The Saint of Bright Doors

Vajra Chandrasekera
Completed 5/11/2024, Reviewed 5/12/2024
4 stars

This book was very original in its mix of demons and anti-gods, brightly colored portals, and dystopian South Asia.  I must admit, it is like nothing I’ve read before.  At the same time, the strangeness of it made it difficult to stick to it.  The prose, though, was phenomenal.  It’s a very literary novel, with little back and forth dialogue and a ton of world building.  I assume it’s set in a dystopian South Asia as the author is from Sri Lanka, there are tuk-tuks, there’s racism and castes, and saris are worn.  But the location is never clearly defined.  I can see why this book was nominated for a 2023 Nebula, but I thought it might be a little too prosy for a Hugo.  However, it was nominated for a 2024 Hugo as well.  

Fetter lives in Luriat.  He goes to group therapy to deal with being the son of a messiah.  He wants nothing better than to have a quiet life with his boyfriend Hej in the big city.  All his life, his mother trained him to assassinate his father, but now, away from her influence, he’s trying to shed that part of himself.  But the past is hard to release when your therapist is secretly a revolutionary, trying to bring you into the overthrow of the influence of Fetter’s father on the government.  He did inherit some magic from his mother, like being able to see demons, feel cold winds from Luriat’s brightly painted doors that go to nowhere, and be impervious to fire.  Oh yeah, and his mother tore off his shadow at birth so he sometimes passes by with little notice.  But as much as he tries to avoid it, it looks like he’s on a collision course with his father and his henchmen.  

I found the book difficult to dive into in the beginning.  At first, I was in love with the prose, but then I became rather bored with it.  It was tough getting to like Fetter, who seemed aimless and kept too much to himself.  So it took a long time to decide whether I liked him or not.  The best part of him was that other people really like him, like his boyfriend Hej, his therapist, and Caduv who connected with Fetter when Caduv first came to Luriat.  But as the plot unfolded, it became easy to see why Fetter was not very likeable by the reader.  He didn’t like who he was supposed to be.  And trying to shed that persona and finding who he wants to be made it difficult to empathize with him.  

It took me nearly two weeks to read this book, which was only about 350 pages.  I went for days only reading two pages at a time, partly because I had many late evening meetings with a work team in India.   And that’s too bad because I lost some of the world building during that period, causing me to be a little lost at times.  However, I read the last 200 pages in two days, and it did come to a good climax.  I was able to recall everything I needed for the ending to make sense.  

One thing I really did like was finding out who the narrator was.  It happens at the end, so I’m not going to spoil it.  But it did surprise me.  

Reflecting on the book for a day, I give it four stars out of five.  It really is a good book.  It was nice to read a book with LGBTQ+ characters after a long hiatus from the subgenre.  I just found it hard to stay with it.  It might have a good chance at winning the Nebula, which is a peer award, and the Nebulas often reward prosy work.  But I don’t know about the Hugo.  I have to read the others to see what I think fans would reward.  Chandrasekera has written a lot of short works and I would really be interested in reading some of those stories.  This is his first novel.

The Eye of the World

Robert Jordan
Completed 4/29/2024, Reviewed 4/29/2024
4 stars

This was a book I was interested in because of its popularity.  It is the first book in the fourteen volume The Wheel of Time series.  So when my in-person book club chose it as their May selection, I was excited.  I finally had an excuse to read this 750 page monster.  I gave myself a lot of time to read it, because the last 800 pager I read took me three weeks.  This one took about two and a half.  I really liked it, but I didn’t love it.  Towards the end, I was struggling to pick it up every day, not because it was bad, but because of the effort just to keep going and I was losing interest.  I kept feeling like it was dragged out more than it needed to be.  I can’t image what would go into another thirteen books of this world.  So I’m probably not going to continue the series.

The plot is a relatively standard quest.  There’s a little town with charming, colorful people.  One day, the Trollocs attack.  They’re sort of orc-like half-man, half-beasts.  A mysterious woman who had come to town figures out that they came not to destroy the town, although they did some of that, but to attack three young men in the town.  Moiraine and her mysterious ranger-like companion, Lan, realize it is because of the evil shadow that has reemerged after keeping low for a long while.  Moiraine and Lan whisk the three young men, along with an insistent young woman, out of the village to seek the guidance and protection of the Aes Sedai.  Thus begins an epic journey across lands, meeting magical people and fighting evil beings to escape from the call of the Dark One.

Yes, it is reminiscent of Lord of the Rings.  Apparently, Jordan claimed that he started the series in an LOTR fashion so as to ease people into a new magical world.  I found the similarities a little too close for comfort.  I don’t know if I’d call this lazy or smart.  Since this was first published 34 years ago, so much more fantasy has been written that has challenged readers more directly.  I think I would have been much more interested in it if it wasn’t such a knock-off.  

What the book really had going for it was the writing.  It was beautifully written.  During the times I was struggling to stay interested, that’s what kept me coming back.  My biggest problem with the book was that I didn’t find myself endeared to any of the major characters.  I liked several of them, but never felt I was fully in their heads.  The book is told in third person perspective from Rand’s point of view.  He’s is basically the main character, he’s one of the three that the Dark One seems to be after.  I really wanted to be drawn into his head, but couldn’t get there.  The other two young men, Mat and Perrin, and the young woman, Egwene, had many strong moments throughout the book.  However, they often did things that fell out of character.  Egwene started out as a strong character, but I felt like she ended up a girly-girl, weak and whiny.   Mat gets possessed by an evil sword and starts acting strange, but as a character, it’s inconsistent.  Perrin discovers he can speak to wolves.  While that seems like an opportunity to shine, he gets all whiny about it.  So yeah, a lot of whining.

There were a few characters I did really like.  There was Thom, a gleeman who sings, tells stories, juggles, and plays the flute.  He travels from town to town to make money as a performer.  He ends up on the journey and adds some much needed humor.  I also like Loial, a very large being with some animal characteristics, but is not a Trolloc.  The Loial is from a race that cares for trees and built many of the cities preceding this era of time.  He’s lumbering, but smart and, well, loyal.  He’s not quite an Ent, but is reminiscent of that Tolkien race.  There was also a wolf-friend guy, I think his name was Elyas.  He helps Perrin realize he’s also a wolf-friend.  He was one of the few people who generally seemed good in this world succumbing to the Dark One’s shadow.  But even he was a little inconsistent in places.

But through all my complaining about the characters, the book is very readable.  I just wish it was tighter and more original.  There’s a lot of action featuring many side characters, good and evil.  There are many twists and turns, even a splitting of the group, a la the breaking of the Fellowship.  So it all has a familiar feel if you’re an LOTR fan, and it may irritate you.  But at it’s core it’s a solid four stars out of five book.  I probably won’t continue the series, but I’ll probably rewatch the series to see how much it followed the book.