This has got to be the most unique and complicated fantasy setting I've seen. A world of one gazillion warring political beliefs and violent religious enforcement, a man who can change history with the flick of a wrist, unseen monsters bleeding into the world. A melting pot of a city, unabashedly racist but also all the other adjectives because it's too big to be just one thing. And you won't be able to pick all of them up because neither can the main character, Fetter, who's just one guy. One guy trained by his mother to kill his father, who's a god basically, but he doesn't want that. He just want to be Just Some Guy.
The prose is boiling, sometimes angry sometimes despondent, the author's sentiments bleeding into the pages. You can tell this was written in the pandemic years, you can tell the author has seen the horrors, the many injustices of our current era, and writing this story is pouring it all out. The author is Sri Lankan and you can tell how that influences the writing and worldbuilding too.
The setups and worldbuilding was massive, too much to keep up with, the story seeming like it would buckle under the weight at any moment. And it did, I think, buckle under the weight. I lost track of it towards the end. The story didn't so much peter out as going someplace I can't follow. What does any of this means, at the end? What happens next? God knows. But I felt the emotions sharp and biting in my heart. And I think that's all they wanted to transmit at the end. Everything else is his alone, and maybe for the people who know him well enough.
Recommended if you're also from a third world country with a violent history with colonization and you'd like to have that sweet catharsis of being seen.
