A review by jamobo
The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera

challenging dark hopeful mysterious reflective tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

 

I’m not sure there’s enough space on the cover for all the stickers this book would need if we listed all its awards and nominations, so suffice it to say this already comes with heavy recommendations from the Sci-fi/Fantasy community and my voice is just one among the choir.

At birth Fetter is torn from his shadow, an act he remembers all too well of his vengeful mother. We get bits and pieces of his past, the whos and whys that led to who he has become, still raw in the back of his mind, but the story sets us on Fetter's path, now an adult living far away from his homestead and trying to be his own man. Not exactly easy for any of us, but even more so for someone born to ruin others.

His own peace, away from his mother, away from fate, improve quite a bit. He goes to therapy, takes on odd jobs and even helps out with a friend of a friend’s research into these unusual objects, the Bright Doors. There’s little known about them beyond observations of where they form and when they disappear, made all the weirder that the Bright Doors don’t seem to like being observed. Though, for whatever reason, Fetter begins to hear and see things coming out of the Bright Doors that no-one else does.

This peace is short-lived as the object of his training, his mother’s vengeance, his destiny will be visiting the city soon. His father, a religious figure and the man who named him Fetter in the first place. 

The Saint of Bright Doors is fantastically weird. Do you want political commentary? Do you want a dressing-down of the caste system? A look at the violent side of buddhism? A kafkaesque bureaucratic prison? A chosen one story about those that weren’t actually chosen? A fantastical land with its own set of creatures and spirits far flung from the mediaeval Europe were maybe a little too familiar with? Well don’t worry, you don’t have to choose. The Saint of Bright Doors has it all. 

It floats through these sub-/genres and topics with an ease that’s almost frightening and despite this myriad of ideas, it’s relatively easy to follow. This doesn't stop Chandrasekera from including some wonderful prose, broaching on purple at points, but never enough to scare me off, or make me misunderstand what is happening at any given moment.

It might seem like a chore at points, meandering, introducing more threads than it seems likely to tie up, but Chandrasekera does a near immaculate job of rewarding those who hold on through the slower, more surreal moments. It doesn’t offer a lot of answers, but instead lets you in on questions that you might not realise are incredibly important to people on the other side of the world. 

You’d be doing yourself a disservice to not check out a piece of speculative fiction this awarded. Especially so if the main complaint online is that it’s too weird (no such thing).