Meg's Reviews > Rakesfall

This was stunning and complex. A portrait of death (and dead things walking) and incarnations and reincarnations, of gods playing games and being caught in the same cycle. I think it would help the reader to have some knowledge of South Asian religions (it helped me certainly) to have a deeper connection to the landscape at play. Chandrasekera's prose is lyrical and inventive. This book is bolder than Saint of Bright Doors in style. Despite magic and zombies-of-a-sort this feels more comfortably science fiction than fantasy or horror.



Genre: speculative fiction/science fiction
Sri Lanka, through many ages

A portrait of death (and dead things walking) and incarnations and reincarnations, of gods playing games and being caught in the same cycle, woven seamlessly with South Asian religion and lore. The story spins out over millennia and lifetimes, reaching into the distant past and stretching into the future to the ends of the earth.

I find Vajra Chandrasekera difficult to review. His prose is lyrical and inventive and his style intensely complex in an intellectually stimulating way. Knowing his style, I fully intended to take my time reading Rakesfall, and yet at halfway through I was so invested in the spiral of reincarnation and destruction that I read the entire book in an evening. Having some knowledge of the South Asian religious landscape - the Vedas and Upanishads and Sri Lankan Buddhism helped me connect to the text more deeply. Chandrasekera is playing with traditional themes of reincarnation and mixing with his own interpretation.

This book is bolder than Saint of Bright Doors in style. Despite magic and zombies-of-a-sort this fits more comfortably in the science fiction genre than fantasy or horror. At times it reminded me of a more personal or a slice-of-life version of The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson, with the winding epic quality of iterations of life after life. At other times, it reminded me of This is How You Lose the Time War, with entities altering the fabric of the world.

Rakesfall is stunning and complex. The pacing is slow and the book is wordy - I’ve never been more thankful for having wikipedia and a dictionary connected to my kindle - but utterly beautiful. Lush worldbuilding through myth and a variety of styles is a similar technique to Bright Doors, and yet gives us an entirely different and purely wild setting.

Thank you to @tordotcompub for an eARC for review. Rakesfall is out 6/18/24.