#The Saint of Bright Doors

[torpublishinggroup]

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A guide of books to gift the people in your life and yourself!

For the person who made a 200+ slide powerpoint about Neon Genesis Evangelion for a presentation party… Also for those who attend presentation parties…

The Archive Undying by @emcandon

For all former and current theater kids (affectionate)...

Will Do Magic for Small Change by Andrea Hairston

For the reader who prefers their off-the-wall science fiction tempered with social commentary, or enjoys social commentary in a space opera font…

The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport by Samit Basu

━ ˖°˖ ☾☆☽ ˖°˖ ━

For the friend with the SHUDDER account…

Piñata: A Novel by Leopoldo Gout

For the burned-out chosen one who’s so, so tired…

The Saint of Bright Doors by @adamantine

For the tumblr mutual that fell down the wuxia cdrama hole…

The Water Outlaws by S. L. Huang

━ ˖°˖ ☾☆☽ ˖°˖ ━

For the gamer who fondly remembers their confrontation with Rayquaza atop the Sky Pillar…

Untethered Sky by Fonda Lee

For the “smash first, questions later” friend in your life…

Ebony Gate by Julia Vee & Ken Bebelle

For a tragic superwholockian in dire need of restorative sapphic fiction…

The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older

━ ˖°˖ ☾☆☽ ˖°˖ ━

For the reader who wished Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell was actually Jonathan Strange/Mr Norrell…

The Last Binding trilogy by @fahye, including: 

● A Marvellous Light

● A Restless Truth

● A Power Unbound

━ ˖°˖ ☾☆☽ ˖°˖ ━

Not enough books? We agree. Check out our other GET BOOKT guide.

[some-triangles]

I am now at a level of obsession with Disco Elysium where I am watching at least a little bit of every playthrough I come across. Last time this happened was with Undertale almost a decade ago. With UT this helped me get a very thorough handle on the way the game was designed and with the subtler bits of player manipulation. DE is not subtle about anything and so instead I'm getting insights into the people playing it, particularly as it spreads beyond the youtube leftist bubble.

The one I'm having the most fun with right now is by this guy named Brady, who is a therapist specializing in addiction. The fun part is not so much his insight into Harry as an addict - again, the game is not subtle - but his absolute discomfort with politics. He refuses to engage with any of the ideological choices, and that makes the game a bit of a bumpy ride for him. It's particularly striking because he's willing to read into everything else that goes on in Harry's brain - he breaks out his Johari windows and his CBT flowcharts and pins the butterfly right to the corkboard - but he shuts down when the game asks him to pick a side.

To extrapolate wildly from one dude's hangups, I think this is just part of the deal with therapy. The aim of a therapist is to make the subject more functional (particularly these days, when if you're lucky insurance will pay for ten sessions, and you better document exactly what worksheets you made your patients fill out) - and being functional means being able to be happy and productive in the society you're currently living in. If I go to a therapist and say I'm bummed out about all the murdering my government is doing they will suggest I stop watching the news, or, if I'm lucky, they'll try to help me figure out why I feel guilt about things I can't control. Delving into the whys and hows of said murdering is actively counterproductive.

This is not to say that therapy is inherently bad, or, like, counterrevolutionary, because making you a more functional person does help with a lot of things, including your ability to help others. It's just a useful thing to keep in mind when therapy and politics bump into each other. I read this paper when I was googling ABA for podcast reasons and it stuck with me. The thesis boils down to: because the world is imperfect and people need skills to live in it we should continue to torture children, and we don't have enough research to conclude that torture could be traumatic. This is on one level reasonable and on one level insane. It depends where you stand, and whether you think "ability to express affection towards parents" is worth that kind of intervention. But the authors wouldn't construe this as a political argument.

Anyway: with all this in mind, I very much recommend reading "The Saint of Bright Doors", which we will be covering on wizards vs lesbians soon.

[supervillainny]

*sidles up to you* hey, whatcha readin?

[queer-book-character-tournament]

Character, book, and author names under the cut

Fetter- The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera

Xie Lian- Heaven Official's Blessing / Tian Guan Ci Fu by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu

Magnus Chase- Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard series by Rick Riordan

Benjamin/Benji Woodside- Hell Followed With Us by Andrew Joseph White

[wizardsvslesbians]

We go along despairing about the state of the publishing industry and bemoaning the lack of artistry and strangeness in modern SF and then in defiance of all logic someone drops a first novel like this.

[literary-illuminati]

2024 Book Review #16 – The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera

I grabbed this on a recommendation I now forget the specifics of, but which I am incredibly glad I listened to. Not a perfect book, but a beautiful one. It really does immerse you in a capital-w Weird setting in a way I haven’t gotten to enjoy in a while, and might the best in years at really weaving it in with a sense of the mundane and the bathetic. Pacing and character development and plot are a little all over the place, but still a great read.

The story follows Fetter, the only child of the Perfect and Kind, anointed messiah of the Path Above. His mother tears his shadow off of him at birth, and forever after he must choose to remain tethered to the earth and not float away into infinity. He is raised from birth as a tool to take vengeance on his father by committing each of his five unforgivable sins – culminating, of course, in holy patricide. His childhood is spent in indoctrination and murders – and oh, he’s also the only one he knows who can see the monstrous devils who share the world with humanity.

So anyway, all that gives him a lot to talk about in therapy.

The actual book follows Fetters’ life as an aimless young adult in the city of Luriat, with its layers of impenetrable government and byzantine system of castes and races inherited from successive colonizers, its regular pogroms and plagues, and its tendency for any doors left closed and unwatched for too long to instantaneously become permanently shut portals to Somewhere. Over the course of the book, he is dragged into a revolutionary conspiracy, learns his father is coming to the city, learns deep metaphysical secrets, is a pretty terrible boyfriend, becomes a suicide bomber, and learns to fly.

To start with the negative, the pacing of the plot is...okay, maybe not bad, but it’s really not trying for the things I’d expect it to. A whole act of the narrative is spent meandering through an absurd purgatory of refugee/prison/quarantine camps Fetter has been consigned to. Lovely writing, thematically important, does eat up a lot of page count which then leads to rest of the book being things happening very quickly one after the other with very little in the way of buildup or reflection. Time is enjoyably spent just detailing the experience of Fetter’s day to day life, but much of the supporting cast feel more like plot (or thematic) devices than characters. The book ends with the protagonist loudly reciting the big lesson he’s learned from the events of the book. So yeah, less than perfect book. Still, I found all the sins very easy to forgive.

As mentioned, this was the first fantasy book I’ve read in a while that felt properly fantastical, like it was created from first principles rather than being the latest in a hoary old lineage stretching back generations. Which might be complete bullshit, I don’t know – not like I’ve read a great deal of other South Asian fantasy to compare it to – but it worked for me. A big part of which is how very modern it is. This is a secondary world with prophets and plague-bearing anti-gods, forgotten timelines whose ghosts leak into the world, and a whole plethora of almost- and not-quite- messiahs. And also one with cellphones and UN-administered refugee camps, labyrinthine bureaucratic politics and scandals over inappropriate allocation of imported medical devices. It all feels like a reflection of the present and its own concerns rather than the thousandth-generation pastiche much of the genre does, I suppose – which is something I really did appreciate.

The world of the book – or, at least, the little slice of it the story is concerned with. There’s clearly grander and stranger things happening off in the distance – is one intensely concerned with caste and class, race and religion and breeding. Luriat is weighed down with the architecture and high culture of successive waves of colonialism, and its elites organize and govern the population according to a syncretic mix of all of their ideological castoffs. Politics – and in particular the use of plague and quarantine on one hand and sectarian pogroms on the other to control the populace – is pretty key to the whole book. It’s also just about entirely beyond Fetter. Not that he’s dumb, just that he’s apolitical, in the sense of treating government like an inexorable and inevitable fact of life to be worked with/around or avoided, not something you can understand or change. Which makes for fun reading as there’s clearly a whole Les Mis thing happening like 0.5 degrees to the left of the book’s plot.

Anyway, I’m still sad Pipra didn’t get more screentime, and the whole ending feels almost comically rushed, but absolutely a worthwhile read.

[booksandchainmail]

Hugo Best Novel Finalists 2024

I've read all 6, so here's my impressions and loose ranking. The numerical ranking is only approximate for now, I'm going to pin it down once we get closer to voting closing. I could see the top two books switching places, or any rotation within books three, four, and five.

The Saint of Bright Doors, by Vajra Chandrasekera This was one of my top books of last year and one of my own nominations. It's a very strange book, twisty and creative, and left me with a lot of thoughts, particularly about how it handles government. I appreciated the mishmash of worldbuilding, all sorts of things that felt incongruous next to each other but somehow fit together. It also felt more literary than most sff novels? I am not normally deeply noticing of language, but I kept coming back to individual turns of phrase here. All books should have a 50-page chapter in the middle where the protagonist wanders through a neverending surrealist prison land.

Some Desperate Glory, by Emily Tesh Another of my nominations, this is a more straightforward exploration of, essentially, the deradicalization of someone raised in an authoritarian military camp. I respect how this book lets Kyr be awful, be completely convinced she is correct, and be defensive and lash out when confronted with her home's issues. I think the ending stumbles a bit, but really I mostly wanted this book to be much, much longer and have Kyr's character arc spread out more. Also, the choice of title and epigraph is excellent.

Translation State, by Ann Leckie Not much to say here, it's a new book in the Imperial Radch universe, I read it when I came out so don't remember detail. I liked the different intersecting plotlines, and particularly the Presger merge-and-devour adolescent instinct

The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi, by Shannon Chakraborty This one I hadn't read before but enjoyed. I don't know how deep I'd say it is, but it's fun, a good classic adventure story with a putting-the-crew-back-together plot common to heist narratives. It benefits a lot from its setting: my main takeaway was that the Indian Ocean in medieval times is a criminally underused setting for any kind of nautical/swashbuckling/adventure story.

Witch King, by Martha Wells I read this one when it came out, and remember liking it a lot. The two intertwined narratives, set centuries apart, worked well for me to let the backstory unfold to inform the main plot as it progressed. I think I preferred the backstory narrative? But that might be due to also having the present narrative, since my favorite part was seeing how the echoes of relationships are still going on centuries after we get to see them form

Starter Villain, by John Scalzi I did not like this. I had some criticism last year for Scalzi's Kaiju Preservation Society, on the grounds that it was fun but not substantive enough for an award. But at least with that one I enjoyed reading it! My main thought while reading Starter Villain was "Well, at least it's short." I think my main problem with this is tonal: it doesn't commit enough to the over-the-top goofiness of "guy inherits his uncle's supervillain empire" and keeps trying to ground it in what an actual secretive genius billionaire pulling strings behind the scenes for his own nefarious purposes might look like, but then any attempts to actually be serious with the grounded stakes and world established kept running into the fact that it also featured sentient cats and talking dolphins! Also, I couldn't stop noticing that the protagonist talks the same way as the major supporting characters, which is the same way the protagonist talked in KPS last year

[bread-lowph]

idk i think about this a lot

[adamantine]

It's my birthday, so if you want to hear me talk for like TWO WHOLE HOURS (and why would you not want this, he says, making eye contact pointedly) I'm up at the iconic Between the Covers podcast with David Naimon! We talk about The Saint of Bright Doors, Rakesfall, Sri Lanka, Buddhism, post/colonialism, fascism, replacement theory, and pretty much everything else that anybody could possibly ever talk about

[crowns-of-violets-and-roses]

The Saint of Bright Doors

Fetter has been raised from birth to commit the five unforgivable sins set out in his messianic father's religion, to culminate with patricide. After being trained for this throughout childhood his mother sends him out into the world as a teenager to fulfill the mission she has set him. This is all largely backstory, dispensed of in just two short chapters. The bulk of the story follows Fetter after he has abandoned following his mother's instruction as an aimless 23 year old (by his best estimate at least) in the city of Luriat.

Fetter now has a therapist (who he has been seeing "ever since he learned what a therapist was") and a boyfriend, attends a support group for unchosen ones and helps new immigrants adjust to living in the city.

Taken out of context a lot of elements of the books sounds like they're from a novel that's doing self conscious genre commentary or is even verging on parody but the book is really nothing like that. It's a unique fantasy world that is genuinely fantastical. I find that modern settings with a high level of magic often struggle to convey a sense of wonder and this was a welcome exception to that.

It's possible it's just drawing inspiration from books I'm not familiar with but the setting felt fresh and original.

The prose is enjoyable. It occasionally tries a little too hard to be clever but that's a rare problem and for the most part it's a joy to read. In particular Chandrasekera is very skilled at shifting registers; there are moments that in the hands of a less skilled would play as comedic juxtaposition (either intentionally or worse unintentionally) but his writing makes it seem natural

As the book continues Fetter gets involved with political radicals, goes undercover as a researcher, reconnects with his dying mother and gets drawn back into his past. The book becomes more plot heavy as it continues and it's not entirely to it's benefit. It's most often at it's strongest when focusing on individual in the course of ordinary life (or well ordinary by the standards of this world).

We learn more about the history of the world and Fetter's parents throughout the story and these parts have some of the best writing in the book. One chapter is taken up by Fetter's Mother, Mother-of-Glory, relating the story of how Fetter got his name and it's one of my favourite sections of the book.

Throughout the book caste and class and the experience and perception of immigrants are constant factors which are never far from the surface.

The book does weaken towards the end. Fetter leaves and returns to Luriat and after his return it somehow feels simultaneously both unfocused and too tightly focused. Towards the very end the narrative distances itself from Fetter and we're disconnected from his inner thoughts. I understand why Chandrasekera made this choice but it's something difficult to execute after following Fetter so intimately up until then and I don't know that it is entirely successful. The latter chapters would have benefited from more room to breathe.

There's no real way she could have appeared for more than the brief period that she did but Ordinary was great and I would have loved to see more of her.

The Saint of Bright Doors is Chandrasekera's debut novel and it is impressive for a first book. As much as I thoroughly enjoyed it, I'm even more excited to see what he'll write in the future.

[torpublishinggroup]

Fetter was raised to kill, honed as a knife to cut down his sainted father. This gave him plenty to talk about in therapy.

WHAT’S IT ABOUT

As a child, Fetter walked among invisible powers: devils and anti-gods that mock the mortal form. He learned a lethal catechism, lost his shadow, and gained a habit for secrecy. After a blood-soaked childhood, Fetter escaped his rural hometown for the big city, and fell into a broader world where divine destinies are a dime a dozen.

Everything in Luriat is more than it seems. Group therapy is recruitment for a revolutionary cadre. Junk email hints at the arrival of a god. Every door is laden with potential, and once closed may never open again. The city is scattered with Bright Doors, looming portals through which a cold wind blows. In this unknowable metropolis, Fetter will discover what kind of man he is, and his discovery will rewrite the world.

The Saint of Bright Doors sets the high drama of divine revolutionaries and transcendent cults against the mundane struggles of modern life, resulting in a novel both revelatory and resonant.

[haveyoureadthisfantasybook]

vote yes if you have finished the entire book.

vote no if you have not finished the entire book.

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[jolyful]

There's been a soft rain all day - perfect ambiance for getting into a new book! 🌧️ So far I'm loving the writing and very intriguing worldbuilding

[ofliterarynature]

OCTOBER 2023 WRAP UP

[loved liked ok no thanks (reread) book club* DNF]

The Sunset Years of Agnes Sharp | Conrad’s Fate | Hold Fast Through the Fire | All the White Spaces* | The Game of Courts | (Artificial Condition) | From Below | Creatures of Will and Temper | The Saint of Bright Doors | (All Systems Red) | Over My Dead Body | The Twyford Code | A Conjuring of Light | Small Miracles | A Murderous Relation | Realm of Ash | The Magicians of Caprona | The Hourglass Throne | Raw Dog | Graveminder | The Devil and Winnie Flynn

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

I am getting to this SO LATE, forgive me if I don't say a lot because I have forgotten so much. Work has eaten all of my time and energy against my will (should I get a new job? Probably). Anyways.

The Hourglass Throne - Will definitely need to reread this before the next book comes out (even thought they're all pretty well self contained for a series!) because WHAT? I have only half an idea what's going on, and no idea how to feel about the ending. Do I grieve? Not grieve? ??????? I think book 2 is still my favorite, but these books are addictive and a joy to read.

The Magicians of Caprona - I think at this point it's fair to say that I don't think DWJ could write a book that is uninteresting to read, but this is definitely my least favorite of at least the Chrestomanci books so far.

Realm of Ash - book 2 of the Books of Ambha series; I didn't like the first book in this series, why did I continue? Hope, that it would build on the things in the first book that I actually liked, and bring the sisters back together. It was better, I guess, but not in any way that really made me like it. I wish I'd followed my impulse and returned it to the library without listening.

A Murderous Relation - another Veronica Speedwell mystery, reliably enjoyable as always :)

Small Miracles - This was a DELIGHT. This was a fun romp (I'm told) in the vein of Good Omens, but with small stakes - and small miracles. The fallen angel of petty temptations is hired by an angelic friend to help the most sinless (and miserable) mortal have a little fun. But there's more to it than meets the eye, and the case gets tangled up the mortal woman's niece, pretending to be a school counselor, difficult family relationships, rants about chocolate, and inconsiderate siblings who rudely keep picking the same human gender as you. It's sweet, comforting, very queernorm, and a little romantic (f/gf)

A Conjuring of Light - I finished my Shades of Magic reread! Thank god. I was so thoroughly not impressed with books 2 & 3 this time around - they're just one book, divided in two, and I don't think it was divided in the right spot. It's so disappointing that these did not age with me, but you will also have to pry my copies away from me because they're one of the few books I've ever gotten signed in person (and the original covers are just cool). I fully intend to submit myself to the new spinoff series because hope never really dies lol.

The Twyford Code - This was such a strange and delightful book, that I'm not even sure I'm mad about the twist at the ending, I had such a good time reading it. (past me, listening: wow, this would have made such a cool fiction podcast, right? Joke's on me haha). I did honestly think I'd forgotten what this book was about for a bit, but then I was going through some old kid's books from my grandma that were *exactly* like the series in this book, and I had a big AHAH moment that delighted me.

Over My Dead Body - this was my first/nonfiction attempt at jamming in some spooky-ish books before the end of October. Overall, good. I did learn some new facts and there were some interesting parts; but I didn't always appreciate some of the author's commentary, and when it say's "America's Cemeteries," it really only means its urban cemeteries, which was a bit disappointing.

All Systems Red/Artificial Condition - Murderbot, my Beloved. rereading for the new book, and I'm trying my hardest to NOT do it on audiobook this time - and it's really worth it to read it in text, I promise, even if Kevin R Free's voice still echoes in my mind.

The Saint of Bright Doors - this was such a strange and wonderful read, I am so delighted to have read this, I love an unapologetically weird book. The vibe definitely reminds me a bit of The City & The City, or in some ways The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy; except I had other problems with those books and didn't finish them, but I did like this one. I know this won't be everyone's cup of tea, but maybe give it a shot.

Creatures of Will and Temper - another spooky book, and ooh boy could I go on an entire rant, I didn't want to finish this one but felt I had to for reasons. I'll let you look up the plot yourselves, but picture this: Victorian London, two sisters (one who likes swords!), and a whole lot of queer characters I wasn't expecting. I was delighted! Except you gradually learn every single queer character is involved with this club that has made a pact with a demon. What exactly does that mean? Who knows, because the book does not tell you until at least 3/4 of the way through, and we only have the word of the jacket copy and our sainted demon slayer, who is sketchy af the moment we get him alone. Turns out it's a chill demon who doesn't want blood sacrifice, cool cool, but maybe it should have been thought through a little more? Also the main/only successful romance in the book is between a 17 year old girl and a woman who is at minimum in her 30's, explicitly encouraged in part by the demon. hmm. Overall the writing and rest of the story was just ok, and the ending was disgustingly saccharine and just bad. Would strongly not recommend, but if someone wants my copy you're welcome to it. 2 stars.

From Below - another spooky book, and somehow still the most successful even though I didn't like it much. I almost DNF'd this in the first half, and while I wouldn't say I wish i had, I think my time could have been better spent. But really - if you are diving at an untouched ship wreck, that went missing with hundreds of unaccounted passengers and crew, in an area of the ocean entirely inhospitable to life, shouldn't one of the things you expect to find be human bodies??????? I got so worked up, lol, but once the spooky stuff started I had a better time.

The Game of Courts - new Nine World's novella! I love that Victoria takes the time to explore the various characters in her books outside of the main narrative. Getting to learn more about Conju ourside the current story was much appreciated, even if getting to see an outsider POV of earlier Kip was maybe the main draw. Probably not my favorite of the Lays novellas, but worth reading - and maybe a good starting place for those who are new to the series? Now if only I could get myself to read Derring-Do...

All the White Spaces - bookclub pick that got rescheduled to Nov (more time to reread Murderbot tho, so yay me). The description of this - trans guy on an antarctic exploration that goes wrong - sounded interesting, but it was kind of meh for me in the end. For one I was expecting more horror, but the description of "polar gothic" I've seen since really fits better. I also wasn't a fan of the supernatural explanation, and the whole thing felt hopeless from the beginning, once we got a grasp on the *actual* details of the situation, so I didn't quite know what we were here for. Not my cup of tea.

Hold Fast Through the Fire - NeoG book two!!!! This series is turning out to be very akin to the Tarot sequence in that they not perfect books or 5 stars by any means, but are so fun and addictive to read. This series is space opera, post-post-apocalypse where Earth has two colonies, and the series is about a team in the space!coast guard. Getting into the specific plot of this book isn't actually important, but there's a good 50/50 split on plot vs talking about our emotions!!! I love it, it definitely shows some improvement over book 1, even though I don't know that the author has got the POV's quite balanced out. Jenks is lucky I love her because her drama sure does keep taking over (and I cried so hard for her in this one you guys). Would recommend. Did I mention that almost everyone is queer?

Conrad’s Fate - a good book, but this is also the point where I really started questioning the recommended Chrestomanci reading order. I think chronologically it's book 2? And I'd already forgotten so much from The Lives of Christopher Chant, I do not understand and wish I'd read them chronologically. Much more fun than the Magicians of Caprona.

The Sunset Years of Agnes Sharp - I was SO excited when I saw there was a new Leonie Swann being published in english, even if it wasn't the sequel to Three Bags Full (which I read last year and loved). I was even MORE excited when the book opened and was being narrated by the pet tortoise!!! Alas, it was not to last, I did not get another murder novel narrated by an animal. That being said, still pretty good, it reminded me of the Thursday Murder Club (which I liked less), but probably won't be a favorite.

DNF'S - Graveminder and The Devil and Winnie Flynn were both books I own that I tried to fit in for spooky month that did not work out. Winnie Flynn I admit I dropped almost immediately, the vibes were peak bad YA and I wasn't going to torture myself. Graveminder I tried, because I liked the idea, and it wasn't bad per-se, but something about the way it was executed (and the many many POV's) just wasn't working for me. Might fit someone else better though.

Raw Dog I really wanted to like, because the history of hot dogs and a description/ranking of hot dogs are both extremely up my alley - and I did make it 40% in! But there were just a number of factors building up against this - the author's sometimes very (overly?) sharp commentary, my lack of interest in her dysfunctional life, the lack of any comparative rating system for the hot dogs, the food waste, and the sheer number of bodily excretions used as descriptors for the food finally tipped me over the edge. I could have kept listening but I didn't really want to. Perhaps for someone, but not for me.

[aroaessidhe]

When a book is in third person but then 80% through it hits you with an "I" in the middle of a sentence

[literary-illuminati]

going for double damage (inbox +1 AND another suggestion for the tbr). I think you might like The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera. It's a very odd fantasy book with gorgeously written prose about revolution and cults and the ol' imperialisms. Probably one of the best books on a craft and originality level I've read this year.

Oh, and while I'm here, unrecommending The Splinter in the Sky by Kemi Ashing-Giwa. It's covering a lot of the same ground as Memory Called Empire (excellent), and I'd say it's better at depicting the realities of cultural imperialism-- but also. It's also just not as good on a basic prose/craft level and it has a bad case of Surely We Can Solve This Systemic Issue Forever If We Just Kill This One Guy. Deeply frustrating since the premise has a lot of potential.

Surely We Can Solve This Systemic Issue Forever If We Just Kill This One Guy

Yeah this is increasingly becoming, well, not a dealbreaker, but at least a major demerit in books trying to deal with actual issues for me. (At the very least, if you're positing a load-bearing Pope Of Racism, the rest of the setting better be stylized and surreal enough for it to fit).

Anyway I have no memory of hearing of this book before but I did apparently because it's already on my giant tbr list. Will move it up, anyway! Thanks for the rec!