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Apr. 30th, 2024 06:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsI'd seen so many glowing recommendations for The Saint of Bright Doors before I read it that I was quite concerned I would end up over-hyped on it and not enjoy it as much as a result, but I didn't need to worry; I thought it was just as good as I'd heard and more.
There are some books that are built around a cool idea, and then there are books that are built around five or six or seven cool ideas that all somehow come together in a harmony, and this is one of the latter. Cool ideas include but are not limited to:
- a protagonist, Fetter, who has been raised by his mysterious mother for the single purpose of killing his father, a major religious leader, but has instead skipped town to go to the big city and get therapy and is slowly rebuilding a complicated relationship with his mother over the phone
- a support group for 'un-chosen' ones who have in some way or another missed the call to a major religious destiny that they feel they ought to have had, which is in fact a cover for a political revolution, which has recruited Fetter to go undercover as a grad student and get access to municipal secrets, forcing him to maintain a complex web of double and triple identities
- a magical city haunted by invisible spirits in which any door that's left closed long enough mysteriously turns into a bright door of unknown significance, that is also a modern city in which people have phones and therapy and internet fundraising campaigns (one of the latter of which, forwarded to Fetter by his boyfriend is attempting to raise money to bring Fetter's father to the city for a major event)
- that is also a place where everyone receives universal basic income and free housing; that is also plagued by recurring cycles of illness and violence; that is ALSO beset by a Kafkaesque bureaucracy in which immigrants and undesirable citizens can easily disappear
- a quarantine camp in the middle of said city which is so enormous and labyrinthine that once you get far enough inside the people within no longer know that they are in fact inside said city at all
There's so much going on in this book and so much that it's got to say, but it doesn't feel chaotic -- it feels like it knows exactly what it wants to be about, and has a lot to say about those things all the way through, while maintaining a sense that anything could happen. If I'd been lucky enough to have even one of these ideas, I would have been like 'what a great idea! that's a book!' and patted myself on the back and felt amazing about it, but this one just keeps building on itself and getting continually weirder and more interesting as it goes. It's not just the ideas, either; I thought the writing really landed the balance between funny and numinous, familiar-recognizable and strange-wondrous, sarcastic/despairing and sincere. By far one of the most interesting, ambitious and compelling books I've read so far this year, and I apologize if I've now over-hyped it for all of you in turn but I do think it deserves it.
There are some books that are built around a cool idea, and then there are books that are built around five or six or seven cool ideas that all somehow come together in a harmony, and this is one of the latter. Cool ideas include but are not limited to:
- a protagonist, Fetter, who has been raised by his mysterious mother for the single purpose of killing his father, a major religious leader, but has instead skipped town to go to the big city and get therapy and is slowly rebuilding a complicated relationship with his mother over the phone
- a support group for 'un-chosen' ones who have in some way or another missed the call to a major religious destiny that they feel they ought to have had, which is in fact a cover for a political revolution, which has recruited Fetter to go undercover as a grad student and get access to municipal secrets, forcing him to maintain a complex web of double and triple identities
- a magical city haunted by invisible spirits in which any door that's left closed long enough mysteriously turns into a bright door of unknown significance, that is also a modern city in which people have phones and therapy and internet fundraising campaigns (one of the latter of which, forwarded to Fetter by his boyfriend is attempting to raise money to bring Fetter's father to the city for a major event)
- that is also a place where everyone receives universal basic income and free housing; that is also plagued by recurring cycles of illness and violence; that is ALSO beset by a Kafkaesque bureaucracy in which immigrants and undesirable citizens can easily disappear
- a quarantine camp in the middle of said city which is so enormous and labyrinthine that once you get far enough inside the people within no longer know that they are in fact inside said city at all
There's so much going on in this book and so much that it's got to say, but it doesn't feel chaotic -- it feels like it knows exactly what it wants to be about, and has a lot to say about those things all the way through, while maintaining a sense that anything could happen. If I'd been lucky enough to have even one of these ideas, I would have been like 'what a great idea! that's a book!' and patted myself on the back and felt amazing about it, but this one just keeps building on itself and getting continually weirder and more interesting as it goes. It's not just the ideas, either; I thought the writing really landed the balance between funny and numinous, familiar-recognizable and strange-wondrous, sarcastic/despairing and sincere. By far one of the most interesting, ambitious and compelling books I've read so far this year, and I apologize if I've now over-hyped it for all of you in turn but I do think it deserves it.
