Uvrón’s Reviews > The Saint of Bright Doors > Status Update

A policeman on a bicycle just showed up in this strange purgatory to deliver absurdist news. This HAS to be a reference to The Third Policeman, surely???!

If you get this Flann O’Brien reference, friend me, I’m desperate for people who understand my favorite nonsense 😜

The third phase of Fetter’s life-in-this-story is still politically sharp, bringing older opacities of power structures to the forefront as times become bad. The blatant irrationalities, confusions, and historical accidents are such a strange way to create a society. And this is exactly how our real modern societies got created.

This book is a skillful take on the world. I mean the real world, even though it’s not set there. How real experiences are in a cosmopolitan city with a cruel, opaque power structure and long history, and many people who all know different secrets. And in this passage, how one’s political actions are bound up in the personal and in your daily life and how that brings regret and consequence.

“That’s not how laws *work*, son,” she says. “A visible law is a ploy, a little play. A mummery in waiting, waiting for you to become interesting. Never give them a reason to care who you are.”

This becomes so clear in a protest movement or as an immigrant. Perhaps I hope genre fiction keeps its aura of disrespect so it can stay subversive and educational.

Love the bold, cool early transition into a different story. Love that this fantasy setting doesn’t reify social constructs (race is still oppressive pseudoscience). Love magic as real but cultural, hard to categorize. Interested to see how the disease/rumor/proselytizing metaphor develops. Has made me think about the value of writing a confused immigrant’s (my own?) perspective of a place.

Damn, why am I blessed by such a series of talented authors writing books I immediately fall into?

The answer is book clubs.