Review of "The Saint of Bright Doors" by Vajra Chandrasekera

I received an ARC of this book from Tordotcom in exchange for an honest review. This review will not contain any spoilers.

This book was not what I expected, mostly for good. The first chapter sets up a classic, if conflicted, Chosen One--so far, so normal. The second chapter is a beautiful single-paragraph time skip--a little more unusual, but still one of my favorite devices (see: The Traitor Baru Cormorant, among others). By the third chapter we have left the mythic tone behind and moved into what feels like a Soviet-era bureaucratic dystopia. Even having been told that this novel was about former Chosen Ones growing up, the tonal shift was striking given that I expected something more in the style of American Gods--myths infusing the modern world with their own styles and sensibilities. Instead, despite names like Fetter and The Perfect and Kind, the rhythms of the story feel closer to the modern world (with subplots about pandemics, refugees, government changes) than to an imagined past. To support this change of pace, Chandrasekera's prose is wry in a way I've come to associate with writers obliquely criticizing dictatorships, full of double meanings and implications that allude to the broader world of the novel without spelling out its rules for the author. Several lines got a genuine chuckle--"without possession, nine-tenths of the lore are already lost" was perhaps my favorite. I spent an unreasonable amount of time trying to anagram "Acusdab" before finally accepting that it probably had no meaning, likely a fitting commentary on the themes of the book. The plot tends to meander and mix ideas in a way similar to the prose; there are sections which recount old myths, passages about work permits and funding for academic research, a long and hallucinogenic bike tour through an internment camp. Despite the specters of prophecy and destiny that haunt the first chapter, and the unresolved question of the doors, the novel takes its time getting to the "plot-heavy" portions of the book, and I enjoyed reading its unhurried account of life in the in-between crossroads city of Luriat. If anything, I found the ultimate resolutions to the ostensibly central questions--how will Fetter kill The Perfect and Kind? what do the doors do? who will be in power by the end?--less satisfying than the journey towards that resolution. Inconclusive endings are a quirk I tend to enjoy, and I feel like this book might have benefited from fully committing to its early theme of upending the Chosen One narrative. Maybe what matters most is neither our destiny nor our reaction to it, but simply the course life takes independent of the forces that drive it.

Four out of five stars. An interesting, genre-bending novel with several striking passages and ideas.