The Saint of Bright Doors

by Vajra Chandrasekera

Fetter was raised to kill, honed as a knife to cut down his sainted father. This gave him plenty to talk about in therapy.

He walked among invisible devils and anti-gods that mock the mortal form. He learned a lethal catechism, lost his shadow, and gained a habit for secrecy. After a blood-soaked childhood, Fetter escaped his rural hometown for the big city, and fell into a broader world where divine destinies are a dime a dozen.

Everything in Luriat is more than it seems. Group therapy is recruitment for a revolutionary cadre. Junk email hints at the arrival of a god. Every door is laden with potential, and once closed may never open again. The city is scattered with Bright Doors, looming portals through which a cold wind blows. In this unknowable metropolis, Fetter will discover what kind of man he is, and his discovery will rewrite the world.

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Queer, LGBT, Audiobook, Urban Fantasy, Science Fiction

357 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 11, 2023

About the author

Vajra Chandrasekera is from Colombo, Sri Lanka and is online at https://vajra.me. His debut novel The Saint of Bright Doors won the Nebula and Crawford awards, and was a New York Times Notable Book of 2023. His second novel Rakesfall is out in 2024.

Reviews

[Nochu_Dee · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera is one of the weirdest but brilliant books I’ve read in 2023. A lot of western people who read this might not realize that Vajra is actually doing something extremely controversial being a Sri Lankan Buddhist. This story is about Lord Gautham Buddha’s son Rahula, English Translation being Fetter (Lord Buddha named him so, considering him to be the very thing that would prevent him from attaining enlightenment, the very day Rahula was born before abandoning him and his wife) and Lord Buddha’s wife Princess Yashodara, in a reimagined fantasy setting. Sri Lanka being mainly a Buddhist country filled with Buddhist extremists, I wonder how well this book was accepted there. However, being a half Sri Lankan who has no interest in religions whatsoever I actually really enjoyed The Saint of Bright Doors which questioned and delved deep into Lord Buddha’s story that I too had.

The construction of the world is impressive and bewildering, just like the intricate South Asian mythology that forms the foundation of it all. In this fantasy world there is a realm of higher existence and a realm of demons, (which is extremely similar to Buddhist heaven and hell, for lack of better words) and Luriat presents ancient South Asian social hierarchies and their violent persecutions toward lower casts, captivating its rich and vibrant tapestry. The author’s cultural background imbues the narrative with palpable echoes of both religious devotion and communal structures.

In all honestly, I feel this would be a difficult book to follow if you don’t have a thorough understanding of Buddhism and it’s origin story and how powerful as a religion it is Sri Lanka. However even if you had an understanding of Buddhism The Saint of Bright Doors still defies predictability, leading readers into territory where full comprehension is elusive. Explanations are sparse, and even the ones provided prove challenging to fully comprehend. You have to just drift along with the narrative, akin to how Fetter navigates through the story.

I loved how Vajra presented Princess Yashodara in this book and how he integrated Sri Lankan Queen Kuweni’s story into Yashodara’s. While historical records acknowledge Princess Yashodara as a royal offspring, insights into her formative years and her trajectory subsequent to Lord Buddha’s enlightenment remain scant. (She became a Buddhist bhikkhuni, a female monastic, and attaining enlightenment herself, that much we know). Queen Kuweni, on the other hand was a Sri Lankan Raksha tribal princess who fell in love with the exiled South Indian Prince Vijaya. Their love story is akin to Romeo and Juliet in Sri Lanka because it ends up in tragedy. In order to gain power in Sri Lanka he marries princess Kuweni (who is disowned by her people because of this) but once he establishes himself as the king, he marries a “proper” South Indian Princess and discards Kuweni and their two children. Heartbroken and nowhere to turn to (as her people no longer considers her their own) she jumps to her death from a cliff or in some cases said to be have been killed by the Rakshas suspecting her to be a spy. This is the story Vajra has masterfully integrated into Princess Yashodara’s story, making her seem an evil woman hell bent on killing her former husband. I mean what woman wouldn’t? lol

Fetter’s character was meticulously molded, encapsulating his profound perplexity stemming from the startling revelation of being groomed by his own mother to potentially assassinate his father. His heartrending sense of abandonment, originating from the lack of nurturing from both parental figures, elicited a profoundly touching emotional response.

Fetter, also known as Rahula, held the potential to ascend as the next monarch in a potent Indian realm, considering that Lord Buddha, or Prince Gautama, had he not forsaken his princely role, would have assumed the throne. Furthermore, if Fetter was indeed the progeny of Princess Kuweni, he could have held leadership over one of the most influential clans in Sri Lanka. Regrettably, both these prospects were snatched away due to the actions of his parents. Vajra adeptly conveyed Fetter’s complex sentiments tied to his status as the “unchosen,” a theme that resonates strongly.

My only qualm about this book was that at times I felt bored and the pacing felt choppy and slow.

Other than that, I found immense pleasure in reading The Saint of Bright Doors. Its refreshing originality stood out as a source of great satisfaction and being an American Sri Lankan I felt connected and represented in The Saint of Bright Doors.

[The Speculative Shelf · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve never read anything like The Saint of Bright Doors – wildly inventive, totally mesmerizing, and it upended my expectations at every turn. It reads like an established author’s career-defining masterpiece, rather than a debut novel.

Vajra Chandrasekera paints a vivid picture of a city on the brink – told through the eyes of a man born and raised to be a master assassin, a catalyst of change in the world, bound for one singular purpose – but his skills dull from disuse and he strays from his destined path. The synopsis may not sound unique, but the tale and its telling are wholly original.

I was so impressed with Chandrasekera’s ability to craft a complex, political, and also surreal story in such an intelligible way. I was spellbound the entire time I spent with this book and I can’t wait to read it again, just to recapture some of the awe I felt the first time around.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

See this review and others at The Speculative Shelf
Follow me on Twitter @specshelf

[John Mauro · Rating 1 out of 5]

I had high hopes for The Saint of Bright Doors, but unfortunately it did not work for me. I found the book to be overly pretentious for my taste, and the main plot points all felt so arbitrary. The reader is asked to accept the nonsensical and go with the flow because...that's just the way it is in this overly self-serious novel, apparently. As much as I wanted to like this novel, I just couldn't connect with it. I hope other readers will enjoy it more.

[K.J. Charles]

An extraordinary read. The worldbuilding is absolutely magisterial and deeply involving, both in the fantastical/magical aspects and the take on colonialism and its effects, on messiahs and religion-dominated societies, on people's ability to not think about what's right in front of them. It's relatively slow build but there's plenty of plot, and Fetter is a fascinating character, constantly divided in himself and torn between world, sometimes literally. Just a magisterial work of imagination that kept me completely gripped even when I wasn't sure what was going on, and the plot turn is terrific. Astonishing this is a debut.

[Melanie (meltotheany) · Rating 5 out of 5]

“I will never again be caught sleeping while someone else changes the world in the night.”

no words i could even attempt to string together will do this book justice, so please just know that this is one of the most impressive and most innovative stories i’ve read in a very long time.

the very basic premise of this story is that it follows a young man named fetter, who doesn’t have a shadow, and finds himself living in a brand new city where bright doors appear at random. his mother raised him to be an assassin, and his father is a leader who is protected by religion. and he is currently in a therapy support group with others who were “almost chosen” alongside him. but these doors make fetter so curious that he attempts to investigate them a little bit more closely, with the help of some friends from the support group.

to me, this is a story about creating vs consuming, about how capitalism is slowly (or quickly even) consuming us all regardless of what we are creating. how money is allocated to religions vs how money is allocated to science. how people care so much more about their individualism than communities that could actually care about one another. how power corrupts and will attempt to dehumanize people, while simultaneously keeping people uneducated and fearful of everything. how there are a lot of different types of prisons, regardless of what they call them. How they will find a way, even if you have the best ids and documentation. how people will try to see both sides of something, when one side is literally having their families torn apart, or being mass murdered during a genocide.

the writing in this is immaculate. the craft of this book is beyond words. the themes are so powerful and so loud. and i just find myself falling in love most with books that honor storytelling and the art of telling stories through generations. especially when those stories are coming from people who have been colonized, especially from places where invasions may have forcibly made you feel less connected. (if you are from an island, or a descendant of island immigrants, i do think this story will hit you even harder.)

i loved this with the whole sum of my being, it is for sure a new favorite, and if we have similar reading tastes then i highly recommend this one to you. but it is a hard read at times, so please make sure you’re in a good mental health place.

trigger + content warnings: loss of a loved one / mother, murder, death, blood, gore, abusive childhood, police and military harassment and violence and brutality (that also includes detaining people), gun violence, plague, grief, cancer, talk of homophobia, prisons, prison camps, confinement, mass executions, cults, talk of eugenics, racism, colorism, classism, talk of quarantine and lockdowns, abuse and assault, slavery, invasion and occupation, colonization, brief mention of infertility, abandonment, one sentence incest mention, fire

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━━♡ buddy read with evie

[Rebecca Roanhorse]

Initially started this on my Kindle and set it down, as it skews more literary than my usual taste. On a recent trip with multiple long plane rides, I picked it back up, this time as an audiobook, and adored it. I was sucked in and endlessly fascinated, and I think it's one of the most impactful books I've experienced in a long time. The audiobook narrator is EXCELLENT, so if you're struggling through the book a bit, consider the audiobook.

Smarter and more educated people have said better things already here than I can about the book's cultural milieu and influences, so I won't even try. It's also been nominated for every SFF award this season, and won some, too. It's definitely worth taking a look at, or a listen to.

[Bethany (Beautifully Bookish Bethany) · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a great example of a book I admire but didn't necessarily enjoy all that much. The Saint of Bright Doors is a very innovative work of South Asian fantasy about a man who was raised to assassinate his father and the city he finds brief refuge in. A city filled with mysterious doors that he wants to learn more about.

Stylistically this feels pretty unique. Moving between realism to almost dreamlike writing with transitions that don't always feel linear. It also feels very meta in a way that makes me feel like I'm missing a lot of the context. It feels inspired by the culture and politics of South Asia and blends the mystical and the modern in ways that can feel disorienting at times. I think a lot of it is intentional and there are a few bits of it where I think I know what the author is trying to get at.

As a reading experience, this was very much a mixed bag. There were moments where I was interested and engaged, but also large sections where I was kind of bored or unsure what was going on. I think this one will probably be polarizing, but I could see someone really loving it if it hits them the right way. The audio narration is good. I received an audio review copy of this book via NetGalley, all opinions are my own.

[Emma Deplores Goodreads Censorship · Rating 5 out of 5]

This one is incredible. A literary fantasy that stands out for its use of language, inventiveness and the complexity of its world, coming from a fully non-western perspective and commenting on politics and religion in South Asia rather than the well-worn American issues. Major Le Guin vibes for me, by an author from a very different walk of life but with a similar command of language, understanding of the real world rather than reliance on fictional tropes, and complexity of setting and theme.

The book centers on a young man named Fetter, who has rejected his upbringing as an assassin meant to kill his father, and who is apparently a riff on the Buddha’s son Rāhula. (There is a lot of commentary on Buddhism in this book, which looks very different from a Sri Lankan perspective than a western one—religious violence is a major theme.) If you’re looking for a plot-driven novel, you’ll be disappointed; the first half mostly drifts from one intriguing scenario to the next, and while the second half grabbed my attention more, plot is never the primary aim. It’s not really character-driven either, with a bit more distance than your usual genre fiction, but the characters are deftly and believably drawn and I did wind up caring about them. (There’s a horrifying moment late in the book where the author definitely identifies all my favorites.)

Instead, I’d say this book is driven most by setting, themes, and style. And it’s a fascinatingly detailed and complex setting, developed in a compact way that leaves plenty beneath the surface; the themes feel fresh and urgent; and Chandrasekera’s command of language can turn a reader green with envy, especially given this is a debut. There’s a degree of magic realism or simply surrealism, which you have to just roll with but which makes for a beautiful journey, with some use of deliberate paradox that you have to accept to see the deeper meaning. There’s an extended sequence in the second half that others have called Kafkaeseque but that reminded me for whatever reason for the Sunderbans sequence in Midnight’s Children, a sort of unreality mixed with hyperreality in which the whole world becomes a prison. But honestly, I loved most of the book’s sequences, and the sharp contrasts among the different settings and ways of life—the author’s vision and knowledge seems unlimited. And although I’m sure plenty of the political and religious commentary went over my head, it was exciting to see elements I recognized (from the real world, not other fantasy), like the monks on TV whose causes include things like starving themselves to protest the “wrong” castes entering particular lines of work, and be able to go, “oh, yeah! Gandhi did that!”

In the end, a uniquely brilliant book that isn’t what most genre fans are looking for, and that’s hard for me to fully describe, but one that blows open the doors to what fantasy can do. I’m not sure what to say about the fact that this is Chandrasekera’s first book: where is left to go from here?

[S.E. Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolute masterclass in worldbuilding. This book entranced me from page one. I'm obsessed with the author's style, with the way he invites us to visit this very real world. It's surreal and strange, a world that could be ours (they have phones and planes and even the UN) but retains the mystical. I honestly can't put my thoughts together to form a coherent review, as this really was a unique reading experience unlike anything I've read before.

[ivanareadsalot · Rating 2 out of 5]

I would like to thank Edelweiss, Macmillan Audio, and Tor for the opportunity to read and review this ARC.

Truly, I wanted to love this book, but unfortunately this story was simply not for me. This literary work was gorgeous and at times mesmerizing to read, but (again, for me) it fell flat, energetically. And while I absolutely love the audiobook's narrator, Sid Sagar, this was a frustrating and slow slog through yet another new release title that seems to celebrate its obscurity. I'm honestly quite tired of these books now.

So why didn't I DNF when I should have a zillion weeks ago? Simple. Because after acquiring the audiobook, it was impossible to leave Sid Sagar unfinished. For the first time in my life, I could say without a doubt that I could listen to someone, specifically this man, read a shopping list forever and actually mean that lol!

So, yeah, this rating is bittersweet, because I loved sooooo many fascinating, fantastical things populating this work- spirit/esoteric phenomena, enviro and magical elements, diversity and culture, lore, people- but I did not actually enjoy this book as a whole, no matter how hard I tried to get into it.

This particular story just wasn't for me, but I will 100% read Vajra Chandrasekera's next release because there is extraordinary talent here and I know that it will only be a matter of time before I vibe with something VC will publish in the future!

[Celeste · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Saint of Bright Doors is unlike anything else I’ve ever read in some regards. And yet it also strongly brought to mind some other stories. Particularly, American Gods. On the surface, this is a strange comparison. The settings have absolutely nothing in common; The Saint of Bright Doors is very much a South Asian story, while American Gods is, obviously, firmly rooted in America. But there is something about Fetter and his approach to life that reminded me strongly of Shadow. But seem disconnected from reality in some way. Both are wielded by powers they don’t understand, but who they can’t seem to help but go along with. Both endure some serious weirdness. Reading both books felt something like a dark, gritty fever dream.

This is the kind of book that you can’t expect to follow completely. There aren’t a lot of explanations, and even those we are given feel difficult to grasp. The best way to enjoy this type of book is to let yourself float through it, much as Fetter does. The world building is both stellar and baffling, as is the mythos underpinning everything. Fetter’s parents are terrifying in their power and incomprehensibility. Fetter has been trained by his mother from birth toward the sole purpose of killing his father, who is as close to a god as one can become. His life is fraught with danger and fear and impossible tasks. He finds a bit of camaraderie in the city in the form of a support group for unchosen ones, people with some kind of divine heritage who did not end up becoming the next Chosen One of their respective religions. And then he finds the Bright Doors, door throughout the city that have been transmuted in some way, and his fascination with them becomes nearly all-consuming. That is, until the task for which he was groomed suddenly reinserts itself into his life.

This is a world of transcendence and demons, of castes and pogroms. It’s a dark world, but a fascinating and colorful one. I could feel the religious and societal inspirations from the author’s heritage. The ephemeral feel of the story from Fetter’s perspective, as someone who drifts through life in a way, was difficult to connect with at first. Thankfully, it grew on me. And then there was a twist of storytelling at the end that made that unmoored tone suddenly make sense, which really elevated the story for me.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Saint of Bright Doors. It was refreshingly original, in spite of those comparisons I drew between it and American Gods. Because while those similarities in main characters exist, the stories themselves are radically different. Especially in terms of setting and world building. That being said, if you happen to love American Gods, I think The Saint of Bright Doors could be your next favorite book.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher, Tordotcom, in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts expressed are completely my own.

[X · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an ending! My only complaint is that I wish this book were twice as long.

I would maybe compare to The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez (lush emotionally resonant queer fantasy) but that book was so structured; this one is so purposefully unstructured. And Fetter only knows so much - and only wants to know so much.

Really though - the way this ends… damn!

[Oleksandr Zholud · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a South Asian urban fantasy that is heavily connected to Buddhist's backstory. I read it as a part of the monthly reading for May 2024 at SFF Hot from Printers: New Releases group. The book was nominated for Hugo and Locus (for Debut novel) awards in 2024.

The beginning looks like a run-of-the-mill fantasy, the way the first paragraph is:
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, the seed of many hours of therapy to come. It is raining. His shadow is cast upon reddish soil thick with clay that clings to Fetter as he rolls in it, unable to raise his head, saved from drowning in mud only by the fortunate angle of his landing. The arch of Mother-of-Glory’s knee frames what he sees next. His shadow writhes slowly on its nail. 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. The shadow goes to its end in silence—or if it cries out, if shadows can cry out, that sound is lost in the rain.

It turns out that Fetter has several supernatural abilities, like he has to force himself to stand on the ground, for can turn weightless (or even massless), and fire cannot hurt him and a few others. He also is able to see demons, who are everywhere, but who mostly aren’t especially active, clinging to buildings’ walls.

He was born with the purpose, of becoming an assassin and killing his own absentee father as a final revenge for his mother. She trains him in this profession, pointing out that he ought to commit the Five Unforgivables, as set by the religious order of his father:
The Five Unforgivables are, in order of severity, matricide; heresy leading to factionalism; the sancticide of votaries who have reached the fourth level of awakening; patricide; and the assassination of the Perfect and Kind. By definition, they cannot be forgiven and cannot be redeemed.

So, from the very start readers know that Fetter should kill both his parents, and one of them trains him for it, quite a dark turn, for “The only way to change the world is through intentional, directed violence.”

However, quite soon we follow Fetter as he grows up and settles in Luriat, the city of bright doors, to live quite an ordinary modern life, watching TV, using a phone, having an affair with another man, learning more about the city and the world, including the fact that he is a second class citizen in local hierarchies of race and caste. Here the bright doors are introduced: they are elsewhere in the city, seemingly ordinary (usually painted in bright colors to stand out) but they cannot be opened and if a person visits their supposed other side, they’ll see there is nothing there…

So, at a first sight, it is more or less a usual growing-up fantasy novel, nothing spectacular – and it was what I thought until I’ve read this great review. For it turns out that Fetter is Rāhula, the only son of Siddhārtha Gautama (commonly known as the Buddha) and Mother-of-Glory is Yaśodharā, the wife of Prince Siddhartha. All characters have an established set of legends about them. I guess for Western readers, who are much more versed in Christianity than Buddhism, it is like a story of the Virgin Mary preparing her other kids to assassinate Jesus Christ! As such, it completely sets the story on its head.

[kay · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was such an immersive experience I'm having trouble finding words to describe it. I didn't know I had an issue with book series splitting their worldbuilding into multiple books until I finished this and realized what a richly packed story it is in just one book.

Fetter's mother ripped his shadow away from him at birth and raised him to be the perfect weapon to destroy his sainted, all powerful father. He now roams the city of Bright Doors, Luriat, shadowless, unaffected by gravity and attending group meetings with the fellow unchosen.

Chandrasekera writes in a visually immersive, established and absolutely beautiful voice. This is one of those debuts where the author comes out guns blazing with a consistent, polished narration and I loved every second of it. He's able to evoke feeling without overexplaining and with just a few words gave me heart palpitations and made me genuinely scared in multiple spots. I can't go into detail without spoiling but there were parallels with one of my favorite books (coincidentally from the same publisher) that made me put my kindle down for a moment (in a good way).

I loved Fetter. He was real, relatable and I just fall for any character whose inner monologue gets a little petty on occasion. The worldbuilding was rich and satisfying to learn about and again, I found myself suprised at it being just enough considering it's not part of a series. (Do I need to stop reading series for a bit? Maybe.) It was chock full of interesting and unique concepts and overall a fun time.

That brings me to pacing as the only thing I had issues with. It felt a bit choppy and slow in some places, and left me confused about the stakes. In the end it did get wrapped up and explained so I honestly can't complain much.

If you're like me and love lush worldbuilding and to really get lost in a book, I highly recommend The Saint of Bright Doors.

Thank you to tordotcom and NetGalley for this advanced reader copy.

[Ruxandra Grrr · Rating 4 out of 5]

Don't have enough energy for a proper review, but for now: I loved the narrative voice, the writing and the texture, the worldbuilding and political commentary were on point. Truly the funnest book about encroaching fascism in recent memory (note: fun is perhaps not the right word, because there's a lot of fucked up shit in the book, and I should make that clear). Also, a lot of bisexuals! Our main character, Fetter, is the disaster one, very relatable, but also turns out his mom and dad are also bi! We got them evil bisexuals too, which is refreshing.

Hesitated between 4 and 5 stars, but I think I wanted it to break me / devastate me emotionally and it didn't (even if I'm already broken, baby, it would be easy!), so let's stick to 4 stars for now. Hope the arrack flows tomorrow at book club!

I feel like I wanna throw shade on the other speculative Sri Lanka-inspired book I read this year: The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, this is how you do it!

[Hirondelle (not getting notifications) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Original fantasy novel, a take on (another universe's) Buddhism, Sri Lanka-flavoured. A debut novel on the short list for this year's Hugo award.  It is very good in many ways, but it also left me quite cold and disconnected, not caring for any of the characters or plot, and this is also why it took me so long to actually finish it. I just did not care about what was going to happen next.

On the good side, the writing is elegant, the vocabulary deep, and there is a vividness to the south Asian-flavoured fantasy world. The  concept of fundamentalist Buddhism, done far more deeply (and differently) than a western-raised writer likely would have, is very memorable. I am sure there are lots of cultural references to (presumably) Sri Lanka ("our strange and wonderful island" even if now inland)  going whoosh way past my head. The many layers of social criticism here are thought provoking.

I respect it a lot because of the above, and likely I will recommend it to friends and other random victims of my book pushing, but I did not much  *like* it. I know I enjoy more books when I connect with the voices, feelings of the characters, and Fetter was a cypher, blank throughout the book. We are told of his feelings and motivations, which are natural and understandable, but my empathy was never involved. I do not know why, not sure if it was a lack of skill, the mythic quality of the story, or if it was just an intentional style of emotional detachment competently achieved.

The tone and texture of the worldbuilding were another issue for me. I am not a reader who needs the laws of magic to be listed and carefully formulated, but there was a mythic tone and a mythic intention to this story (the Buddhist thing, I guess. Shadows captured and physical people were just floating around. Demons causing diseases), which contrasted with the modern world building in other parts (mobile phones and social media, crowdfunding, identity cards, pandemics and masks, doors that break the laws of physics), and that was an odd blend that did quite click and made me think, "oh wait, what does knowing that do to the laws of physics and would not tech evolve differently then?"...This might be just a me thing. (Incidentally totally different universe, different geography, different empires and histories, and  then a reference to "bright United Nations blue" which was just mood breaking...).

I did not like the ending either, there is a kind of reveal, meant to be a surprise, and I thought it was all too subtle until the reveal and then too obvious past the reveal and overexplaining a bit. 

So, in all, this is an interesting book, and I am going to keep an eye on his career. It is a  debut novel, and I keep repeating it because the inevitable comparison is to Wells and Leckie (I am ignoring a famous Hugo Award winner here, intentionally) at the peak of their not-inconsiderable storytelling powers, and that is not an even field to judge an ambitious debut novel.

Incidentally, this year, for the very first time ever, I decided I wanted to read ALL the Hugo nominees for novel and short fiction categories (not the Lodestar, though, and not the series. I was not that ambitious, thankfully). Finished, done, I am proud and boasting  of it, but not again. I have just been reminded that I am not a reader who enjoys challenges, projects, duties, or even plans. My random  shuffle butterfly chasing methods of picking whatever I want to read next are just more satisfying. (Now, I just have to remember to actually vote and how one logs in...)

[Siavahda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another confusing masterpiece from 2023!

Rtc!

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.

Read the rest at Every Book a Doorway!

[laurel [the suspected bibliophile] · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fame, she says, is how a ruling class conditions artists to docility and incorporates their work to lesser ends. Sedition, unrest, and even revolution are useful to political actors currently out of power.

One of those books that twists and turns and churns and leaves you both satisfied and deeply unfulfilled (in a good way).

Lessons learned in childhood leave deep roots and are not easily plucked out by adult reasoning.

Fetter is the unacknowledged and forgotten child of the messiah The Perfect and Kind. Raised by his vengeful mother for a life of violence, he rejects her teachings and tries to forge his own path in the city of Luriat...but fate has other ideas. And fate is also not destiny.

Anywho, a good comp title is The Spear Cuts Through Water.

I received an ARC from NetGalley

[Hank · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a worthwile read, different and an interesting (to say the least) MC family life. I am 100% sure there were lots of metaphors I missed but was able to immerse myself into an odd blend of modern+mythology.

Fetter was set up to be conflicted throughout the book, conflicted by how he was raised and who he wants to be now, conflicted by the modern world smashing into demons, gods and funky doors and conflicted by his parents. He did not dissappoint and his struggles with all of it was well done.

Probably a 4 star book when generous but it was somewhat confusing and the end with his missing shadow did not clear anything up.

[Olivia · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF at 70%

Thank you to NetGalley for an arc in exchange for a review.

I’m sorry I can’t finish this. I hardly ever DNF this far into the book but I am so disinterested in finishing this. I didn’t hate 100% of it, so I’m going to start with the points I did enjoy.

The setting of the story is very interesting. I loved hearing about the different cultures and religions that the residents of the cities belonged to. The book had so much potential to (even minimally) explain/expand on ANY of these concepts. I also liked certain aspects of the MC and his upbringing. The first three chapters were so promising, and you get a glimpse at how the MC was raised to be a tool for his mother’s machinations. Again, so so so much potential.

Unfortunately, the book drops the ball on all of this. The world-building is so minimal and nothing is explained. I understand that all the nonsense rules are supposed to be symbolic of how convoluted governments of this type are. It just comes across as lazy writing.

The “plot” is non-existent and the MC just goes with whatever happens to him. He is written with the “chosen one rejects his destiny”, but it is taken way too far; the MC doesn’t have any drive to do anything. He always seems to simply be there while things happen around him. It quickly becomes frustrating because he was had so much potential.

I was so excited for this book, but unfortunately it fell very flat for me. I hope this finds readers who will enjoy it.

[Jess · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 the first time through. 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 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 immersion in 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 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--only 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. Fetter's mother is obsessed with his [Fetter's] 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 insecure, desperate to be valued (mostly by people whose esteem is safely out of reach); he can be petty and is 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.

SoBD is 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, goodness, 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 brought 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.


"I see white-armed antigods stalking. Almost nobody here is masked or distancing, so a fresh outbreak of plague is on its way."


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.)

[Lata · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a difficult book to summarize, but the outlines of the story are fairly simple: A boy is raised by his mother to be a weapon against his father. Fetter's mother ripped his shadow away at his birth to make him an assassin, and she grooms him to murder his father, around whom a religion has grown.

The story gets really interesting once Fetter eventually escapes his mother, and ends up in the Luriat, a city of wonderful and terrible things coexisting. Fetter falls in with a group of other Chosen Ones, and Fetter builds a life for himself, even as he begins to probe the mystery of the city's Bright Doors, and has long conversations with his mother on a phone not connected to anything.

Luriat is an amazing construction. Full of bureaucracy, cults, rising rebellion/revolution, discontent, economic disparity, and possibly magical relics, and set in a world of conquest and colonialism.

Fetter grows into an interesting person as he begins building a life separate from his mother's obsession, while also trying to stay under the radar of his father's people. He and the other Chosen ones are an odd and interesting bunch, with their support meetings, messy lives, and plots.

And though there is a rising resistance, spearheaded by those Fetter knows, he's not central to that cause, or any cause. In fact, he's just trying to live his life, and not kill anyone. Much of the novel is Fetter processing things around him, and it doesn't quite follow the trope of a Chosen One who accepts and fulfills his destiny and the city/the kingdom's governing body is replaced by something else, hopefully better.

Instead, Fetter kind of bumbles around, and keeps trying to make decent choices as he learns more about his parents and their actions, and along the way author Vajra Chandrasekera treats us to the complexities of religion, politics, colonialism, bigotry, repressive governance, identity, immigrants' experience, and a lot more.

Set in a dystopia, the book veers into surrealism at times, and mystery, and weirdness. At the same time as it sometimes confounded me, I was intrigued and entertained.

Thank you to Netgalley and to Tor Publishing Group for this ARC in exchange for my review.

[Laura (crofteereader) · Rating 2 out of 5]

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.

{Thank you Tor.com for the ARC and Macmillan Audio for the ALC in exchange for my honest review; all thoughts are my own}

[Amy Imogene Reads]

This is all about mysterious fantastical doors and I am very ready to be obsessed

[Rosamund Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rarely have I enjoyed a book so much. Fetter, the central character, has been brought up to be a weapon. When he was born, his mother severed his shadow from him, so he could more easily hide from people. Fetter's mother wants him to kill his father, and encourages him to practice murders. But by the time he's in his early twenties, he no longer wants that kind of life. He makes his home in Luriat, a modern city, where food and housing are available to everyone, but people are subject to strict caste rules, and unexpected brutality and imprisonment by the police. Fetter joins a support group for people like him -- people who have rejected their destiny, or who have been passed over.

The concept of this novel are very clever -- an urban fantasy, set in a city that is both like and unlike the modern world, allows Chandrasekera to explore themes of isolation, corruption, and sexuality, alongside devils, mystical doors, and immortality. This is also clearly a product of the Covid restrictions, and is one of the most interesting reflections on those times that I have read. It's a very imaginative work, that at times feels like a contemporary literary novels, and at other times a Kafkaesque fantasy. It consistently surprised and moved me, and I was genuinely sorry to leave Fetter when the story ended.

[Michael Finocchiaro]

Sometimes there are books that just turn you off from page one. This was the case for me with this Nebula- and Locus-winning book which rewrites the story of Krishna in a sort of strange melange of sci-fi and fantasy. I felt no connection with the characters and found the narrative confusing and rather boring as well. I tried about 100 pages before giving up. I hate doing that, but I just did not connect to anything here despite having traveled to India several times and read Indian literature (including some of the The Bhagavad Gita and parts of the The Rig Veda). Maybe it is just the millennial writing style of young authors like Chandrasekera, I don't know but like TJ Klune and Emily Tesh, some of the current generation of sci-fi writers are just annoying rather than entertaining for me.

[L (Nineteen Adze) · Rating 4 out of 5]

More later, but I want to highlight this great review on the book's Sri Lankan and Buddhist cultural background.

//
First impression: I'm not sure what to make of this book. It's unquestionably thoughtful, blending the fantastic and the mundane in a subtle way that really works. It's also an absolutely exhausting read at times, following a passive character who's always at an emotional distance from the reader, and at times feels like a slow fever dream. It's somewhere in that murky literary speculative fiction twilight border. I admire it, but I waver on how much I enjoyed it. RTC.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was really into the world here — similar to our own in terms of technology, but with a hint of magic that’s common but still rare enough to be special. It’s an echo of Sri Lanka (with “the continent” as an major influential force and previous waves of colonization), but it’s not just a copy/paste, which lets it innovate in interesting ways. And there are a few concepts — like present actions actually changing what happened in the past — that had me very intrigued.

But it really fell flat for me with the characters (except for Mother-of-Glory, who was fascinating and terrifying). Fetter in particular feels a bit aimless, with no real drive or mission, and at one point even asks himself why he’s doing something kind of mission-like — he lists four possible reasons (all of them not really consistent with him as a character) and doesn’t come to a conclusion. The narrative also felt aimless, with interesting little pockets, sure, but it became frustrating when they often led nowhere.

The ending though? Ok yes that was cool.

[Sanjida · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book meanders, definitely. But that's not the point. On a sentence, scene level, it's quite revelatory. The world building is truly impressive, a mix of modern and mythic, unmistakenly and intriguingly South Asian. I misread it as Indian more than Sri Lankan, since I am more familiar with contemporary Indian politics. But no matter, it works for both. This is a book that could only have been written in the 2020s - where plagues, pogroms, casteism and racism, bureaucracy, holy men, and madness exist simultaneously. I am shocked that something so sophisticated made it on the Hugo ballot.

[Nicholas Perez · Rating 3 out of 5]

More of a 3.5/5 stars

Fetter was supposed to be a chosen one. Trained and prepared by his mother, Mother-of-Glory, to hunt down and assassinated his father, Perfect and Kind. But Fetter ran away from all that. As young man in the city of Luriat, he's in therapy for other failed or rejected chosen ones. Each one of them related to some sort of all-powerful and/or religious figure who gave them preternatural abilities. So, Fetter goes on with his life: he helps new citizens get acclimated to Luriat, he goes out on dates with his boyfriend Hejmen, and tries to hide the fact that he has no shadow and can levitate in the air. However, Luriat is rife with political strife, and Fetter's father is coming to the city. And Fetter will be roped into something that make him question all manner of things about the world.

This a difficult book to rate. The Saint of Bright Doors is not a typical chosen one story, obviously. These days most writers seem to chafe at the concept. That being said, Vajra Chandrasekera does something unique with the story. Indeed, his story-telling style is even more different to a traditional chosen one narrative. This is very much a character-driven story, rather than a plot or concept-driven one. It is mostly about Fetter understanding--or trying to understand through all the lies, changes, and mysteries that have been heaped upon him--who and what he is. The setting of The Saint of Bright Doors takes inspiration from Sri Lanka, where Chandrasekera is from, though it may not be entirely obvious at first. The names of the lands and countries mentioned in this book do not correspond to anything in real life, but again, pay attention because you will definitely get some things as they are revealed. Within this world, there are beings that Fetter can see, but no one else but his mother can. They are traditionally called devils, but were originally known as the invisible powers. They walk among almost every part of the world and their origins are a part of the mystery of the book. Additionally, there are multiple countries and sects that have their own rules and languages about what constitutes what. There is never anything greatly detailed about this, though some things with the politics are explained a bit more, but it is clear that Luriat and the places around it have been affected by the aggression between these different sects and polities and there a history of multiple colonization briefly mentioned. In short, all of this is to let you know that Fetter's world is rocky and unstable, a powder keg waiting to go off from all this massive weight Fetter finds himself entangled in.

The world-building is different than to what you would find in any other contemporary or urban fantasy. It's very Gene Wolfe-esque sans the unreliable narration, though there is a lot that Fetter does not know and wonders who is telling him the truth or not. There's no info-dumping; what is revealed is mostly through inference or implication. Wolfe's world-building was vast and grand scale, but his writing style only doled it out so much until it completely crystalized into something bizarre and wonderful. Chandrasekera does much of the same here, though his scale is not as grand as Wolfe's, and that's not a criticism. Speaking of Wolfe, The Saint of Bright Doors is to Buddhism is what The Book of the New Sun is to Catholicism.

What I mean is that the world-building and story of The Saint of Bright Doors is greatly inspired by Buddhism. I don't know a whole lot about Buddhism beyond the fundamentals of what an undergrad college class would teach, but the central story of the book and who and what Fetter, Mother-of-Glory, and Perfect and Kind represent are rooted in the original story of Buddhism. As the story progressed, Mother-of-Glory eventually revealed to Fetter her backstory and Perfect and Kind's. As she told this story, it gave me pause. She said that Perfect and Kind used to be a great journeyer and ruthless. When I first heard this, I thought that Perfect and Kind was based off Emperor Ashoka of the Maurya Empire from ancient India. Ashoka was said to be brutal until his embracing of Buddhism and his son and daughter were said to have brought the religion to Sri Lanka. However, I learned that I was wrong. The true revelation came with the reason why Fetter was named Fetter. Perfect and Kind named him as such because his love for him was the last chain (fetter) that he had to break to renounce himself from the world and begin his Path Above.

"Wait a minute," I said. "This sounds familiar." So I went to Google. Sincere apologies to any Buddhists who read the following and discover that I have errored. It is not my intention and I am only going off what I can find in English on the Internet.
Apparently, "Rahula" was the name of the son of Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha. Apparently, the name "Rahula" means "fetter," and he was named as such because he prevented Siddhartha from further Enlightenment. Additionally, the name of Yasodhara, Siddhartha's wife and Rahula's mother, means "bearer of glory."
The Saint of Bright Doors is a re-imagining of sorts of the original figures of Buddhism. I hesitate to call it a true re-telling/re-imagining as it doesn't quite fit those genres parameters and that Chandrasekera does not call himself a myth-retelling fantasist like Madeline Miller or all those other Greek retellings out there.
This is why I compared The Saint of Bright Doors more to The Book of the New Sun than anything else. Wolfe's Christ figure in his weird Catholicism was a masked torturer and executioner who desired really tall women, and Chandrasekera's Buddhist figures are a father and son who are both bisexual who both desired to "know" their worlds, but also change it.

Okay, enough of the Wolfe comparisons.

This Buddhist influence made me wonder what Chandrasekera was trying to do, especially when tied into the unchosen ones and how the world changes. No idea what Chandrasekera believes or doesn't believe in, nor is it my business, but I couldn't help but wonder. Is this a critique against Buddhism and it's different traditions, much like the Path Above and the Path Behind in the book? It's very possible that there is some sort of theology, philosophy, and/or cosmology in Buddhism going that I simply don't understand as an outsider. Whatever Chandrasekera is doing with whatever he is using, he certainly crafted and interesting story. The world-building is the strongest element of The Saint of Bright Doors. We learned that Mother-of-Glory had a hand in creating the Path Behind which, like the Path Above, also turned to pogroms and riots within Luriat which only adds more questions and tragedy. Some of the political stuff could get confusing at first, but Chandrasekera managed to iron it all out as it went on.

The prose has a psychological tinged to it, and there's a reason for this revealed later on. The pacing is a little on the slow side, and that may bother some. At some points, I will admit, I did wish it was a bit quicker, but not so much quicker for I really don't think that a really brisk pace could truly do justice to this story. Back to the prose, it manages to be within Fetter's head most of the time. If you think there's a conundrum with the story or Fetter that isn't being recognized, don't worry, it will definitely be revealed. When Fetter eventually returns to his original childhood task of trying to hunt down and kill Perfect and Kind, he starts to question why he returned to it. Just why did he do so automatically? Now, we're not always given an answer for these kinds of moments and that answer to that is partially given in the twist towards the conclusion. However, there were times where I think things weren't explained, not even in the aforementioned inferences or implications. I think sometimes that was intentional as Fetter is still trying to understand what anyone is even telling him. Even Mother-of-Glory appears to have lied or misconstrued a truth to him sometimes, as hinted in one moment by her ex-girlfriend (yes, she's bisexual too). Other times, however, I think things could've been explained a bit more.

Fetter is the most fleshed out character in this book aside from his parents. Koel and Caduv, two of Fetter's friends and fellow unchosen ones, are not as fleshed out, but still have some depth to them and involvement with the plot. The characters, I must admit, felt much flatter and Fetter's relationships with them did not come off as fully define. I felt that even his romance with Hejmen and attracted to Pipra were not fully defined or fleshed out. It more so just stated that he had feelings for both of them and that was it.

So what about that ending? Fetter does not accomplish what Mother-of-Glory ever wanted him to do, but he does change the world, as his father changed the world many, many times both ideologically and literally. However, he seems dissatisfied that force and violence were used to do it, at least that's what I gleamed. Things are changing though. While I do think it gives a satisfactory end to The Saint of Bright Doors, I didn't have quite the catharsis that people who enjoyed the book did, nor did I have the disappointment that those who disliked it did.

I think this is one of the stronger debuts out there, even if it wasn't a perfect score for me. That being said, I am greatly invested in reading Rakesfall. Chandrasekera said he probably couldn't have sold Rakesfall as a first novel, and that has me curious!