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.

I'm at a loss for words
This was so good.
The Saint of Bright Doors is a very complex story, about family, and magic, and the releationship between one self and one's destiny.
This is the story of Fetter, a young man raised by a mother who trained him to kill his father, but years later when he makes a life for himself away from the trail of blood and betrayal that surrounded his childhood, everything changes when Luriat, the beautiful magical city with a very cool secret, is preparing to receive an important religious figure on tour, this being none other than Fetter's own father. His past is catching up with him.
Told through a very peculiar pair of eyes and an enthralling writing style (that deserves 5 stars on its own), you see the political intrincacies of the city's politics and religion, the magic sweeping all around, the relationships between the characters and how they bend and/or break and the growth and constant change of our main character.
This is a story about fathers and sons and mothers, and rebels and politics, and doors and paths, and lovers and friends, and devils and saints, and angels and monsters, and immigrants and allies, and doctors and shadows, and learning and loving and hating.
Will Fetter fulfill the destiny was throwin into him? Will he fail? Will unknown forces do it in his stead? FIND OUT WHEN THIS BOOK COMES OUT!!

CONTENT WARNING: This book contains contents that may trigger sensitive readers like violence, religious fanatism, talks of matricide and homicide, slight sexual behaviour and exorcism.

If you only take one thing from my review, it’s this: I love this book so much. So much. It is so good. It’s going to have a permanent place on my top shelf, only I’m sure it will actually live in a small pile of beloved books much closer to hand, getting its pages dogeared and its spine warped.

The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera has everything: palpably vivid worldbuilding! Cutting political insight! Quietly wry humor! Propulsive multi-threaded narrative! Knockout prose! Complex and compelling characters, even the minor ones! I usually limit how many exclamation points I use in one review, but I can’t help myself!

The novel follows Fetter, a man somewhat adrift in the city of Luriat. He tethers himself to his community by offering assistance to newer immigrants and refugees to the city, but his deeper longings are still confused: what does he want, himself? It’s hard to tease out his personal desires from those of his psychotically overbearing mother, a woman who shaped him from birth into an assassin. He was meant to be her weapon for destroying his own father, a saint of dubious intentions, but he chose to leave that life behind. Now he spends time with other un-Chosen Ones in a support group, and tries to accept things as they come.

But what do you accept in a city rife with corruption, random violence, and deep economic disparity, and what do you work to change? Fetter is enticed by the opportunity to improve his chosen home, especially because it comes with the chance to learn more about Luriat’s bright doors. The doors are both mysterious and slyly mundane, seeming to be nothing more than ordinary—if slightly ostentatious—architectural fixtures. Why they suddenly appear, though, and what they open into, is unknown. Fetter may be uniquely equipped to discover what the bright doors really are, and in so doing understand a much deeper truth about Luriat itself.

Luriat has elements of New Crobuzon from China Miéville’s novels, an urban wilderness both gritty and gleaming, a bit of order in its chaos and vice versa. But it also has—and hear me out—a bit of Haruki Murakami’s Tokyo, not just because there are unexpected alleys and sudden corners that slip into the surreal, but also because the way that Fetter goes about exploring. He’s one of those characters who, though he definitely has agency, tends to have things happen to him. The city acts upon him, not quite a character and not quite a phenomenon, but definitely not just a setting.

This largely works very well. The city acts through its various avatars, and Fetter responds, and we get to explore Chandrasekera’s incredible world from many different vantages.

The Kafkaesque section during which Fetter is imprisoned in the camps is a bit wearying. I can’t exactly fault Chandrasekera for so accurately conveying both Fetter’s personal depression and the sense of frustration and despair so omnipresent among the political prisoners, refugees, and other unlucky souls trapped in an intentionally opaque system. It has the sense of a map the size of a country, except that it’s a bureaucracy the size of a state. The camps feel bigger than Luriat itself, complete with their own districts and administrative centers—a city not within a city, but perpetually outside of a city. Still, because Fetter has no clear overarching goal—is he still looking for ways to kill his father? Is he looking for a different paradigm than either accepting or resisting the one his mother gave him?—it becomes a little sloggy. Which may itself be the point, metaphorically speaking, but it does still bog down the narrative a bit.

Things pick up when Fetter begins to embrace his powers, but confusion does seep in again as Chandrasekera switches to an unexpected new POV (although the groundwork was definitely laid for the change—pay attention to those not-actually-typo shifts to the first person!) in order to wrap up the story a bit too quickly. Part of this is objection, though, I freely admit might be me not knowing or misunderstanding some of the themes in play—I don’t know enough about Sri Lankan culture and history, and I may be misinterpreting how I should be reading.

But it’s a quibble, and it shouldn’t deter you from reading The Saint of Bright Doors; it’s just a caveat that the ending may not be what you expect in terms of the narrative cadences you’re used to. Fans of Robert Jackson Bennett and Daniel O’Malley will love the magnificent worldbuilding and sociopolitical insightfulness. And the existential insightfulness. The Saint of Bright Doors asks really, really big questions about time, and who gets to control myth, and what myth actually accomplishes in the world. When stories and interpretations compete for ascendancy, where do the losing ones go? What is the fate of all the failed Chosen Ones, and all the utopias or apocalypses they were supposed to usher in? Their stories don’t get told—but here in Luriat and in The Saint of Bright Doors, they finally do.

The Saint of Bright Doors is one of those books where you had better keep your arms and legs inside the moving narrative vehicle: the ride starts fast and doesn't stop. Catch 22 meets The Phantom Tollbooth and somehow it all works.

Fetter was raised to commit all five Unforgivables so that he might properly defy his father, the Perfect and Kind. He moved away from all of his family troubles and into the city of Luriat, known as much for its convoluted bureaucracy as for its Bright Doors. He makes a new life for himself, but he can't escape the devils he must not see, and people keep forwarding him emails for his father's cult's crowdfunding campaign.

As you can probably tell from that little snippet of plot, Fetter's story is complex almost to the point of density, but in a way that only requires suspension of disbelief. I trusted that details would become clear if and when they were meant to be clear (they did!), and was left with the feeling of falling into a frenzied dream.

The juxtaposition of fantastical elements with more mundane, practically anachronistic elements only added to that particular vibe: lost shadows, yawning portals, and mysterious visions of the half-moon are mentioned as casually as paperwork, facemasks, and asbestos.

I'm others will have much to say about the themes of religion, sin, colonization, and general categorization of "the loathly, lonely body" and its "thirty-one parts of impurity." I'm looking forward to reading those analyses, but all I can say is that everything layered perfectly upon itself, histories of frustration and prisons of empty virtue, and I was blown away by this story.

Recommended for fans of The Library at Mount Char, Nona the Ninth, and Piranesi.

I really really enjoyed this book! I'll admit I got a bit lost in the last third, but found my way back by the end. I've never read anything like this, and am really looking forward to Vajra Chandrasekera's other books (if they plan to write more). If you find yourself getting lost in the same section, please power through, it is absolutely worth it!

The world building of this book is complex, but in a way I'm not sure it's meant to be entirely understood. The layout of the continent and countries wasn't always clear to me, nor were the various cultures/religions, but for the most part this wasn't important for the greater plot. There are a few places the reader should know, but they're easy to keep track of.

Chandrasekera manages to mix modern technology with cities and places that feel that they should be ancient. I can't think of any other book that has the same vibes to the writing, and it really was incredible.

I love intelligent books. Gorgeous cover art and I loved the premise of this book (as well as portal fantasy in general). The poetic writing was exceptional and the world building top notch. I absolutely loved it.

Thank you Netgalley and Macmillan for providing me an electronic advanced copy of The Saint of Brights Doors. 

Fetter's a refugee in a city away from the small town his mother raised him to be an assassin to kill his father and dismantle his legacy. He has a boyfriend and a group of misfit religious figure rejects. He spends most of his time helping new refugees, ignoring regular programs against lower caste members of society, hanging out with his boyfriend, and going to his support group. 

One day, he is sucked into a conspiracy that threatens the way he views himself, his mother, his history, and his new city. In the city of bright doors locked that are locked and go nowhere, in a world where cutting your shadow makes you floor, Fetter is lost finding himself. 

This book is exquisitely written. I found the cast of characters as interesting and overwhelming as I found the world. 

The story was a bit uneven in pacing, and I occasionally had to refer back to remind myself of the characters. Since it was pitched as a novel about bright doors, I wanted them to have more weight. 

I enjoyed it. If you like dense, setting-based books, you should give it a try. I think I would like it better in print and would love to talk about it in a book club.