I was caught offguard by how unique and intense this book was right from the first page, and was swept away immediately. I was all in from that opening sentence, and when I said so in an IG story, I received feedback from a few other people/ARC reviewers that I was in for an amazing read. I love how you're dropped into this fantasy world, which is magical but also has some modern similarities that feel surprising, and trusted to keep up as things move along. The story is visceral and tactile in places, contemplative in others, with political intrigue and intertwining subplots that come together beautifully. It was so unique, imaginative, and well executed, and the writing itself is beautiful, in style and form. I loved having this as an ebook because I highlighted so much to look back on later! I could see this book being polarizing, because it has a somewhat surreal feel sometimes, and the worldbuilding requires the reader's attention to keep up; however this is my favorite type of worldbuilding (other examples: Rivers Solomon, Yoon Ha Lee, Tamsyn Muir, Ann Leckie) and it was done skillfully.

The Saint of Bright Doors manages to be both one of a kind, and also the exact kind of book I love :) I will absolutely read more by Vajra Chandrasekera.

I adored the writing. It was incredibly engaging, and the way it spoke about important contemporary topics without making it seem too political was amazing. Fetter was a character who was enjoyable to follow - the idea of your entire life (until that moment) leading to one thing you were told you had to do worked well in the book.

This book had some nice surprises, as it does not always go the path I expected it to follow. At times, I was not entirely sure why we should care about what I was reading. However, overall, I think it was fine - all books have bits that drag out for just a bit too long.

I enjoyed the world-building - the connection of things we know and recognize from our world being incorporated into a fantastical world worked well to explain certain plot points, I’d say, although I can see why it might be different for others - taking them out of the world so carefully built and back into ours.

This book is able to put so much, in so little - it is so concise and avoids being too descriptive about the fantastical elements. I really enjoyed the ending, as again, it was not really what I had expected at all. At this point, I think having read many fantasy books that seem to follow a particular line, this was a fun stand-alone outlier.

Thank you to NetGalley and Tor Publishing Group for the ARC!

The Saint of Bright Doors is a stand alone debut South Asian fantasy book with immersive world-building and queer characters.

We follow Fetter, a boy whose shadow was ripped from him at birth by his mother. She is raising him as an assassin who will one day kill his father. However, Fetter deviates from his mother's plans and settles in a town called Luriat, where he becomes enamored with the mystical bright doors.

The Saint of Bright Doors immediately pulled me in. Fetter's character is caught between his own desires and the responsibilities set to him by his mother. I found him to be a compelling and relatable character.
The story blends elements of realism and magic. It was be disorienting at times.

Unfortunately my reading experience of The Saint of Bright Doors was okay at best. I found certain parts of the plot riveting while other parts dragged on. The moments where I was bored felt endless.

I can see this book being divisive in the book community. People who really like it will love it , others will find it intriguing but have issues with the pacing , while a third group may just completely hate it. You will know a few chapters in which group you fall into.

Overall The Saint of Bright Doors is a clever book from a great new voice in fantasy. I would definitely pick up other books by Chandrasekera in the future.

I have not started reading this e-ARC yet, but I was sent a physical copy of this, and I cannot wait to read that instead.

Thank you, Tor, for giving me a physical copy!

3.5✰ // there were many elements i enjoyed in The Saint of Bright Doors. i really appreciated the detailed and in-depth world building that Chandrasekera developed and i also thought that the fantasy elements were very well written. however, some aspects of the book’s overall flow seemed a bit disjointed to me. perhaps, if the book had been edited to create a more sinuous flow in the storyline, then i may have felt more engaged earlier in the text.

thank you so much to Tor Publishing and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I don't think I can give this one an accurate star rating, to be completely honest. I loved it. I didn't love it. And I almost DNFed it numerous times. I think that someone has to be in the exact right mood for this to resonate and I wish that I'd met this novel during one of those moods.

This is an extremely ambitious and utterly surreal novel with a fascinating premise. Fetter, one of the almost-chosen ones, is left floundering in the wake of being raised by his mother with the singular purpose of killing his father, the leader of a highly visible cult/religion. After escaping his rural hometown, Fetter finds himself in the city of Luriat, where everything is more than it seems and finds himself in group therapy. Devils and the divine mingle in this story about mysterious doors and what happens to those whose purpose leaves them behind.

This was a fever dream of a book. At times, delightful and yet utterly nonsensical. The author tackles generational trauma and other complex relationship dynamics. The novel's strengths lie in its ambitious premise and thought-provoking commentary on politics, caste, race, and religion. The prose is rich and vivid, with great quotes that capture the essence of the story.

However, the book can also be pretentious and challenging to navigate. The message can get lost amidst the dense prose, and it may not be everyone's cup of tea. The Saint of Bright Doors is a novel that requires patience and careful reading to fully appreciate its meaning and metaphor. It is best savored in small doses, allowing readers to delve into its bewildering and enigmatic world.

Overall, The Saint of Bright Doors is a modern classic that pushes the boundaries of storytelling, but it may not appeal to readers looking for a straightforward narrative. It offers a unique reading experience that rewards those who are willing to embrace its strangeness and explore its hidden depths.

I wanted to love this book but constantly has wavering feelings throughout the story. Some parts were very intriguing and others were very slow and uninteresting to me.

What a trip this was. For anybody who has been missing China Miéville's particular style of politically-driven speculative work, here comes Vajra Chandrasekera. A world that feels very much like our own (computers, dating apps, cities and sectarian violence and bureaucracy) smashes into a fictional one in ways I don't know I've ever seen before, and I found it so freaking refreshing the entire time. Fetter is a complicated and wonderfully human main character, despite being the assassin-trained son of a possibly-messianic cult leader and lacking a shadow to boot. The book expands into an uneasy liminal space as it goes on, moving the reader from something that feels like what they know into something altogether stranger, and it ends with a head-turner and a half. It's a thoroughly impressive debut, bold and bright and wonderful as a door that is no longer a door.

When Fetter is born, his mother uses a nail to tear away his shadow and the shadow of his umbilical cord to strangle it. She then trains him as an assassin whose ultimate purpose is to exact revenge on his absent father who is one of many messiahs who roam the lands.

Fetter finally goes to find his way in the world, trying to live a life free of his childhood influence and his bloody teenage years.

In a new city, he finds himself entangled with groups who are fighting against a fascist government, those who represent the government and those who are trying to find answers to the mysterious bright doors that appear throughout the city.

The Saint of the Bright doors is an ethereal urban fantasy that takes the reader on a mind-boggling journey. Along the way it contemplates the intersection of fascism, racism and religion. It wrestles with how to understand and fight these dark forces. In the end, there are no clear or easy answers, but the reader (or at least this reader) can’t help but grapple with the questions that are raised, not only throughout the book but in the day-to-day reality if our own world.

Expertly crafted and constantly surprising, The Saint of Bright Doors is one my favorite books I’ve read this year.

Thanks to Tor and NetGalley for the advance reader copy.

It’s been quite some time since I read a story that pushed me to the edge of my comprehension. It’s been a few hours since I wrapped up The Saint of Bright Doors, and frankly, I’m still pondering what it is that I just experienced.

I was drawn to this book based on the description as well as a knowledge that stories focused on the Indian and Asian communities are typically lush in the descriptions of the everyday, all while building in pieces of the religion and mythology that are woven throughout the culture. In that sense, The Saint of Bright Doors does not disappoint. The details about the main characters, including our main focus, Fetter, are vivid and imaginative. The boroughs of the cities and sections of the islands are bright and dark at the same moment, as the culture is promoted while the pending plague and regime change looms like a tsunami in the background.

Maybe this says more about my structure as a reader, but I’m still struggling with what type of book I just read. Is it fantasy? Possibly, with world-building and mythology. Is it allegorical? Also possible, since there’s a journey and god-like creatures. Is it non-fiction? Is it fiction? I think the distraction of not knowing what the book intended to be made it a difficult read for me. I couldn’t tell if I was supposed to be following the journey of Fetter, or if I was supposed to be translating the Mother and Father into a warning a la a morality play.

There are many bright spots in this book but in so many ways, I wanted the author to focus more on specific pieces. Hej and the relationship. The Bright Doors, including the one our main character was assigned. His powers.

This may warrant a re-read on my part but for now, I’m going to give it a 3 rating.

A big thank you to Tor Publishing and NetGalley for allowing me to read an advanced e-book reader copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

This book starts at a sprint and does not stop until it screeches to a halt at its conclusion. It grabbed me at the beginning and did not let go through all of its complex and interconnected pieces: devils and anti-gods, unchosen and almost-chosen, time being compressed and rearranged, fascinating background mythologies and folklore, plagues, pogroms, seditious plays... The worldbuilding drew me in immediately, and the book lends itself to re-reads to further immerse the reader in the intricacies of the world. I, for one, plan to re-read it and do just that.

The Saint of Bright Doors follows the main character Fetter, who was raised like a tool, but now he is trying to build his own life and purposes. He left his rural hometown and found his way to a big modern city(And by modern I really mean it). The world is interesting, full of cults, rebels, and hidden gods. And the city... The city is unique, full of magical and mysterious bright doors. And Fetter is on the brink of discovering their secrets.

We had a very strange relationship with this book. I tried to get into it a couple of times since getting it, but I guess I failed in the end.

It's unusual because the book feels immersive and atmospheric and usually I enjoy it. But in this case, the atmosphere pressured me and gave me some uneasy feelings. The idea of all these cults and their revelries and the gods with hidden agenda... It was weird. I didn't really want to read it, didn't automatically take the book to read another chapter, and tried to pick something else every time. I started it not once, but always returned to the same result. So in the end I decided not to finish it. Sometimes it happens - this book and I, we are just not for each other.

Also, it wasn't easy to understand what was going on in the book. I usually like when authors just drop us in the middle of the world and let us figure out everything by ourselves. But in this case, it was overwhelming.

I still think that this book will find its readers, there are a lot of riddles to solve and many intriguing things to love.

And I want to compliment the ambitious idea and the writing style - they really work to create the right atmosphere.

Thank you Netgalley and Tordotcom for providing me with this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Absolutely phenomenal!

And I'm definitely tagging this novel as "idk what's going on but i'm down." It shares a space with novels such as the Dyachenkos' Vita Nostra series and Hawkins's The Library at Mount Char, if you want to see where I'm getting at. Utterly bizarre, otherworldly, and definitely the type of speculative fiction I love to read, so ymmv. (Like, seriously. Don't say I didn't warn you.)

I loved the writing. Sure, it's purpley and over the top, but it's done in a creative way where you can still understand the gist of the plot or the situation without being super confused. It's very unique and I'd love to read more from the author.

It's really hard to describe this book. I had the same feelings and emotions with The Locked Tomb series, except this one was way more serious. The worldbuilding is a lot and feels all over the place (with the politics and religion and culture and literally everything else), yet it was contained enough that I could truly appreciate what the author created. It was a great metaphor for how politically and socially messed up a society can be, and how difficult it is to navigate around a new and different society as an immigrant and outsider trying to build a new life.

I think the one thing I disliked was the ending. It sort of fell flat, like letting the air out of a balloon by untying the end. I was expecting a huge bang because the lead-up was wild and had so much tension, but then it just ended that way. Oh well. You can't have everything. But I still loved the story though.

One more thing and this is just a personal preference. I actually wanted more out of the bright doors and devils. At certain parts, it turned Annilation-esque (2018 film). I really loved those scenes, but I'm always down for more cosmic horror.

Now where can I buy a signed copy?

Thank you to Tordotcom and NetGalley for this arc.

HIGHLIGHTS
~a support group for UnChosen Ones
~messiahs who really deserve murdering
~pearl-divers
~far too much paperwork
~a Very Deadly wisdom tooth

2023 seems to be the year of the baffling but amazing masterpiece; this is the second book I’ve read so far this year that has confused but amazed me.

BY ALL MEANS, KEEP ‘EM COMING!

<The moment Fetter is born, Mother-of-Glory pins his shadow to the earth with a large brass nail and tears it from him.>

The Saint of Bright Doors is more than a little tricky to summarise. It starts in a reasonably familiar mode, albeit with its own beautifully unique flavour; a young boy with supernatural abilities is trained as an assassin, raised to kill his distant, powerful father. Ah, yes, we think, settling in comfortably. We know this story! Let us embark upon it again, as retold through Chandrasekera’s eyes and hands and voice.

Well, my darlings, this is not, in fact that story. At all.

Because when Fetter gets to the big city, he just…stays there. Makes a quiet little life for himself. A boyfriend; a support group for other UnChosen Ones; helping out immigrants with their paperwork. He loses interest, and belief in, any great destiny of his own. After the, ah, unique way he was raised, he just wants some peace, to be normal, keep his head down and not make waves.

<He has put away childish things. His mad, violent childhood; the indoctrination; his training as a child soldier in his mother’s war against his father: these things, these people are in his past.>

He ends up Involved anyway.

I’m honestly astonished by how much Chandrasekera manages to pack in to under 400 pages. It’s as though an 800 page doorstopper has been distilled down to its purest and most potent possible form; nothing is rushed, everything has as much space as it needs, but it’s all so concentrated, powerful, especially coming at us through Chandrasekera’s prose, which grabs you by the throat like a garotte. I read the entire book in 24 hours, ravenous for every word, and I can tell it’s going to be a long time before I stop thinking about it.

This is a book that is equal parts about magic and fascism; about supernatural doors that can’t be opened and the weaponisation of organised religion; about devils (sorry, I mean laws and powers) and the inherent, inextricable violence of colonialism. And the thing is, I’ve read books that deal with these topics before (okay, maybe not the doors) but this feels very different, somehow – less cinematic, maybe, more human, messier, more difficult. The Saint of Bright Doors is not the story of a hero either creating or joining the resistance, and neatly cutting off the head of the snake in a dramatic climax; it doesn’t follow the pattern we’re used to, and Chandrasekera uses that to shock us open to a very different way of doing things. This is a book that plunges the reader into a state of dreamy dissonance in which anything and everything seems possible – and is.

I don’t know how to put it better than that.

Because if I try and actually explain The Saint of Bright Doors to you, it really sounds like it shouldn’t work. There’s so many threads, and none of them follow the tropes and conventions we reflexively expect; which should be jarring, but in the shocked dream-state Chandrasekera puts the reader in, it’s instead easy to just go with the flow the story, despite it being so unfamiliar in its bones. The characters are not who we expect (and want?) them to be either; Fetter in particular, as he has no interest in being a hero, doesn’t burn with passion to make things better or stop the evils being perpetuated by his father and said father’s followers. What do you do with a main character like that, in a story where terrible things are happening? Isn’t he obligated to join the resistance? Isn’t that where the story is? What’s going on?

<It is obvious they fear infection, but infection by disease or ideas or identities?>

I can only tell you that it all makes sense as you read it. This is very much one of those you had to be there things – The Saint of Bright Doors is a book you have to read to understand. But that shouldn’t be a problem, because despite what I’ve said it’s easy to read; the pages fly by. Fetter may not be the hero we want, but what he is is an immensely sympathetic (and relatable) twenty-something who doesn’t know what to do with his life, and is just trying to preserve it in the midst of chaotic horror. He’s so easy to understand, to empathise with; the lack of cinematic High Drama is what makes him read so real. There’s a particular, pivotal moment where he Does A Thing that makes no sense at all – but it makes no sense in such a completely human way. I’ve been in that same daze, where you keep walking forward even though you’ll never be able to explain to another person why you did; it jolted me, to see that state of mind captured so perfectly on the page. Fetter isn’t a hero because he’s a real person, and honestly, that makes for better reading.

And my gods, the magic! The supernatural aspects of this story feel both unique and raw; not raw in the sense of unpolished but in the sense of wild, aching, real-and-unpretty. Undomesticated, which is a word I’ve never used to describe magic before but fits so perfectly here. I’ve never read a fantasy where the magical elements felt quite like this; so strange but so believable, impossible but obvious at the same time. Just the fact that we have a support group for UnChosen Ones makes me want to shriek with delight, not (just) because that idea is so damn cool but because all of these people come from different, contradictory faiths that are despite that all equally valid – as evidenced by the fact that Fetter is far from the only one with magical talents. HOW DOES THAT WORK? HOW CAN THE PATH AND THE WALKING AND THE MAN IN THE FIRE ALL BE REAL AT THE SAME TIME? Gah!

(Do not expect an explanation. You will find no hard magic systems here.)

<The bright doors are not locked. They are not even closed. The bright doors of Luriat are wide open.>

The way the supernatural elements were braided into the fascism honestly stunned me – the more I think about it, the more impressed I am, the more I adore Chandraseker’s worldbuilding and twistiness and weird brilliant mind. But one does not, obviously, adore the fascism, and I’m not sure I’m smart enough to talk about this properly, to fully appreciate what Chandrasekera did here. We’re shown a supercontinent (not a world) being battered and burned by pogroms and war, fuelled and incited by the twin sects of the Path Above and the Path Behind, and it is horrifying without being nightmarish, somehow. We see mass executions and people being burned alive, but in that state of dreamy dissonance Chandrasekera has created it is possible to look at these things without flinching – and I think that’s the point.

Let me put it this way: usually, I skim or skip over these kinds of scenes. I simply Cannot. But Chandrasekera let me – made me? – look, and I think there’s something important in that, even if I can’t quite put into words what or why. Maybe because – flinching, and looking away, is…well, cowardly? We flinch away from these same horrors in the real world far too often; we prefer not to see, not to know, not to think about it. Chandrasekera doesn’t give us that option, hypnotises us into looking and seeing, while simultaneously making us able to see. Not by making it less horrifying, but by making us able to bear looking at it. Because we should look at it.

Do you see?

<What I want to do, ultimately, is to break the cycle in which plague and pogrom for the segregated, disaggregated many lead to power and profit for the few. At least for a little while. I want to show people that the death and the loss we’ve learned to accept are neither a curse to be borne nor a price to be paid, but are the efficient functioning of Luriat, working as designed.”>

One thing I do want to note is how well Chandrasekera captures the horrifying absurdity of fascism, something I don’t think I’ve ever seen fiction do before. There’s a bleak humour to the endless lists of governmental factions and departments, a ‘you have to laugh or you’ll cry’ weight to Fetter’s inability to keep straight all the different police and military death-squads. It’s not comedic, but it highlights the despairing wtf of the rational mind being confronted with irrational hate; how the reasoning is so bad it should be funny, would be funny if it were, you know, not about genocide. I can’t think of another book that points out that not only is fascism evil, it’s fucking stupid; that you can’t have fascism without impossible-to-comprehend levels of stupidity.

(Alas, not the kind of stupid that means unorganised, or unable to achieve its objectives. If only.)

And I appreciated, honestly, that none of the cast make any bones about the fact that fascism cannot be overthrown peacefully.

<the power of rulers is always based on death magic, and you can’t topple that without violence.>

This is a weird, wildly imaginative debut that bids you leave your expectations at the door; your prior experience with the fantastical genre will not help you here. There are layers upon layers to this story, and yet I promise you, it is not a dense, heavy read; it is more than a little surreal, and subversive, and strange, and I love it. The Saint of Bright Doors is a shooting star, coming upon you with no warning and full surprise to dazzle you dizzy. It is not fun, but it is impossible to put down and dear gods is it good.

If it doesn’t make all the Best of 2023 lists come December, it will be a crime.

This book is gorgeous and unsettling and strange and I'm not sure how to even start talking about it. I'm a little obsessed--which is odd, because I wasn't even sure I liked it while I was reading it. At the time I thought it was ingenious but not necessarily enjoyable, but now I want to put it in everyone's hands and tap my foot while they read so that I can grill them on what they thought about it.

Saints, the divine, and even passed-over prophets are thick on the ground in The Saint of Bright Doors; the world is poetic and immersive but just a few degrees to one side of readily relatable. It doesn't take turns between the traditional and the modern so much as it shows the chaotic fallout of myth and modernity's collision and messy overlap. It wasn't comfortable to read but I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. It's brilliant even when it's not pleasant.

The pervasive feeling that went with reading this book was "unmoored"; the setting, the time, the characters--everything about this story stands out for sitting uneasily in the mind, or at least for being a ill-at-ease with itself. I started out thinking that I was reading a folkloric-leaning fantasy set in a pre-industrial age and was unsettled when Fetter and his mother get into a car and go somewhere; not a carriage, a car. So I adjusted my sense of the world and the time--to have it jostled again when we find that the gods walking as mortals have not just very earthly yens (and means) for power and control, but also crowdfunding campaigns and televangelists.

"Fetter has seen the convoys of the elite, with their long rows of vehicles, servants, bodyguards, drummers, elephants, spear-carriers, heralds, and motorcycles. Uniforms were a keystone of such displays."
Just *try* anchoring that to an easy referent for place and time.

Our main character--maybe an antihero? though nothing in this book is so clean-cut and uncomplicated--is Fetter. That someone named a child Fetter tells you a bit about the story you're getting into. Fetter is the cast-off son of a man who started out as a pirate and made himself into a messiah before abandoning his child and partner. His mother is obsessed with his father and has raised Fetter to be a tool for revenge. She pulls his emotional strings and manipulates him at every turn; both she and his father--though really, a staggering number of the people in this world--are hopelessly self-involved and never bother to see Fetter for who he is.

But who is he? Fetter's not sure either. He is terribly insecure, desperate to be valued by the people whose esteem is safely out of reach; he's petty and unsure of himself, painfully uneasy in his own skin and uncomfortably ready to trample anyone who looks like a competitor for the approval he craves, and he's inured against trust and honesty by a childhood full of object lessons in their dangers. For all that it's obvious he came upon his brokenness honestly, Fetter is still a difficult character to sympathize with.

This book is so lush and layered and gritty and absolutely nothing is simple. Luriat, the city to which Fetter heads to escape his past, seems like a bastion of modernity and decency at first, a stark relief when contrasted with his backwards village, deeply disturbing mother, and her folk magic practices.

"'What do you want to do with your days?' It's a question they ask every week at the support group for the unchosen, the almost-chosen, the chosen-proximate."

"Here in Luriat, foreign prophetic visions are detritus, not destiny."

Luriat offers free services to its residents, so that no one has to work unless they wish to afford nicer things, but that civilized decency coexists with, and in fact requires, overlooking pogroms, waves of refugees, and internment camps.

"It is through responding to these crises and disasters, he learns, that Luriat's free services came into being: small hard-won victories immediately compromised by the frames of race and caste that control access to them."

There's incisive post-colonial criticism to go with the adept social commentary--and oh, the layers!
Once upon a time, a light-skinned invader from a foreign land showed up on an island with conquest and hegemony in mind, bringing along a shame-based religion. That time was both 10,000 years ago and 20ish years ago. That man stole what he wanted and then brings the old ways and the modern industrial age crashing together and he (literally, in a way only fantasy can realize) stole that island people's land and past from them and erased their memories of the old ways, remaking the world in his image.

Fetter is fascinated with the bright doors in the city of Luriat but it slowly becomes clear that he's something of a door himself, a portal through which the clashing, uneasy relationship between mother & father, tradition & modernity, or myth & capitalist realpolitik is acted out. I still don't know what to make of the way the story ended and whether I think it's the closest this novel comes to having a weak spot or was just right and couldn't have happened any other way. What a book! 4.5 stars

I received an ARC from Tor and Netgalley in exchange for an unbiased review.

P. S.: This is apropos of nothing, but until I was mulling over how to describe The Saint of Bright Doors, I would have sworn it had next to nothing in common with The Archive Undying, a book I read shortly afterward. But the more I groped for words for SoBD, the more I saw broad-strokes parallels in the things that struck me about each book: both have protagonists that are compelling but not comfortable to spend time with, both look at people warped by early close relationships that were exploitative and lacked boundaries, both follow the adult lives of people left behind in the life-altering wake of a god, and they both use narration-POV changes late in the book to startling effect. (SoBD feels decidedly South Asian and AU is set in a world with a Southeast Asian feel and giant robots, so... the parallels do end.)

The Saint of Bright Doors is a book that takes some time to get into and for me, it wasn’t where my mind was at when I encountered it. The drama and high stakes the author sets up, creates beautiful imagery in the mind, but it’s almost too dreamlike and I had a hard time finding firm ground to follow the story. I often like a book that allows me to follow along in what feels to be a dream come to life, but there seems to be so much going on in such a short period of time that I would have to reread pages over again in order to comprehend what was happening. I asked for the audiobook which made it marginally better which is why I can give this book the 3 stars I gave it. I wanted to be mesmerized and hypnotized by the world which was painted by Chandrasekera, however I was simply left a bit confused. I needed a bit more linear plot to follow in order to keep moving forward. I did find it very creative and would probably give more of his works another chance. I may even come back to this at another time when my head is in the right space for it. I think I need to be in a more contemplative mindset.

Evocative and mesmerizing, this view of a world similar to our own and yet fundamentally different is both raw and fully formed. With a complicated history and a lovable hero, it will entrance you and keep you guessing.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for my free copy. These opinions are my own.

Thank you to NetGalley for an Advanced Review Copy.

This debut certainly starts off strong and reminiscent of the opening to Rebecca Roanhorse's Black Sun. The remainder of the story, while beautifully written, was at times convoluted and chaotic, hence the 2.5 star rating.

I generally prefer a robust world with intricate world-building. I think this book had some of that, but presented in a way that was both hard to follow and keep up with. I think this can be done well (ex. the Malazan series) in a way that presents the reader with building-blocks and hints, allowing them to work some things out for themselves. I just didn't feel like that was successfully done in this case.

I also struggled with the "so what" of the general overarching plot. The middle of the book is only tangentially related to the mystery of the doors in Luriat, almost as if the author was simply adding to the page count. It was also hard to situate Fetter within the plot(s); his rather apathetic nature made it both difficult to understand the world around him and to understand his motivations. For me, there was too much mystery and not enough pay off.

I think the idea was interesting, but the execution didn't pay off for me.

There were very interesting parts to this, but I had a hard time getting into it, and a hard time at the end feeling like we'd gotten somewhere. Not quite what I expected I guess.

Brilliant book. I love the beginning where Fetter remembers his shadow has torn from him at birth. As we learn more about this, we learn he isn't tied to the earth, and can float at will. The word fetter itself means a chain or shackle attached to the ankle to restrain movement. It seemed so interesting to me that his name is Fetter when he is so unfettered.

So from the very first moment I wanted to know where that seeming contradiction would go.

There were some rough bits at the beginning where the tense slipped from past to present tense rather at random, and a bit of heavy-handed world building after that brilliant beginning with Fetter and his shadow, but the story itself. Oh wow. What a rich, amazing story with a very satisfying ending.