean? The whole first section is fantastic. As Fetter ages, he discovers he has certain unique abilities (whether these are tied to his lack of a shadow is unclear at this point): he can float, and he is able to see and hear the strange and often horrifying creatures that seem to share his plane of existence but that nobody else can see, though they are aware of them and have certain rites and rituals surrounding them (his mother calls them “the invisible laws and powers” while the other seemingly less knowledgeable people call them “devils.” Also as he ages, his mother trains him to kill, with certain specific goals in mind, including both patricide and matricide (“After that, you have me around to hold your hand”). At thirteen, he “goes out into the world, armed and dangerous”, and then after a single-paragraph chapter covering his teen years, we next see him in his twenties and living in the city of Luriat, having severed ties with his family and given up his killing ways.

Luriat is famed for its titular “bright doors”, mysterious doors scattered throughout the city that cannot be opened and only have one side. Also, any regular door left closed long enough will turn into a bright door, will “vanish from one side and become openable from the other.” Fetter becomes involved with investigating the bright doors, as well as entangled in a host of other issues: he becomes enmeshed in the political struggles in the city and also its religious issues, as his father is the head of a major religion/cult and is coming to the city for a big gathering. Fetter has nothing to do with his father or his religion, and in fact in Luriat goes to a support group for the “almost chosen” — those in close proximity to prophets, sect leaders, etc. but who were not selected or walked away from their roles.

I’ve already noted that great opening section. Another highlight are those doors, which are utterly fascinating in the tiny details that accrete about them—the way they are painted so colorfully and maintained, the way the can “bloom” from a regular door, the way opacity seems to be a factor so very few regular doors in Luriat are fully opaque (some places have a waiver for frosted glass but only to a certain extent), and more. I love the doors of Luriat. Loved them. Well, for the most part. Like some other parts they kind of waned a bit toward the end.

The numerous sects/religions/cults are another highlight, as are the members of Fetter’s support group of not-quite-the chosen-ones. And the gradual, piece-by-piece revelations of the darkness at the core of Luriat is also quite well done. A darkness that includes but is not limited to xenophobia, racial classifications, propaganda, mob violence, fascism, illegal detainment, and that is sadly all too topical in our own place and time. I also liked the idea of the premise at the core here, even if I thought the execution had issues, though I won’t say more about it to avoid spoilers. Finally, The Saint of Bright Doors is an admirably ambitious debut, covering a lot of heavy topics — heavy in depth of thought, in topicality, in importance.

As for the issues that didn’t outweigh but did detract from the above positives. One was pacing, which was up and down; there were more than a few places where it felt the book bogged down, and I’d say it was also overlong. Somewhat connected, it can also be a “talky” book, in that a number of character talk at or tell Fetter things over an extended number of pages. This isn’t inherently a writing problem, but the execution here contributed to that bogging down sense. Fetter himself is a pretty passive agent, and while that’s partly the point – his growth into agency is one of the subjects of the book — it goes on so long, and he is so passive, that it was hard for me to fully engage with him. Stylistically, there were a number of times where modern language/coinage popped up — phrases like “landline”, “social media” “broke up their band”, etc. — that at first distracted then became honestly a bit grating. While the novel has that great opening, it felt like it sort of meandered or somewhat listlessly wandered toward its ending. And finally, while I as noted above thoroughly liked a lot of what Chandrasekera offers up, perhaps not surprisingly for a debut novel, those ideas/plot points that were introduced with such originality and verve kind of petered out a bit by the end thanks to execution or pacing issues or not being fully thought out (or at least conveyed as such).

In the end, I’d still recommend The Saint of Bright Doors since as I stated above, the positives do outweigh the negatives and also because the good parts are so good. And it being a first novel also leaves me excited to see what Chandrasekera shows up with in their sophomore effort having gone through this experience.

I've read several books this year by South Asian SFF authors and I've noticed they veer toward a particular very cerebral style, full of gods and devils who walk among us in the real world, which is often more terrifying than the supernatural plane. "The Saint of Bright Doors" is no exception in this style, so it may not be for everyone, but I've come to appreciate this voice.

"The Saint of Bright Doors" is the story of child assassin Fetter, groomed by an abusive, semi-immortal mother to be a weapon in her plan for vengeance against his father, a cult leader who has godlike powers. This is a mirror universe to ours, with all our same modern technology and social media but different geography.

Fetter escapes his mother's clutches and finds himself in the repressive town of Lariat, the background horrors of the military dictatorship fueled by his father's influence. Fetter falls in love with a young lawyer named Hej, in a city where queer love is illegal, and finds himself a support group for the children of gods who have been unchosen for their sacred destinies. He's a child assassin who has vowed not to kill anymore, he doesn't have a shadow and he can see devils that others can't. I loved Fetter's character and his relationship with Hej.

The bright doors around the city are studied, feared and worshiped; no one knows quite what they mean. Could they be portals? Objects of worship or disdain? Just a door? Dangerous? I found the science behind the bright doors quite interesting.

A lot of things about the narrative structure didn't really fit together, in the end, so I had kind of mixed feelings about this book. I felt like the bright doors could have played a bigger role in the plot, and I didn't like that it was an urban fantasy. The modern technology didn't really drive the story forward. If modern technology is used, I wanted more contrast between it and the supernatural plane; but it was almost incidental to the story. I was confused by the universe at first partly because of the modern influences. But it would have been hard to pull off the Kafkaesque futility of government bureaucracy without that level of technology.

What was really interesting about this story was the fallen superheroes seeking redemption, the bright doors, the various religions and the magic they inhabited so that you couldn't quite tell what was real and what was not, and the almost Kafkaesque nature of the government Fetter's friends were working to overthrow.

All in all, this was an intriguing read and a fascinating universe.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance review copy. I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Unfortunately this book was a dnf for me. I really liked the concept of the story but the writing/ world building was too confusing and hard to follow and I could keep track of what was actually happening. I really wanted to love this book but sadly it wasn't for me. Thank you to netgalley and the publishers for the arc in exchange for a review.

Genre: South asian urban fantasy/speculative fiction

Part urban fantasy and part thinkpiece on religious cults in modern society, The Saint of Bright Doors is as mysterious and mystical as it is thought-provoking. I absolutely loved the setting, which at once feels urban and modern and also fantastical. Junk email and therapy about saints, gods, and cults. Whole worlds being erased and new doors being opened. Bright Doors leans more fantasy or speculative fiction than magical realism.

I worried a little on starting that this would feel like too many other portal magic type books, but it never does feel that way. Fetter is wary of what the doors can bring, but also knows that their existence is a given and he can’t escape them.

Fetter’s sexuality is notable, because queerness of any sort is prosecutable in Luriat. Internment camps are set up ostensibly as quarantine zones to protect citizens from spreading plagues, but while they recognize the plagues can be deadly, it’s also an excuse to monitor citizens.

This was really interesting, and is one I’ll continue to think about.

Well at 10%, I'm completely lost and completely uninterested in finishing. The story is anything but direct, covered in purple prose, and so "deep" that the surface level basics are completely thrown out. What's left is just a jumble of info dumping, but none of the info you need to understand a dang thing. No Thank you.

**Thank you NetGalley and Tordotcom for the eARC**

I received an ARC of this book from Tordotcom in exchange for an honest review. This review will not contain any spoilers.

This book was not what I expected, mostly for good. The first chapter sets up a classic, if conflicted, Chosen One--so far, so normal. The second chapter is a beautiful single-paragraph time skip--a little more unusual, but still one of my favorite devices (see: The Traitor Baru Cormorant, among others). By the third chapter we have left the mythic tone behind and moved into what feels like a Soviet-era bureaucratic dystopia. Even having been told that this novel was about former Chosen Ones growing up, the tonal shift was striking given that I expected something more in the style of American Gods--myths infusing the modern world with their own styles and sensibilities. Instead, despite names like Fetter and The Perfect and Kind, the rhythms of the story feel closer to the modern world (with subplots about pandemics, refugees, government changes) than to an imagined past. To support this change of pace, Chandrasekera's prose is wry in a way I've come to associate with writers obliquely criticizing dictatorships, full of double meanings and implications that allude to the broader world of the novel without spelling out its rules for the author. Several lines got a genuine chuckle--"without possession, nine-tenths of the lore are already lost" was perhaps my favorite. I spent an unreasonable amount of time trying to anagram "Acusdab" before finally accepting that it probably had no meaning, likely a fitting commentary on the themes of the book. The plot tends to meander and mix ideas in a way similar to the prose; there are sections which recount old myths, passages about work permits and funding for academic research, a long and hallucinogenic bike tour through an internment camp. Despite the specters of prophecy and destiny that haunt the first chapter, and the unresolved question of the doors, the novel takes its time getting to the "plot-heavy" portions of the book, and I enjoyed reading its unhurried account of life in the in-between crossroads city of Luriat. If anything, I found the ultimate resolutions to the ostensibly central questions--how will Fetter kill The Perfect and Kind? what do the doors do? who will be in power by the end?--less satisfying than the journey towards that resolution. Inconclusive endings are a quirk I tend to enjoy, and I feel like this book might have benefited from fully committing to its early theme of upending the Chosen One narrative. Maybe what matters most is neither our destiny nor our reaction to it, but simply the course life takes independent of the forces that drive it.

Four out of five stars. An interesting, genre-bending novel with several striking passages and ideas.

I received a copy through NetGalley for review.

So this was a very interesting book. By the last 65% I finally got to a point where I was enjoying it because it was sort of making sense. But there was a good 10 times I seriously considered putting this down. Upon finishing it the only thing I can loosely, and I mean loosely compare this to was Lani Taylor's Strange the Dreamer. It sort of has that quality of writing and plot-ish to it on flow.

I'm not even sure if I can adequately describe the plot. I'm going to try!

Fetter is our main character. His mother was once an ordinary woman whose path was changed by a powerful, manipulative man- his father otherwise known as the Perfect and Kind. Who essentially learned enough of histories and magics from other cultures, and possibly world's that he literally altered it to suit his own needs.
A prophetic zealot, who shaped the world, re wrote it and stripped entire people's, lands and cultures of their history, and memories.
His mother- Mother-of-Glory (thus renamed by her husband, who left them) raised their son Fetter to become a weapon to end him. Crafted from childhood to subvert his teachings, and destroy them and end his life.
His shadow is cut from him at birth. And I wonder if it was an effort to literally separate Fetter from the world his father remade in his wants and image. To unmoor him.

The plot deals with violence, colonialism, plague, revolution, genocides, prisons, castes, government control and manipulation, stolen lands-magics, memories, what happens when you rob an entire world of their history, their cultures, to have everything you ever know re-written without your knowledge.
It's a very interesting commentary.

And while I had trouble keeping with the constant changing on the plots, plots that were sometimes ripped out from under us, due to the Bright and the Kind's meddling at some points.
But I really did appreciate the writing.
And the growth Fetter goes though to pull away from what both his narcissistic and manipulative parents want from him, shaped him by force and both by absence. His parents are awful, horrible, selfish people.

It's a commentary on the absolute worse things that exist in this world, and a character who chooses another path for himself.
And a shadow self who chooses something completely different, to set their other self free at last.

It was a heavy book, even for me. If any of these subjects are hard for you, I'd recommend you skip. Many parts were not easy to read.

But in the end, was incredibly well done.
I'm only deducting a last star for having to really struggle through this plot that finally, finally got there in the end.

Raised by a cult to kill his father, Fetter just wants to leave that behind, go to therapy, and then finds himself joining a revolutionary cadre and then there is also the mystery of the mysterious doors that have been scattered across the city. This is a story that kind of just throws you into the middle of the world and the entire story arc itself is a bit muddled and confusing. I tried so hard to finish this book because I just wanted to know if I’d find some clarity by the end, but unfortunately I did not. You don’t really get a clear sense of Fetter’s motivations or even the motivations of the Luriat’s bureaucracies. Unfortunately this one didn’t work for me but if you enjoy fantasy/sci-fi books with intricate world building and modern world mixed in as well as having many characters with their own idea of what is going on then give it a go, maybe you’ll have a better time with it than I did.

*Thanks Netgalley and Tor Publishing Group, Tordotcom for sending me an arc in exchange for an honest review*

An imaginative fantasy, which is surprisingly light on doors but heavy on sincerity.

We follow our main character, Fetter, who was raised in a cult-like setting and has moved away from his overbearing mother and cult-leader father, into a city to forge his own path. There are interesting world-building pieces that keep the world both grounded and interesting like our 'bright doors', and a plague which forces people to wear masks. I love a character that attends therapy, so bonus points for self-awareness.

The last 10% of this book was perfection, I just wish it had happened in the first 25% of the book. I won't give too much away, but I really wish there was more.

This book takes itself seriously and I often found myself wishing for a bit of joy. I also wish our main character had more agency. He seems to float on the wind of other people's wants and desires, which often made me feel lost when reading.

Thank you to Netgalley and Tor Publishing for this advanced reader copy.

I struggle starting this review, in a good way, because this is one of those books that are hard to define. It almost feels like a world of its own. There’s nothing else out there quite like it, in my opinion.

For the worldbuilding itself, including the presentation of the world within the narrative, I was reminded a lot of Tamsyn Muir’s The Locked Tomb series. It feels overwhelming at first, and you feel very lost—but then the pieces start to fit together, and you start to feel a sense of almost… possessive and addictive excitement (which fits the story’s theme well) as you begin to understand how the various plot elements tie into the world elements and the character elements.

The world feels contemporary, yet it also feels second-world-y. Relatedly, politics and history and religion take center stage at all times as a thematic core. The dynamic between these elements in society (and how the characters relate to them) is the foundation of the story.

This is not a plot-heavy book. Not on the page, at least. There is in fact a lot of plot, off page and in between lines, but the overall narrative style is heavy on interiority and character interactions to drive the story forward. And a lot of the plot also resides within the past and gets (re-)told orally within the present timeline. This also means that the pacing of the story is relatively slow.

The magic within the world is based on parallel worlds, time-warping, otherworldly creatures, doors, im/morality, cults, brainwashing, symbolism, terraforming, and just… so much more. Insofar as the main character goes, and their specific relationship to magic, it reminded me a bit of Holly Black’s The Book of Night.
Lastly, the book veers into the territory of having an unreliable narrator, though for reasons which have mostly cleared up around the midpoint.

This is a book that plays on dichotomies. In the world. In the magic system. In the characters. In everything. And it makes for a highly interpretive and imaginative book.

This is a book truly unlike any book I have read before, and yet somehow deeply similar to some of my favourite stories. It has almost the feel of an epic poem in the journey you take as a reader and the journey the main character, Fetter, goes on.
I was deeply enamoured by the world Fetter inhabits, particularly the idea of Bright Doors. In this book a Bright Door is essentially an opaque door that has been closed that becomes a Bright Door, it can no longer be opened or destroyed. My favourite detail was that as a result all the doors people use are clear or translucent and there is an approved level of frosted glass. I liked the combination of magic and bureaucracy that you see fairly often within the story.
I will say if you're hoping for a straightforward kind of story this may not be the book for you, not only are some elements somewhat meandering but there are things that are intentionally kept vague for much of the book. I personally found that added to my reading experience as I liked just letting the story take me where it will and discovering the plotline often after the events had taken place. `I suspect this is a book that would feel completely different on a reread once you understand which elements are plot significant. I would say that where some books feel like a structured march to a destination, The Saint of Bright Doors is a pleasant stroll along a winding stream with a lot of pauses to catch your breath.
If you're looking for a book that feels incredibly different in terms of the world building and the plot I would highly suggest ordering a copy of this book. The combination of magic and technology is phenomenally well done and the ways in which the book tackles the concept of divine destiny is truly fascinating. I'll be really interested to read more from Vajra Chandrasekera and will be seeking out some short stories as I wait for the next standalone novel.
My rating: 4 stars
I received a free digital copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, all opinions are my own.

I didn't really know what to expect when I started reading this, but honestly, I think that was the best plan I could have had. Expectations would have only held me back (and/or been absolutely useless to me). The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera was an incredible, unexpected delight, and one that at no point conformed to any ideas I might have had of where the story was going to go. Every time I settled into "oh I seeeee, interesting", something subtly shifted in the narrative and we were off in a totally different direction, leaving me constantly, and joyfully, on the back foot.

And I think that was a wonderful thing, for all that "unpredictability" is such a complex and messy topic in how we discuss novels. We yearn to be surprised - we say "ugh, I could see the end coming a mile off" as a terrible insult when reviewing - but so often that surprise comes at the expense of good plotting, pacing and foreshadowing. You can easily surprise a reader by totally changing the parameters of the story, throwing in a deus ex machina, or just making something up about the substance of the world that had never been mentioned before. Of course you can. But I would much prefer a predictable story full of Chekhov's entire armament shed than one that prioritises the reader being unable to see the end coming over making sure that end is well earned. Thankfully, plenty of stories manage to do both, so it's not a real concern. The interesting thing is managing to write a story where there isn't much in the way of foreshadowing, but the ending still feels earned and supported by what's come before.

Which is what Chandrasekera has done here.

I was absolutely unprepared for how this story was going to progress. There is no way I could have predicted it. But it never feels* like those changes are sudden moments of "SURPRISE BITCH! DIDN'T SEE ME COMING HUH?". Instead, they are integrated into the story much more gently, much more softly, and so do not jar when the moment comes. And, critically, they mostly do not jar the protagonist, and so the reader is somewhat forced by his (frankly distressing at times) levels of willingness to go with the flow to not overreact to dramatic changes. Fetter doesn't care, and he knows more about the situation, so why should we?

The whole story thus has a drifting, floating tone and pace, making it feel somewhat longer than its size, and somewhat at odds with the often heavy content it's dealing with. Throughout the course of the story we grapple with colonialism, autocracy, war and famine, racial profiling, religious violence, non-religious violence, and a whole host of other issues one can find in a state that does not care for all of its citizens. But that gentle tone never undermines the seriousness of the issues at hand. For all that Fetter, and thus the reader, is never particularly surprised, especially not in a dramatic way, by changes to the story and the situation he observes, that does not mean he (and we) are unable to feel the seriousness of it. It's simply that all things in the story are communicated and internalised slowly, and if anything, that lends them more weight, because we are forced to simply... sit with them.

The city much of the story takes place in is also an interesting setting, because of the way its oppressiveness is revealed to us. At first, Luriat seems somewhat utopian - it is kind to its newcomers, with free housing and no need to work, and easy access to citizenship, provided you fill in some forms. But we slowly discover that this is only the surface, and there are much nastier tendencies hiding beneath, both in how it treats those outside its boundaries, and, more quietly, those within. Fetter slowly starts to see how the concept of race science permeates all the social interactions, bureaucratic behaviours and all levels of life in Luriat, how truly rotten it all is. And because it is revealed so slowly, we have to sit with it all and really think on what it means, how it affects every interaction. By being so slowly understood, it is hammered home all the more firmly.

There's a similar approach to the fantastical in the novel as well. In some ways, it feels like magical realism - the magic is treated incredibly offhandedly, just another part of life, not to be remarked upon, and critically, not to be explained. But what starts as small bits of the fantastical slowly builds and builds until it feels overwhelming, and some parts do merit an explanation. And the way they integrate with the building of the plot at times lends itself more to the feel of urban fantasy, so it ends up being hard to quantify quite what genre this is or isn't... which honestly, I really like about it. It simply is what it is.

Which again, loops back to that unpredictability. Of course, some of this may be my lack of familiarity with Sri Lankan literature. Maybe it's actually super predictable if you're well informed on the scene. But coming at it as someone who isn't, it doesn't contextualise neatly into a box that I have, while vibing partly with several of them, and so either I don't have the apparatus to use meta knowledge to predict it, or it's doing an interesting job of rejecting that predictability. Either way, I enjoyed it very much.

The only thing I did not always enjoy was the way the characters, particularly the protagonist, Fetter, were built. By his background, by the way the world is, Fetter is intensely naive about some aspects of life, especially politics. This naivety bleeds through into how the world is explained to us through his lens - leaving parts of it as a total blank because he absolutely does not understand them, and blatantly says so. And that part, the way his viewpoint affects the worldbuilding, I love. It's synthesised very thoroughly and never feels like an excuse or a way to run away from creating something. However, on a personal level, I often struggle with naive main characters, especially when they seem not to learn and overcome this naivety, even with time. For the bulk of the story, Fetter has lived in the city for year - become a resource for newcomers on navigating its paperwork, even - but he still hasn't grasped a lot of the political realities around the atrocities committed quietly by the city. He knows, more or less, but he does not really understand, especially the why and the wherefore, until very very late in the story, and far later than seems to make sense to the reader. Luckily, Chandrasekera manages to make him sufficiently endearing otherwise as a character that this is somewhat forgiveable, and it does make sense in the context of his background... but I like my characters savvy, in general, and so this was a minor disappointment.

In the grand scheme of things, however, it mattered not at all. The book was thoroughly enjoyable, engaging and thoughtful right from the start, and I was hooked throughout my time reading it... even before the point, quite near the end, when everything went down. Chandrasekera wrote an amazing book anyway, and then right when you were getting comfortable with the ending, decided to turn everything on its head and make it a stunning book, in a way that forces you to reexamine the narrative that went up to this point and go "oh... oh of course". I will give you no more than that in explanation, because it was a joy to be surprised by, but it alone, as a little moment, made the book 5 stars for me, even aside from every other bit of lovely prose and careful world building that led to that point.

If you like magical realism, if you like worlds full of mystery, if you like characters lost in the sea of events that are bigger than them, and if you like stories full of critique for the hardness of the world, this is a story for you. It's beautiful, sometimes hard, and constantly thoughtful, and I loved it.

*ok except for one time but that is... a special case and honestly what makes the book a 5 star read for me, so shush.