Vajra Chandrasekera (Tordotcom)
WHEN he is born, Fetter鈥檚 mother rips off his shadow and strangles it. This violent act is the source of unusual powers that manifest as he grows. He can see things others can鈥檛 鈥� or fear to 鈥� and he has to learn to obey gravity: it takes great practice to keep his feet grounded.
But the core curriculum in his mother鈥檚 tutelage is 鈥済ramarye, dialectics, revanche, deferral, and murder鈥�. She is training Fetter to kill his father, one of the many prophets who stalk the world Vajra Chandrasekera has built in The Saint of Bright Doors, a debut that marries speculative fiction and magical realism.
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Fetter rejects his mother鈥檚 training and grisly plans, opting for a new life in cosmopolitan Luriat, a balmy, lazy city that takes in migrants of all stripes and gives them free food, medical care and housing. It is also an authoritarian horror that sorts citizens according to a racial and caste classification system that touches all life and prospects in the city.
Now a sullen 20-something, trying to forget his past, Fetter attends a support group for the unchosen: the progeny born and bred to take on the mantle of the prophets of arcane religions, but cast out. His misfit friends have powers, too: prophetic dreams or persuasive vocal harmonics. Their leader is Koel, the unchosen acolyte of a minor religion. Quiet about her own powers, she itches to burn the system down.
Fetter is happy enough to eke out a pleasant, aimless, existence 鈥� until he notices the 鈥渂right doors鈥� scattered around the city. They never open and are painted vivid colours to mark them out. Some people worship them; the government fears them. Koel realises that, although they don鈥檛 open, they are never closed 鈥� and the unseen entities they admit could bring everything down. What are they? What is Luriat? Is anything real? The more Fetter struggles, the more he must yield to the powers his mother bestowed on him to turn him into a weapon.
His journey is a classic story of trying to outrun your past only to discover that no one ever does. But this book is so much more. It is about making sense of an abusive childhood, about how authoritarian governments instil fear. And it is about how religions turn old hurts and fears to their own advantage.
Somehow, Chandrasekera keeps all these plot lines coherent, orchestrating their orbit around his deepest theme: how people use memory for their own dirty ends. It is well established among cognitive scientists that memory is unreliable. We can misremember an event mere seconds after it has occurred. This glitch is easily exploited to build consensus, often for darker ends. This is dangerous, because our biographical and collective memories are central to our identities and sense of self.
Fetter鈥檚 descent through the increasingly bizarre layers of unreliable memories that define his existence (and that of Luriat itself ) is dreamlike and piercing in its emotional truth. Clashing incompatibilities seem to be Chandrasekera鈥檚 stock in trade: he effortlessly braids the minutiae of modern life (email spam, crowdfunding, apartments) with the less familiar (shadowless people, trees with floating roots).
The pleasant disorientation that ensues makes the book as hard to put down as it is to step out of a dream: and like a dream, even when it doesn鈥檛 make sense, it is true. What鈥檚 truly unbelievable is that this is someone鈥檚 first book.
Sally also recommends鈥�
Terry Miles (Del Rey)
If you like the idea of following a trail of false memories through a complicated magical universe, you might like Rabbits, a book that is part conspiracy podcast and part pure fun.
Sally Adee is a technology and聽science writer based in聽London. Follow her on聽Twitter @sally_adee
