Alternative post title: Oh wow I need to buy a copy of this + The Book of Heroes for myself because this is AMAZING

I read Brave Stories years ago and really enjoyed it, but as is quite usual for me, never really bothered to check if Miyuki Miyabe wrote anything else. So imagine my surprise when I found out that she’s got tons of other books, including The Gate of Sorrows.

The Gate of Sorrows stars university student Kotaro. He works part-time at a cyber security firm, and when a colleague of his disappears after looking into a string of disappearances in Tokyo, he gets pulled into a strange world where stories have power and otherwordly creatures exist.

The blurb also mentions Shigenori, a retired policeman who’s a really interesting character but don’t be fooled because the bulk of the book is focused on Kotaro. In fact, Shigenori doesn’t even appear for a few chapters after he’s been ‘cleansed’. When he’s in action, however, he serves as a good foil to Kotaro because he’s a veteran of the police force and hence knows more about how murder investigations work than Kotaro.

I basically loved everything in this book, especially the world. It’s based on Tokyo, with all the grit and bleakness that exists in the city, but the fantasy bit is built on stories. As the book says:

“In stories, people sometimes encounter a power so strong that it changes them completely. Whether it changes them for the better or the worse depends on time and circumstance.”

Because stories are so powerful, there is a world where they come from, and that world contains guardians who are dedicated to keeping the wrong stories out and for stories in general to keep going. Hence you get the nameless devout, or as the book explains:

“The nameless devout do penance for the sin of stories. Each was once a person who tried to live a story that obsessed him, instead of weaving a story for himself.”

The meaning of stories is the backbone for the magic in this world, and in turn reflects the reality of our world: we also make meaning of our lives through stories. There is also the idea that being cleansed of your cravings if the goal (hence the nameless devout being punished for the sin of stories), which reminds me of Buddhist thought in the sense that the ultimate goal in Buddhism is to free yourself from attachment. But as Shigenori says about the reason he is seeking “more suffering”:

“Because it makes us human! No matter how hard they are to bear, we guard our feelings and our memories and cling to them and live with them. That’s what it means to be a person.”

Apart from the world and how Miyuki uses that to explore the importance of story and from there, desire, I also really enjoyed the plot. It starts off with a serial killer and I will not spoil the book, but I really liked how Kotaro, and later Shigenori, looked into the cases and how those cases reflected current sentiment and the idea that we see what we want to see. While not completely similar, the part where the media and society affect how the serial killer case is seen reminds me of how media affected the murder case is seen in the movie, Snow White Murder Case.

Characters are also very interesting. There is a strong supporting cast of characters, starting from Shigenori, who isn’t quite human, to Kotaro’s colleagues at the cyber-security firm (they are basically the internet police) and the inhuman Galla, guardian of the Third Pillar.

I’m highly tempted to get a copy of this book as well as the Book of Heroes, which takes place in the same universe. And some of her other books, since I might be on a roll. As you can tell, I really enjoyed The Gate of Sorrows and I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys both fantasy and mystery stories.

Featured Image: Photo from Canva