This book began a bit difficult for me to grapple with: Chandrasekera begins the text in a manner similar to mythological tales, and there’s a pretty steep learning curve w/r/t to the world he has constructed. Contributing to the challenge, Nochu_Dee on Goodreads points out that the book is actually allegorical. Chandrasekera’s book then becomes a commentary on Buddhist extremism and politics in South Asia. I can’t speak to this topic, but her thoughtful review is absolutely worth reading.
The Saint of Bright Doors is an outstandingly original work: there are demons, “bright doors” that appear without anyone really understanding why, time-play, an evil (?) mother, supernatural powers, and more.
The single largest issue of the novel is that it relies far too heavily on exposition. On some level, this is necessary to tell a story of this scale in such a brief form. However, it’s rather obvious that it isn’t characters driving the story. Instead, Chandrasekera’s book is valuable for its approaches to world-building and playing with really interesting concepts.
Some of those concepts have so much promise! But, in the end, so many of them don’t reach their full potential. For instance, we come to see Fetter devote large amounts of time to studying the “Bright Doors,” but the novel is inconsistent about the motivation in doing so. Is it to meet the other students studying them and thereby drive Fetter’s attempt at assassinating his father (which itself is inconsistent, as there was little indication that Fetter would do so)? Or is it to depict the politico-religious concerns among elites in the city that much of the book takes place in? The doors themselves have so much promise, but they fall out until the last chapter, when Fetter appears to lead a demonic army? Another missed opportunity is Mother-of-Glory’s mention that Luriat simply did not exist before the Perfect and Kind transformed the nature of existence. What does this tell us about the nature of reality? How does this affect Fetter’s understanding of the world? We don’t know! The book is littered with really cool but underdeveloped concepts like this.
The major twist of the book is that it’s being narrated by Fetter’s shadow. Realistically, I think this is a smart decision: it adds depth to Chandrasekera’s world. The downside is that there is an enormous tone-shift in the last two chapters, and this takes away from the coherence of the novel.
Other ideas, on the other hand, are much better executed. I thought that the depiction of prisoner camps (?) was particularly well done. The chapters that deal with the camps are utterly surreal and they added so much depth and texture to the novel. I also found that they were used effectively to develop Fetter’s character.
In spite of these conceptual problems, I really enjoyed the novel. The world here is really quite fantastical and it feels alive, unlike many of the characters. Four stars.