The Saint of Bright Doors
In the seconds after Fetter is born, his mother kills his shadow. He grows up shadowless, at times weightless, floating off into the clear air. His mother trains him for a series of violent missions, beginning with matricide and ending with the murder of the Perfect and Kind, a revered and powerful spiritual leader—and Fetter’s own father. Launched out onto his own at thirteen, Fetter tries to abandon his prophecy, but it has a way of coming back to him. The world of the story is deeply unfamiliar and yet also somehow entirely real, in a city where any closed door can instantly become “bright”—no longer open or accessible to humans and yet seeming to share a border with strange other worlds. Entangled within Fetter’s life are other tales: about what happens when you change the world and it keeps on changing, about revolution and sedition, and about the substance of something as insubstantial as a shadow.