Hugo Nominee Review: The Saint of Bright Doors, by Vajra Chandrasekera

Hugo Nominee Review: The Saint of Bright Doors, by Vajra Chandrasekera

by Rich Horton

Counting my review of Ann Leckie's Translation State, which I wrote last year before Hugo nominations were made, this is the fourth of my series for 2024. I'm reading Witch King, by Martha Wells, right now, and then I'll proceed to John Scalzi's Starter Villain. But the intervals before those next reviews will be a bit longer -- for various reasons (such as two weeks looking after my grandkids!) I didn't get to the three previous reviews until I had finished all three books.

This is another first novel, but Vajra Chandrasekera has been publishing short fiction for about a decade. This novel has gotten a tremendous amount of praise -- as, really, have all the nominees, but to my mind, this novel has gotten a bit more notice than the others. And with good reason -- this is a very ambitious novel, and very well-written. It is trying to do a lot, and succeeding at a fair bit of what it tries.

The story is told primarily from the point of view of Fetter. Fetter's mother tore his shadow from him at birth, and as a consequence, besides not casting a shadow, he is not tightly rooted to the ground: he will float into the air if he doesn't take care. His mother also teaches him to be an assassin, from an early age, and she prepares him to commit the Five Unforgivables, as defined by his absent father's theology -- for his father is a "saint", the Perfect and Kind. These crimes are matricide, heresy, killing of saints, patricide, and killing the Perfect and Kind. Nice family!

After this short introduction, we proceed to Fetter in adulthood. He has left his mother and moved to the city of Luriat. He has joined a group of the "unchosen" -- people who were passed over for the status of prophet or saint of a religion. Fetter qualifies, of course, due to his father being the Perfect and Kind, and we soon learn that his father's religion is gaining influence and that his father may come to Luriat some time in the relatively near future. Fetter also has a boyfriend, and some friends in the group of the Unchosen, but still seems to be drifting in life. 

And then there are the Bright Doors. These are doors in buildings all over Luriat -- any door might become a Bright Door if left shut long enough. Birght Doors can not ordinarily be opened -- and if you enter one's building from another doorway, you will see no evidence of it. For this reason many houses in the city don't really have doors. There is a city department that assigns people to monitor Bright Doors, and Fetter signs up for this.

Fetter's mother is dying, and she begins calling him, on an unconnected phone, and starts telling him stories about her past, her marriage, Fetter's father, and so on. These are very strange, and indeed they clearly bring the novel into the realm of magical realism. Meanwhile one of Fetter's Unchosen friends lures him into a sort of revolutionary group, one focussed at first on putting on a satirical play. And Fetter's father and his army of pilgrims come closer and closer.

It becomes clearer and clearer that the city of Luriat is a very unjust place, and also that the Perfect and Kind will not improve things. And we can see, more or less, the shape of the climax, though Chandrasekera surprises us in some ways. As I said, it's a very ambitious novel, and there is a lot to admire. But somehow for me it didn't quite land. There is a narrative trick at the closing section that, while it's clearly prepared for, didn't work for me. And the magical realist aspect, while quite cool, failed to convince, and I'm not sure it was needed. I didn't really get as involved in the social issues brought up by the novel -- there is a distancing aspect to some of it.

Perhaps this is nitpicking, perhaps I am not the right reader, or perhaps I should reread the book. It's clearly impressive, and a quick look at his upcomimg novel, Rakesfall, makes it seem potentially even more impressive. Even with my misgivings, this is a novel that may well have been on my nomination list had I read it in time.