Well this was a wild rild.
"The Saint of Bright Doors" is a highly imaginative and immersive fantasy story, brilliantly written and structured. It's thought-provoking and does require all of the reader's attention, because if you skimread for just a second, you might get really confused.

Actually, I was confused anyway because there is just so much to digest. The book tells the story of Fetter, a young man whose mother once cut off his shadow and who is, according to her, destined to kill his all-powerful messiah father. But that's really just the very basic plot strand that evolves into so much more, a whole bouquet of different ideas and themes surrounding religion and politics and their entanglement and much more. It's definitely a demanding book because a lot of these ideas are hard to understand, especially when it comes to the religious aspects.
My one gripe with the book might be that I never really connected with most of the characters. I enjoyed them and they were intriguing, but some of them felt more like they are there to play a specific role instead of being fleshed out properly. I am a very character-driven reader though, so there's that.

All in all, this was such a unique read that I had a hard time putting down - I probably would have devoured it in two settings had I had the time. It's weird, it's confusing, it's incredibly imaginative and supported by Chandrasekera's visual, at times almost poetic writing style. I recommend it to everyone who wants to read something different than your usual fantasy.

If you think the synopsis for this book speaks in metaphors when it talks about Fetter being shadowless and untethered from gravity, or antigods and devils, you are dead wrong. Those things are all in the book, quite literally, and they are both part of the incredible appeal this story had on me, and the reason why it’s not getting an even higher rating. But let’s start at the beginning.

The opening chapters of this novel are quite bonkers. We learn of Fetter’s birth and childhood, the way his mother (Mother-of-Glory) raises him to be a trained killer, sends him on missions to kill various people, use his gifts – such as being able to just float away from the ground – and his lack of a shadow to aid him in his schooling. You will quickly find out if this book is for you because while the narrative style of those first few chapters is a bit different from what comes after, this odd, fable-like distance from the characters remains and makes this more of a curiosity than a truly immersive read. I personally am okay with both a protagonist I can root for and empathize with, someone whose feelings I feel when I read, whose pain hits me in the guts alongside them; and a character that I get to watch from afar, intrigued and curious as to what they will do next, while not as enthralled in their personal emotions. Fetter definitely falls into the latter category, not because he isn’t a great character (he is!) but because of the writing style.

Chandrasekera throws the crazy in with the mundane as if it’s nothing. The fact that Fetter has no shadow is remarked upon by several people, but nobody reacts quite in the way we’d expect them to. It’s taken as a strange fact about Fetter and then people move on. I mean, there are weirder things in this world, after all. Like the Perfect and Kind, a god-like person (and, incidentally, Fetter’s dad whom he’s supposed to kill), the Bright Doors that are studied academically, and the entire organization of the city of Luriat.
This is one of the things I both liked and disliked. Luriat is such an exciting place with a caste system and complex politics filled with curruption, there are Plague Years and pogroms and people disappear at random to never come back, there are different quarters of the city where people of different means live, but you don’t technically even have to work if you want to live in Luriat, given you’re okay with a lack of luxury… I could go on and on about the wonders and bafflements this city has to offer.
My nitpick about this bit of world building is that we readers are as hapless about the city’s rules as Fetter is, but we also don’t really get to learn a lot more. About some things, like the doors, sure, but not about others. And I would so very much have loved to learn more instead of being told again and again that Fetter doesn’t know what this caste or that social status really means either, whose accent gives whom away as poor, and who holds political power because of which association. Oh well, we can’t have it all I suppose.

Bright Doors is also somewhat unusual as a story, because there isn’t any big quest or really any red thread to follow. Fetter is supposed to go out and kill his father, that’s what his mother has trained him for, but Fetter doesn’t want to and so simply decides that he won’t. So for a while, he just lives in Luriat, helps out people in his quarter, and goes to group therapy.
Oh yeah, there are therapy sessions for unchosen ones, meaning people who could/should have inherited their parents’ awesome powers (again, god-like or saint-like beings are just accepted here), but then, for whatever reason, didn’t. It is in this group that Fetter meets Koel, who publishes seditionist papers and seems to want to start a revolution.
Again, all of this was a lot of fun to read about and I put it in the category of “this is so cool” but I felt once more that we lacked information. If we really want to go along with a revolution, we’d first need to know how the city works. What we’re given are snippets and tidbits that let us know something is very rotten in Luriat, but to me at least it wasn’t enough to get fully immersed.

Fetter goes along anyway and ends up pretending to be someone else, a student who gets to check out some of the Bright Doors, and this is where things get really interesting. So it’s also where I stop telling you things and refer you to the book itself, because I’m mean. 🙂
The Bright Doors were my favorite part of the book and I loved how groups of academics (and others) studied their behavior and tried to “create” Bright Doors from regular ones.

For a book less than 400 pages thick, The Saint of Bright Doors packs in a lot. It’s not only the absolutely bonkers world building and the unexpected ways in which some magical things are considered totally normal while others would stand out as extraordinary or even dangerous. Without spoiling anything, the novel deals with some very cool themes like the manipulation of time and space and memory, something I am a sucker for.
Although I said Fetter stayed at arm’s lenght from me, I did come to care enough about him and his little group of friends by the end of the book to hope they’d all end up okay. Because obviously, big things happen toward the end and the Plague Year that people have been warning of has arrived. I’ll let you discover just what that means by yourself.

The ending itself had one super cool surprise in store, but also felt a little abrupt and anticlimactic. I can’t explain how exactly without giving everything away, and the quick-ish ending didn’t ruin the reading experience in any way. But it did make closing the book feel somewhat strange, like I’m still hanging in the air a bit and not enough has been explained. All the major questions are answered but I didn’t feel truly satisfied at the end.

Now what I appreciate about this book being a Hugo finalist are several things. First of all, it’s always great to see new authors, especially debut authors, make the Hugo ballot. Secondly, Vajra Chandrasekera is definitely what I’d call a breath of fresh air, not only on the Hugo ballot but in SFF in general. His world building, writing style, characters, and way of telling a story is different enough from the books I usually consume to stand out. I also couldn’t say that there was a single page in this book that didn’t entertain me, one way or another. So it’s definitely a very good book. It will most likely be ranked in the top half of my Hugo Awards ballot, although I haven’t yet read all the finalists, so maybe I shouldn’t make any promises.
I am curious to read the author’s upcoming novel Rakesfall and I wouldn’t be mad if this one ended up winning the Hugo.

MY RATING: 7.5/10 – Very, very good

I wanted to read "The saint of bright doors" for quite some times now. I'm not sure the book is for me, nonetheless, I consider it a great work, weaving a tale with mastery. The writing style is beautiful yet I struggled with it (maybe I am too tired right now). It conveys the multiple layers of the story with a great deal of precision, managing to stay on track while loosing the reader (or at least losing me) in a nice way.
The worldbuilding is full and extensive but not overwhelming. It also keep a sense of mystery, a nonsense side, because not everything is explained. I appreciate that, since having a world thah completely makes sense isn't something I appreciate most of the time, I need that feeling of wonder. But I have to say that in a way, "The saint of bright doors" is a little too grounded for my taste, even with that fleeting sense.
The books tackles colonialism and messiah, on trauma and family ties. There is a lot of feels there, but somehow I didn't manage to feel them. More of a me problem I think. Fetter a good character for so many embivalence, caught in between so much, trying to become his own person while entangled in so many things at once.
I understand this story has a full other meaning if you know about Sri Lanka and Boudhism. I am not familiar enough with any of these topics to tell, but I nonehteless found the story extraordinary in its uniqueness.
"The saint of bright doors" is a beautiful, weird and strong book, and I can't wait to read more of Vajra Chandrasekera !

Thank you to NetGalley and Solaris for my digital review copy.

From the blurb on NetGalley, I was expecting some form of self aware, urban fantasy, where "nobody is special because everybody is special", sort of with the same sort of world as Disney's ExtraOrdinary, or the same weaving of mythology and mundane as "Work-Life Balance" by Benjamin Chee and Wayne Rée.

Then, I realised the blurb was different on Goodreads. In fact, it seems that nearly every edition has a slightly different blurb. And from those, I thought this would have more adventure.

I did end up DNF'ing this book at 50 percent through. I never usually DNF books - I can count on one hand how many books I have DNF'd.

This book has a very casual approach to worldbuilding - we get little bits drip fed throughout, but nothing solid. I got a quarter of the way through and I was slightly confused to the setting. There seems to be an incredible amount of possible religions, and your status in the city of Luriat comprises of many things, including, but not limited to, where you rank in a caste system, your genetics, if you are a failed messiah for one of the many religions.

I found that I didn't really care for the characters, but I think this may stem from my confusion with the plot.

I can't tell if the world is a contempory based world or more of a high fantasy - as there's mentions of emails, but also demons, so I assume that it is an urban fantasy setting. There's a lot of South East Asian influences (from betel to Arrack) that I managed to find whilst reading, which helped to contribute to the melting pot that is Luriat. However, I felt like I couldn't get a solid grasp on the setting and the society whilst I read it. It casually mentions things like "Alabi-style" when referring to clothing and architecture and I know that given the context of the book, Alabi is (presumably) a different city within the world, but it lacked the clarification of what Alabi is like.

There's no doubt about Chandrasekera's ability to write prose, but at times, it felt messy as I couldn't discern what parts of the plot threads linked to the overall plot, or what contributed to the worldbuilding. There were things that should have been big plot revelations, that felt lost on me because I was confused trying to figure out how everything made sense.

Overall, it felt like the idea was better than the complete execution of the idea. This book will be for other readers, I have no doubt. But unfortunately, it wasn't for me. I will try to read it again in the future.

La novela de debut de Vajra Chandrasekera me ha dejado con sentimientos encontrados, porque tiene picos de enorme interés pero a la vez también sufre de valles de tedio, dando lugar a una obra muy irregular en la que se atisban puntos muy atractivos que no se han logrado cohesionar en un todo homogéneo.

The Saint of Bright Doors tiene un comienzo impactante, cuando la madre de un recién nacido le arranca la sombra para que sea un mejor instrumento en su venganza contra el padre. Los primeros años de Fetter serán de adiestramiento en el arte del asesinato, todo con el fin de conseguir el objetivo último de su madre.

Tras este arrollador principio, el libro se sume en un estupor vacío de emoción. Y con estos altibajos continuará toda la lectura, con momentos tan atractivos como el club de ayuda a los "casi elegidos" de la miríada de religiones que pululan por la novela y otros que no sé si denominar de relleno pero que son romos como un cuchillo de goma EVA.

Los mensajes contra el racismo y el clasismo de la sociedad inventada por Chandrasekera son extremadamente pertinentes y certeros, así como la extremadamente afinada crítica a las religiones, de las que parece haber una increíble profusión en este mundo. No duda en ningún momento en enfocar la hipocresía subyacente a todas ellas, que dicen renunciar al poder pero al que realmente se aferran como una sanguijuela hambrienta.

Los momentos en los que hace su aparición la magia son tan destacados que cambian totalmente el curso de la narración, por no decir el de la historia. Pero hay que reconocer que el autor prefiere no abusar de estos para no reducir los capítulos a una concatenación vacía de deus ex machina.

The Saint of Bright Doors me parece una novela fallida en algunos aspectos, pero aún así creo que seguiré leyendo la obra del autor, porque necesitamos riesgo en el género para dar lugar a obras novedosas e interesantes.