Source: DRC via Netgalley (Tor Publishing Group, Tordotcom) in exchange for an honest review
Publication Date: July 11, 2023
Synopsis: Goodreads
Purchase Link: Amazon

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Why did I choose to read this book?

Read either the Netgalley or the Goodreads description of this book (linked above) and tell me you don’t want to know what the absolute fuck is going on in this book. It’s like it challenged me to understand what it might be about and honestly, challenge accepted.

What is this book about?

If I absolutely had to nail down what this book was about, I would say it’s about legacy. I wanted to say destiny, but I think that would be misleading. It starts off as a chosen one type story, but then Fetter leaves his path and starts his own life hidden away. His mother tries to put him back on his path, and his father looms as a larger-than-life religious figurehead that he’s “destined” to kill, but Fetter just wants to have a normal life. How Fetter is blown about and affected by both his mother’s and father’s legacies creates the plot and eventual ending of this book.

What is notable about this story?

I absolutely love a story that is able to conceal a twist until its reveal. I do not want to spoil this at all because it’s so masterfully done, but you will not be disappointed about how things come full circle. The ending is so satisfying.

The bright doors were so interesting. I would love to see some fan art renditions of what the doors look like. There’s one on the cover of the book, but I want more! The idea of “empty realms” or like, multiverses that die off, was an interesting take in the same world where Marvel’s multiverse exists, and the creepiness of the creatures that Fetter could see seeping out through the doors added extra urgency to the characters trying to study what the doors do.

There are so many weird things going on in this story that I didn’t know what to latch onto. if you’ve ever been to a zoo or a museum or even a conference where you had the “Look at that! OMG look over THERE! What’s THAT?!?!” feeling, that is the exact feeling that this book evokes. I read through to the end because I cared about what happened to Fetter, but also because if I just turned this particular corner something really fucking weird or strange could be there for me to enjoy. I never stopped being surprised and entertained in this book, like a golden retriever darting back and forth excited by yet another squirrel. SQUIRREL!

Was anything not so great?

Honestly I can’t find a lot to criticize with this book. It’s written with our current short attention spans in mind, the writing is lush and evocative, and it’s both story and character driven – something I would usually complain about but is done so well here I can’t complain.

What’s the verdict?

4 stars on Goodreads. If you are looking for a book that will hook you from the beginning and throw you on a roller coaster that takes you through a museum of beautiful paintings and terrible histories before ending in a completely different place than you thought you would get off, this book is for you. I highly recommend the experience.

This was a case of 'It's not you, it's me'. I enjoyed the idea of the book and was intrigued by the doors, but couldn't focus on the writing. Currently it's a dnf for me at 30%. I hope to pick up the book in the future and finish it then!

Thank you NetGalley and Tordotcom for the eARC

sets the high drama of divine revolutionaries and transcendent cults against the mundane struggles of modern life, resulting in a novel that is revelatory and resonant.Fetter was raised to kill, honed as a knife to cut down his sainted father. This gave him plenty to talk about in therapy. Vajra Chandrasekera is from Colombo, Sri Lanka. He has published over fifty short stories in magazines

i liked this so much it was so fresh and real and i read a lot of fantasy it doidnt seem like the books ive read before maybe a bit pretentious in the dialogue but i dont mind im going to read a second time like right now

Out of respect, I have not posted a review publicly as I am giving this only two stars and a DNF which is very rare for me. I made it 20% and still wasn't engaged. Of course I am curious to know what the doors actually are / what they do /if they lead somewhere, but not so curious that I would keep reading as my TBR pile gets ever taller.

I absolutely love the cover for this novel! It is so beautiful!! The novel’s premise is an interesting one. The main character, Fetter, has been trained his entire life (by his mother) to kill his cult-leader father. His life takes a few turns, and he escapes his mother’s grasp to a city with magical doors. Fetter becomes caught up with investigating the magical doors and plotting against an oppressive regime.

This novel is beautifully written. The way it’s written is almost poetic. The novel was a little bit more conceptual than I would normally read, but this read was so worth it! Looking forward to reading more work by Vajra Chandrasekera!

This is a remarkable piece of work. I really enjoyed maneuvering my way through this unique story.

The main character was trained to do basically one thing, but when their skills seem to atrophy, their life takes on some new twists and turns.

This story has an interesting vibe. I can see how some may not love this, but I caught the rhythm of the writing, and this author really impressed me.

Out July 11, 2023!

Thank you, Netgalley and Publisher, for this Arc!

I received an ARC from NetGalley and Tor. I'm voluntarily leaving a review, and all opinions are my own.

Genre: Fantasy, Intellectual Fantasy, Weird Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Queer Fantasy, South Asian Fantasy
Spice Level: It's not exactly spice in the romance sense but lots of graphic, crude language.
Representation: LGBTQ main characters & discussions about cultural discrimination/prejudice

I loved the concept for this book.

There are many things that were fascinating: the gods, collective memory, the urban setting, mythological background, and of course the doors.

It has a Kafka like feel to it at times.

I was expecting there to be more about the doors and felt that could have been developed more in this complex world. Because my expectations were not met, I'm giving this a lower rating.

However, I think there is an audience for this book who will adore it.

Happy reading!

This book was such a disappointment for me. It was the ARC I was most excited about when I got approved for it. I wanted to know what these bright doors were all about. The story I got however did not focus a lot on these bright doors. Instead, we get very confusing and minimal worldbuilding and a plot that really wasn't that interesting. I still don't understand the politics of this world and if you want me to root for a rebellion it is pretty crucial to understand why we are trying to overthrow something.

Nothing is explained. You just have to go with the flow, but in this case that really did not work for me. The writing style wasn't engaging to me and I struggled to connect with the characters. At the end of the book I found myself skimming the pages to just get it over with.

Every now and then a fantasy book comes along and, literally, blows the doors of the genre. Sri Lankan author Vajra Chandrasekera’s debut The Saint of Bright Doors eschews the urban fantasy tropes of the Western fantasy canon to deliver something modern and fascinating. As all good fantasy does, it takes readers on a mind bending journey that also holds a cracked mirror up to the reality that they are familiar with.
In the startling opening passage, ten year-old Fetter has his shadow removed by his mother and is trained to be a killer. His ultimate task – to kill his father, a cult leader and immensely popular religious figure. But despite this indoctrination, Fetter runs away from this task and moves to the major city of Luriat. In Luriat he joins a support group for the “almost chosen” and through this group is recruited by a women called Koel to go undercover to investigate the Bright Doors of the city. Bright Doors appear when a solid door is closed and ignored for long enough. They do not open but are possibly gateways to other worlds. Through this work, Fetter becomes involved in factions seeking to bring his father to the city and finds his destiny closing in on him.
The Saint of Bright Doors is much more than the sum of these parts. Chandrasekera considers issues of faith, of belonging, of revolution, of power, of class and race, of duty and the porosity of history. Much of the second half of the book, some of it a kafkaesuqe journey through a giant prison, is informed by the global response to the pandemic and the impact that this has had, particularly on the poor and already dispossessed.
The Saint of Bright Doors has been described as intellectual fantasy as if this is a bad thing. It is a book in which the genre is used to expose and test ideas, beliefs and ways of living. Chandrasekera does this by creating an urban fantasy world steeped in the trappings of what we consider modern life – mobile phones, social media - but also informed by old ways of living, the religious, power and class structures that have been left behind by successive regimes. And then pulls off an audacious, twisted conclusion which provides answers to many of the mysteries that have underpinned the action.

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.