Vajra Chandrasekera
Saint of Bright Doors
Reading Date(s): 18 May 2024
Rating: 5
I adored this book, and finished it over the course of a day. I came out of it knowing that I had missed things that were going on, and that my understanding was incomplete, and that that was okay. I suspect that there were philosophical things that I would have appreciated if I were better read across a range of topics.
Partly this is because our primary viewpoint character, Fetter, does not have agency in their own story. They have a destiny chosen for them; they walk away from it; they never really choose where they go, but instead drift on the currents of life. They move to the city, have their world-view widened, their political understanding slowly gains depth.
The writing is absolutely beautiful. Even in the sections where I did not follow what was going on, I didn’t care, because the story didn’t need me to understand, merely to embrace. The world building is startlingly complex, dropped in intermittently at varying levels of complexity, depending on what truth the speaker had. The characters are well realised, but not in any way detailed - fine line drawings rather than portraits. While there is an over-arching plot, it doesn’t ever really seem important that it happens.
While reading, I was reminded of How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu, and The Closet of Discarded Dreams by R. Ch. Garcia.
Content notes:The Rake
Reading Date(s): Not started
Rating: NA
I haven’t acquired this one yet! I have great hopes for it. I heard an interview with Chandrasekera, talking about both books, which was really interesting. I think it was on the Coode Street Podcast; definitely on one of the podcasts nominated for the 2024 Hugo Best Fancast category.