I had high hopes for this but it was all over the place. The characters were poorly developed and the storyline was weak. Not my cup of tea at all. I really wanted to DNF but hoped it would get better…,it did not.


****Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an ARC in exchange for my honest review****

The contents of the book are even louder than the cover (which is saying something because the cover is bright and colorful and eye-catching). It’s chaotic and hard to follow. As much as I was drawn in by the lush descriptions of people and places and doors, the politics, religion, and the “nature of the universe” was so hard to follow and frequently failed to answer the ever-important “so what?” that I’m pretty sure my brain just turned off and let the nice rhythm of the audiobook narration wash over me.

I always have a hard time with stories that lack a main driving plot, and this one was no exception. It was interesting to see an almost satirical look at how people bend over backwards to “other” each other (the caste system in this fictional city was wild and incomprehensible by design) and the pointed jabs at wealthy socialites landed well. But once we finally wandered around so much that we circled back to the problem presented at the beginning, it ended so suddenly that I was just confused. And then it was over. And I was left trying to cobble together any meaningful thoughts to put in this 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.

Sid Sagar’s narration transports the listener to the world of Luriat. He brings a reflective tone to the way he tells a story – a characteristic I first noticed when listening to his narration of Victory City by Salman Rushdie – which brings out the meditative essence of the novel.

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

This book should be right up my alley but it simply did not hit the mark. It has some pros and cons that overall leave it very middle of the road for me.

Pros: The prose are nice and intricate. The side characters are meaningful and interesting. The concept is fantastic.

Cons: the side characters became more interesting than the main character’s story. The prose interfered a bit with the narrative and made it difficult to sink in or focus. (This is especially true for the audio.)

Thank you for the advanced copy for review.

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 Macmillan Audio for the audio ARC**

Leaving the life where he was raised to kill a god, Fetter finds himself in group therapy fronting as recruitment for a revolution. This book seemed right up my alley but and the premise is still something I'm interested in. The writing itself was lovely. Aside from some awkwardly worded descriptions of arousal, I enjoyed the actual work being read.
The audio narration left a lot to be desired and ultimately led me to decide not to finish listening and rhe rating. The pacing of the narration, even sped up was slow and did not draw in my attention.
Because my issue is with narration, I will revisit The Saint of Bright Doors once published.

The Saint of Bright Doors is an earnest and dense character-driven fantasy novel. Fetter had a blood-soaked childhood, a chosen one, raised by his strict and over-bearing mother to serve one purpose, to be trained as a skilled assassin whose only target is his father. Fetter’s world is his cult, and religion, saints, gods, anti-gods, divinities and devils, politics and power define his world.

The world-building is well done, though a bit hard to follow in an audiobook. I found the pacing inconsistent with lags that went overlong. There were many subplots, which muddled Fetter’s story, because some were so much more exciting!

In all, I would call this a solid story about finding your way in a world where expectations of who you should be does not define who you are.

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.

While the story wasn't for me, let's take a moment to appreciate the amazing audio version of this story. Narrator, Sid Sagar, was the perfect voice for this character, and easily navigated between our main character Fetter and the many supporting characters he encounters on the way. It's absolute art, and I would 100% listen to the next book Sid narrates.

Thank you to Netgalley and MacMillan Audio for this advanced listener copy.

Loved the concept and narration. It was a bit creepy and confusing for me, so I found I had to keep forcing myself into listening.

This cover is absolutely stunning.
I wanted to love this so much. The description was so intriguing to me, but I just found myself struggling. I read a good amount of sci-fi and fantasy, but even I was struggling with how much world-building there was. Combine that with the ever=changing threads of truth from each character, and I was left needing to re-read parts of chapters just to understand what was going on. I do think this was action-packed and a wildly fun ride, so even though it took me a while to really get into the swing of the writing and world-building, I did enjoy this. It's an interesting blend of sci-fi and fantasy elements but can get bogged down by it's own intricacies at times. I am interested to see how the physical version of this does in our library, though!
Specifically for the audiobook: I liked the narrator! I liked listening to this story a lot--it really enhanced the experience of the story for me. I think I could just imagine the world and characters a little better when someone was reading to me versus me reading it myself.