A world that was broken into two halves by a catastrophic event, a faith and society build around trade and improvement - People believe and work to improve themselves and the world. Though what does that mean is a point of theological discussion. Power is alluring, Power is a necessity when you organize people, especially markets. Financial, Social and Political Power. Manipulations, Conspiracies and Philosophical and Theological Lessons. If Improvement is the goal - whose Improvement? And How best to achieve it? And how to mend the broken world?

The Cathedral of Portals left me feeling dizzy, deeply touched and trying to put feelings into words of how many thoughts are inside this book that I want to hold onto, to think about and to form more of an opinion about that what I have now. So you can see that I deeply enjoyed this book and will probably digest it for months to come, re-read it too. It is well thought through, the characters are so very human and the world feels huge. I felt deep compassion and even pity, fell in love and saw my own struggles and failings in these characters and their world.

Honestly, I normally give a bit of insight in the characters of a book. Who I liked and why and who not and why. But here it is hard for me to do because the characters are the story and I do not want to spoil it or go onto a rant on how complex the relationships are, how they change, learn and hurt each other. I think I did already enough of that… Though I can say, to make me feel compassion for a villain of the story is an amazing accomplishment!

The book is long (988 pages are nothing to sneeze at) and slow paced but it does not feel like it is dragging its feet or giving you unnecessary scenes. It flows steadily along with it's characters, who are the driving force of this story and changing each other. There were a few repetitions of descriptions and explanations that were not needed for me, but they hardly got in my way. They were a friendly reminder, recall, during the first half of the book. Which is normal.

Hard family connections are discussed, if it is possible to mend those - and what if not? Including grief, emotional and physical abuse, neglect and pressure. It is approached in a way where those flaws are not minimized when you see how it started. The explanation is not an excuse, but a way to understand how people reach this spot and are still responsible for walking there and staying.How relationships can look like when you take different paths on how to solve and deal with the problem named the World, from platonic to romantic.The story carefully talks about how Kindness, unasked and even undeserved, can touch and change a person so deeply that they become better. And how that is not a guarantee at the same time. It is a risk to take and the question remains if the person thinks the risk worth it.

Gender is an interesting topic in this book as well. The Priests are Nonbinary. And I wonder if any of them struggle with that demand to give up their binary gender or if by the ceremony they do indeed leave it behind, that something there happens. But for this I can not answer it. But I loved how smooth it all felt with the pronouns. How Philothea struggles with their look - not androgynous enough - and yet it matters so little because it is more important who else they are and what they do and say.

Steinmetz has taken faith and the experience how different people interpret it, spinning his story exactly around the differences of opinion and how that effects our decisions and actions. What is change and what is improvement? What about guilt and responsibility, redemption? The story is filled with failure of its characters and of their systems. It fails, they fail, it twists and they twist it. And yet they try so hard to be better and to make the system better, to better their own relationship as well. And then there others who only focus on themselves. They are to be the center and if only they improved then everyone else also would improve. So there is disagreement on how it looks like and why. And of course there are always the people still being cruel and twisting the system to be good for them. The Story asks how not just to fight this but to change it in a way that might last. Especially for the religion this is interesting and something our own churches should consider when it comes to how they can approach change.

If you like to think and read about Change, Regret and Guilt, Failings and Mistakes, Ego and Sacrifice, Responsibility and Atonement, especially when it comes how these thing are not just individualistic questions but societal ones - this is THE Story. It won't give you all the answer. How could it? But it did give me plenty of food for thought.