Back
Vajra Chandrasekera: The Saint of Bright Doors (Hardcover, 2023, Doherty Associates, LLC, Tom) 4 stars

Fetter was raised to kill, honed as a knife to cut down his sainted father. …

Weird, inventive, and pointed commentary at the same time

5 stars

I tore through this book, and might just re-read it immediately, which is something I never do.

It starts out as a fantasy story that feels exceptionally weird because Chandrasekera's willing to do his world building / exposition very slowly. I kept going through a lot of confusion because the writing itself is just so beautiful. And then gradually as the exposition falls into place it becomes clearer that the book is at least partly a critique of religious fanaticisms and chauvinisms... but each time I felt I really had a handle on the book something in its world would shift - either the protagonist learning a new piece of his own story or a significant detail the the author waited until a dramatic moment to show the reader. Even the ending feels like another instance of that, and it is a relatively unclear ending, though it fits the whole …