Title: The Ten Thousand Doors of January
Author: Alix E. Harrow
Publication date: September 10, 2019
Publisher: Redhook, Orbit Book Publishing 
Genres: Young Adult, Fantasy, Historical

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I received a copy of this book from the publisher (Orbit/Redhook) in exchange for an honest review. All opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

“Listen, not every story is made for telling. Sometimes just by telling a story you’re stealing it, stealing a little of the mystery away from it.”

Have you ever had penchant for the whimsical
Have you looked sideways at doors ever? Or held your breath as walked through a threshold? Or maybe in a moment of fancy, while staring longing at a wall hoping for for a chance of something magical. An opening, a portal...
That just maybe there is something magical in the world.
I have despite voices to the contrary, telling me otherwise.
Are you a readers who remembers what it was once like to have the ability to imagine a wide world of endless possibilities. In Within these pages, January will discover the impossible truth of her own existence– and the harrowing dangers that lurk between the Doors and other worlds. 

This fairy tale will have you stepping through the void, into fables, folklore, adventure, love and sanctuary, and the infinite power of words and love.
In this completely original lyrical debut, Alix E. Harrow captivating book is a magical blend of both historical fiction and magical realism.

—"I almost didn’t notice the Door at all. All Doors are like that, half-shadowed and sideways until someone looks at them in just the right way."—

The Ten Thousand Doors of January is completely original storyline but written in classical childhood fairy tale style of older work. Beautiful writing that is poetic and the words are fluid in this captivating and lyrical debut.

In the turn of the twentieth century, a time of change with inventions and new discoveries, We meet January, an oddly colored, wild and headstrong imaginative girl.
From the first pages I fell in love with January Scaller.
When we first meet January, she is seven years old and, though her father is living, she is being cared for by Mr. Locke, her fathers benefactor.
Her father travels the world, seeking out exotic treasures to bring back to his employer.
Throughout her childhood years, she is herded and tamed into submission,
well almost..

January’s quiet existence comes to a halt when she stumbles across peculiar book.
A book that carries the scent of other worlds and tells a tale of secret doors, of love, adventure and danger. As each page reveals more impossible truths about the world,
January discovers a story that might just be the key to unlocking the secrets of her past."

The Ten Thousand Doors of January, is lush and richly imaginative, a book of impossible journeys, unforgettable love, and the incredible power of opening doors .
Alix E. Harrow effortless writing is stunning and unconsciously literary.

This has to be the most stunning, captivating book of 2019

—"Life has a kind of momentum to it, I’ve found, an accumulated weight of decisions which becomes impossible to shift."—

The Thousand Doors of January is the first novel of author Alix E. Harrow, who just won this past year's Hugo Award for Best Short Story. That story, A Witch's Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies, is a powerful story about a lost boy among adults who have the tools (a magic book hidden away by a librarian) that can help them find their way and while it wasn't my pick for the Hugo, it certainly was not unworthy of the award. That story was actually the first I'd heard of Harrow, who's apparently written a short list of short fiction over the past few years, but it was impressive enough as a story for me to be interested when her first novel showed up for request on NetGalley.

And The Thousand Door of January shares some themes with that short story but uses those themes in different ways to create a very different tone, ending on an optimistic if little bittersweet tone. It takes a not unfamiliar take on portal fantasy, marries it to a conflict between the status quo of the past and change of the unknown future, and centers the story around a young heroine who is really well done. And more, a heroine whose story I really cared about, which is one of the best things I can say about a story.

--------------------------------------------------Plot Summary------------------------------------------------------
January Scaller, a girl of strange non-white complexion, grew up at the turn of the 20th century with her father nearly always away - away on trips around the world, searching seemingly for strange foreign objects to bring back to his employer, the wealthy Mr. Locke. January always wished to go with her father, but instead she grew up in the care of Mr. Locke, who assured her it was for her own good.

And then, age 7, she found a Door to another place. And while that door didn't last, it wouldn't be January's last encounter with the Doors, and they, along with a book titled "The Ten Thousand Doors", would change her life forever, sending her on a journey to discover who she really is, and what the Doors really are.....and why Mr. Locke and his friends seem determined to do anything to stop her....
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The Thousand Doors of January is a book that combines elements from many many past books into its story. You have the idea that there are doors that appears to many other worlds (ala classic portal fantasies), you have the idea of old people fighting against anything that threatens change from the status quo - to say nothing of racial oppression and inequality - you have the idea of love and growing up, you have the idea that writing is magic and power....etc. And it combines all of these elements into a truly terrific story, with this story told by its protagonist, January, from some point in the future, as part of a book (well, the book you're reading, of course).

And January is just so damn wonderful. This is her story, the story of her struggling with what is essentially captivity despite occasional glances at the outside world, and then her discovery of what else is out there, and the truth of who she is. And oh does Harrow make it so hard not to care for January, and to feel sad when she's sad, and to feel happy when she's happy. January is brave, adventurous, intelligent and creative, but despite the magic she finds herself involved in, she feels like a real person, which again makes her emotions so deadly to the reader - or at least to me - because while I mentioned this book does end on an optimistic note, the journey is far from fun and games and she goes through some really rough times.

Of course her journey is accompanied by a number of characters, some of whom are developed well, some less so. But the book devotes significant time to the story of two other characters, Adelaide and Yule Ian, who are characters in the in-universe book January finds (and perhaps more). And their stories are really well done, as a young woman who searches for doors constantly and a young man who grows up researching and trying to discover the truths behind the doors, for his own hidden purpose. It's a lovely story at first, until the truth of it comes out, to devastating emotional effect, but great payoff - the reader will figure out where it is going fairly quickly, but it doesn't blunt any of the effect.

The plot is really well done, juggling the story within the story as well as January's own story to really strong effect. Certain plot elements and twists you may see coming, but they're executed well and still had emotional impact and it all adds up to an ending that is pretty perfect - hopeful and yet bittersweet, so as to not make cheap any of the difficulties and hardships January endured in her childhood: this ending is earned and earned well. If I had any complaints, it's that the boy who comes along with January as her only friend isn't really developed as a person outside of January's orbit, although the twist in the ending perhaps kind of justifies that now that I think about it.

Yeah, I really really liked this one and recommend a purchase when it comes out.

4.5 stars

This book had a number of points that sort of felt slow to me. I don’t mean that to sound like a bad thing, but the majority of the story in the beginning felt like an introduction to most of the “main characters.” It felt like the plot moving forward really only started to happen around the 40% mark.

To be fair, the story was rather intriguing. I know I was entranced by the different narrative voices, and the information we were learning about Doors and a little bit about other worlds and such was fascinating.

Okay, so here’s what I found to be really cool about this story: part of it is told via a book that January is reading, and we get to read it as well. It is partly a story and partly a research paper/project, and honestly that storytelling element made this book stand out from others.

Besides, I love a good story about stories. And this one definitely had plenty of good stories to be entranced by. Plus, I think we’ve all at one point or another dreamed of going through a portal to some other place and this book definitely has the portal/doorway adventure element to the story done very well.

In the beginning we find ourselves learning about the characters and Doors and things begin to slowly develop and unfold. But as we get deeper into the story, we really see the elements of stories, of belief, of love, and most of all family grow and develop in such a powerful way. The prose is also lush and vibrant and beautiful.

This was definitely an impressive debut, and I look forward to seeing what Alix E. Harrow has in store for us readers with her second book.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me with a copy of this to review in exchange for my open and honest opinion.

I walked through this book languidly over days. I took my time sipping each chapter like the fine wine that it is. In the end, after I had finally poured myself through the last bit Harrow’s prose I had no other option to declare that this book was indeed magic: unadulterated, unfettered, otherworldly magic.

Books can change people. They can mold you like a sculpture, place you in a furnace, and you come out the other side different and altered. I have experienced this phenomenon a few times in my life. I think this is one of those times. I honestly have never read a book like this. From the first ten pages of the book, I knew that what I was in for was a different kind of experience entirely.

“Let this ignoble origin story stand as an invaluable lesson to you that a person’s beginnings do not often herald their endings.”

The main narrator of the story is January Scaller. We first meet her when she is seven years old. Small, slight, wild, and bright. All of the wrong things for the age in which she was born, but all of the right things for the main character you love.

“I was what Mr. Locke called an In-between sort of thing.”

At the beginning of the story, January discovers a door. It was a brief experience, but it left an inalienable impression. Books and doors and the adventures that lay betwixt them become the stories of January’s life. The narrative is told in the form of stories discovered by January and experiences directly lived by January. These moments and stories of discovery are interwoven so that at times you can not tell when the magic of January's personal experiences stops to begin the magic of one of her discovered tales. It sounds as if it would be jarring, but these stories flow like waves, from one into another. It is perfectly executed.

"Ade spent her childhood in exploration, crisscrossing through their seven acres as if she’d dropped something precious and hoped to find it again or, more accurately, like a dog on a short lead straining against her collar."

All I can say is that this is one of the most beautiful books I have read this year, might be ever. Harrow has a way of sentences that make the words dance with each other.

It was such a wonderful read and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

This gem of a book covers every base. Well written, well planned, lovely prose and a female heroine who was a great role model. Loved the whole thing. Great debut!

DNF @37%

I was really hoping that I would love this book as it sounded right up my alley: gorgeous prose, magical realism, fantasy, etc. but I found myself completely bored with it. Now, the writing was quite beautiful in some parts. I did love how she wrote certain sentences and quick turns of phrase. I did not like the alternating chapters between the non-fiction book that January reads and the chapters of January's own story. I found the book that she's reading to be very boring and struggled to get through those chapters. In fact, after three chapters of reading the book within the book, I realized that I had no idea how January actually came across the book. I'm sure it was there but I couldn't recall it at all. That's when I knew that this story wasn't holding my attention. It was a struggle to pick up and when I did I was reading it but wasn't engaged in the story at all. Sadly, this book just didn't work for me.

Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with an advanced reader ebook in exchange for an honest review.

The Ten Thousand Doors of January
By Alix E. Harrow
3.5/5

January Scaller is a perfectly unique specimen of a girl. Her dark bronze skin as much as her name set her apart—but it is more than that. January lives with Mr. Locke, her father’s employer and patron, a wealthy white man living in Vermont. Her father is an adventurer and acquires rare collectibles for Locke. And everything would be this simple if not for the discovery of a door that opened to a new world. January, a lover of words, wrote it open one day, and was prompt punished—the door, destroyed. Since then, January has tried hard to conform to Mr. Locke’s rules to become a proper young lady. But when she finds a book describing the doors, and puts together the missing pieces of her life, she discovers that things are not what they seem, and no door is ever shut to her.

This book is a tale of self discovery, reunion, family, and love. Bring tissues because it is SAD and TRAGIC but also so hopeful and uplifting you won’t be sure whether you are crying in anguish or happiness! This reads like literary fiction so it took me a long time! It also has a fairly slow start so I wasn’t really into it until about half way through when the pace picked up. It has parts that alternate between the present story and a chapter of the book she finds, which is cool but I’m not a huge fan of that style of book. I feel it takes you out of the story and you have to reorient yourself every time. But the later chapters that were more like storytelling than academic information were easier to adjust to. I very much enjoyed this book, but I do have my reservations about the pace and these chapter switches. Additionally, it definitely did not read like a ya fantasy book until the last forty percent or so, but the prose is beautiful. I found myself getting a bit bogged down in the prose that was waxing poetic about words, but overall it is very well written and tells a beautiful story. This book is great for those readers who like coming of age stories, almost poetic prose, and who maybe aren’t ready for high fantasy but want to dip their toes in!

E-Arc provided by the publisher through Netgalley for my honest review

The story is written like a mix of family stories and a scientific documentary surrounding Doors to other worlds. As a young girl January finds a door to another world in a field while traveling with her caretaker Mr. Locke. Over the years January begins to shape up into a “proper young woman” and leave the fantasies behind, until her father goes missing and she discovers a book all about the Doors and the journey of a woman names Ade.

The book had a very intriguing premise but was very challenging to get into. I picked it up and put it down several times before pushing through. The first two thirds of the book were largely building backstory, and then January started to take action in her own life around the final third of the book. The story is based in late 1800s to early 1900s but does work in a fantasy element with the Doors and some unique characters. I think someone who enjoys historical fiction with a little fantasy would enjoy this story.

Thank you to NetGalley and Red Hook books for the opportunity to read The Ten Thousand Doors of January in exchange my honest review.

Imagine Seanan McGuire's Wayward Children meets The Eyre Affair meets a sort of reverse Inkheart meets a whole lot of probably-a-metaphor. I won't waste your time with summary, but what a synopsis can't tell you is the immediacy of Harrow's writing, and how much they can convey about a character in very little time. There were parts of the book I read like I watch horror movies, because Harrow made me care so much.

Yes, there were characters I wish had more screen time and development (namely Jane and Samuel), and I wouldn't be terribly surprised if those characters got their own novels later on, though there's plenty of closure. And there were several reveals I saw coming chapters ahead of time. But I didn't <i>care</i>.

This is not a book that you pick-up and immediately become immersed in, but rather the kind of book that slowly trickles over your self-conscious allowing you to think about the story from the prospective purely from the characters' angle. In this case, it starts off with January almost in a memoir style, telling you the story of herself at an earlier age in a world that almost seems half-veiled to her. It could be because she is a child or because she is bi-racial or both. It lends mystic to the story, a sense of unknown.
As the story progresses and more of the world around January is revealed, you'll find yourself beginning to wake with this sense of wonderment and mystery. Questions churn in your head and pages will fly under your fingertips. World-building, hah! Dimension-building is occurring within these pages.
I will warn you though. This book may not be for everyone. January is not a brave girl. She is in her own words "a good girl." She is a teenager brought up and manipulated to believe certain things, though it made me frustrated with her, even angry. She is weak. Her father is weak. I find that I have to remember she is a child who wants to please and believe that people love her, no matter how bad they are or how bad they treat her. Look at abuse victims. Don't lose heart; circumstances can sometimes strengthen even the weakest of us.
Overall, this is a book that opens eyes to believing and minds to possibilities.

** I received a free copy of this book via NetGalley and am voluntarily leaving a review. **

The Ten Thousand Doors of January opens with such magic that I was entranced after the first three paragraphs. “When I was seven I found a door,” January begins, then speculates she really should capitalize that ‘d’ so readers could understand it was not an ordinary one. And then she explains there are doors to other dimensions, hence the title.

But there is very little of the magical in January’s early life. She lives with her guardian, a wealthy collector of antiquities while her father travels the world seeking them out. Her guardian is a dour man who insists on obedience and quiet. After she found that door, he was even stricter. The one exception is her dog, a gift from the grocer’s son. Her father hires a woman to serve as her companion and protector.

But when she finds a book she believes is a gift from her father, she learns that door when she was seven was real and so much more, leading her on adventures that are harrowing, but leading her to learn so much more about her family and herself.

I loved The Ten Thousand Doors of January. In spite of the many evil characters and some of the malignant powers they had, overall there was a sweetness to the story that we seldom see done with so little sentimentality. January is a strong character, a magnificent one in fact, despite her youthful submission. She was a bit slow to identify one of the malign influences, but that makes sense in terms of how the characters knew and interacted with each other.

The only weakness was at the end, the wrapping up and tying the threads together. This happens often with fantasy books when a character comes fully into their power. The story was their discovery and development. Once the power is fully realized, it becomes too powerful for real jeopardy to continue, so authors wrap things up off-stage, so to speak. It’s not unusual and doesn’t ruin the story at all.

The Ten Thousand Doors of January will be published September 10th. I received an e-galley from the publisher through NetGalley.

The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow is a modern day fairy tale. January is an in-between girl. She and her father, Julian Scaller, live with Mr. Locke, a collector of the world’s rarities. Mr. Scaller is away a lot, traveling to collect these things that Mr. Locke hides from the world. This is a story of words, and of stories, and the doors to other worlds that stories allow us to see into. At first, the storyline was a little confusing, but once I understood what this book was really about, I loved it! It’s fantastic and fantastical. It was engrossing and charming. The story was deep and insightful.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an advanced e-copy of this book. All thoughts are my own. #netgalley #thetenthousanddoorsofjanuary

Thanks to Redhook Books and NetGalley for providing an eARC of this book!

I loved <i>The Ten Thousand Doors of January</i>. It is a love story, a growing-up story, and just the kind of fantasy I love. January and the people surrounding her are interesting characters, who are brave and restless. I think other fans of portal books, from <i>The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe</i> to <i>Every Heart a Doorway</i> and <i>The Golden Compass</i> will enjoy this book.

This is a historical fantasy, set around the turn of the 20th century. The structure is interesting, alternating between January's narrative from childhood to early adulthood/late teens and a book within a book, the titular Ten Thousand Doors. This book recounts the story of Adelaide Lee Larson, a woman who finds many doors, but is looking for a particular one. These portions of the book is written by an otherworldly scholar and are read by January in several moments of extremis. I liked how this narrative within the narrative unspooled slowly, revealing more about the doors and the worlds adjacent to ours. These chapters were some of my favorite parts of the book - Ade is so single-minded and smart in her pursuit of the right door.

Harrow's writing is lovely and she depicts the reality in early twentieth-century America of being a mixed-race girl (January) and black man (her father). She also uses other worlds to show that this reality in our world was by no means natural or inevitable.

I was a bit vague in my description of what happens in this book, but I think that is for the best. Read this book for the fantasy and the writing and for January, who is a great character. Know also that (minor spoiler) although there is a stressful time when you might not think this is true, the dog Sinbad "Bad" is OK.

An interesting book with a lot of fantasy and witchcraft mixed in. A tiny bit Alice Hoffman ish. I did enjoy the name of January and the ability to escape. Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC.

One of my favourite reads of the year thus far. The Ten Thousand Doors of January is a lovely, cosy book featuring an in-between girl on the hunt for her missing father, hidden doors leading to other worlds, and a very good dog named Bad.

January Scaller is a young girl who's not quite orphaned, but might as well be, as her father regularly leaves her behind as he gallivants the world on expeditions. One day, news of his death reaches her ears, and her tenuous relationship with him is ripped wholly asunder.

Set in early 1900s America, life is not particularly kind to a girl of mixed heritage, whose skin colour is too many shades apart from white to make her palatable to society. But the discovery of a book—a mix between an academic treatise on the existence of magic doors, a captivating romance, and the mournful journal of a man lost in a brand new world—sets her life on a different course, one that galvanises her search for her supposedly dead father.

Harrow's prose is charming and vivid throughout the book, and she achieves an almost Ghibli-esque rendering of the multi-coloured, multi-faceted worlds within. There's a heartwarming love story, a touching tale of complicated familial love and loss, and a well-done internal journey of the main protagonist as she learns to find herself amidst her in-betweenness.

This is very much a book for people who love books—if this doesn't make sense, read the book, and then you'll understand what I mean. I'll be gladly following Harrow's career from here on out.

(Also, the cover is gorgeous. Even though I was lucky enough to receive the ebook ARC, I'll definitely run out and buy a hardcopy upon release just so I can have this cover on my bookshelves.)

I’ve seen this book described as a love letter to storytelling—and that’s spot on. It starts out familiarly enough, a plucky young girl raised by a wealthy benefactor at the turn of the century, and while I enjoy some of those stories, they can feel a bit stale after a while. Even though it was immediately apparent Alix Harrow was an exceptional writer, I didn’t expect to be so enraptured by the world she has crafted and shared with us.

There’s adventure and intrigue, there’s mystery and mysticism. There’s magic and contests of wills. There’s so much heart poured into this book that I often found myself very moved. It gave me a feeling deep inside that anything is possible. If I read this as a child I might have believed it to be secretly true, even if I knew better, similarly to how I felt about The Chronicles of Narnia.

I don’t want to overhype and then have it not meet someone’s extraordinary expectations, but I can’t imagine that anyone who picked up The Ten Thousand Doors of January could be disappointed. This one’s more than just a pretty cover.

Books are portals and The Ten Thousand Doors of January is no exception. Its beautifully crafted worlds, complex characters and exquisite writing will leave you utterly enchanted.

When you look at the premise; magical doors, multiverse you immediately think of works like Narnia and the more recent Wayward Children series. So how does it stand out? It’s atmosphere. There’s something so familiar about the way this book makes you feel when you read it. Like being a kid again and feeling that pull towards a seemingly ordinary room or spot in the trees and knowing down in your very bones that there’s something not quite right about it but you cant place it. This is one of those titles that make you recall that spark that made you fall in love with reading of wanting a story of your own like it.

The cast of characters is so diverse and the way their stories all intertwine is incredibly well crafted and thought out. Being mostly set in the turn of the 20th century America, there’s racism, class-ism, gender-role expectations, all of this was respectfully and tactfully approached. Something to be aware of if any of these topics bother you.
This is a phenomenal read that I encourage people to pick up. For a debut novel to be this exceptional I think we can expect great thing from Harrow in the future.

*E-Arc kindly provided by Author, Redhook Books via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

This is a book, about a book. A very original story about doorways through time, true love, family dynamics, and finding the strength inside yourself to overcome obstacles. It is also an adventure story. It kept your interest throughout, wondering how January was going to survive the situation she found herself in. I really loved this book and recommend for any fantasy fiction reader.

*Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher, and the author for providing me with an early copy in exchange for an honest review.*

DNF @ 15%

I've discovered that portal fantasy/magical realism books are not my thing. They take so long being clever they forget to move on with the story. "Beautiful" writing is not a reason for me to read a book. On top of that, the plot went nowhere in the part that I read, and I came to dislike the heroine.
I made a note in my Kindle that says "This is one of those books that's full of itself and takes forever to get to the point."
I'm going to include a few quotes that illustrate just how full of itself this book is. *These quotes were taken from an uncorrected copy so it might not be the same as the published version.*

I ought to introduce Mr. Locke properly; he'd hate to wander into the story in such a casual, slantwise way. Allow me to present Mr. William Cornelius Locke, self-made not-quite-billionaire, head of W. C. Locke & Co., owner of no less than three stately homes along the Eastern Seaboard, proponent of the virtues of Order and Propriety (words that he certainly would prefer to see capitalized--see that P, like a woman with her hand on her hip?), and chairman of the New England Archaeological Society, a sort of social club for rich, powerful men who were also amateur collectors. I say "amateur" only because it was fashionable for wealthy men to refer to their passions in this dismissive way, with a little flick of their fingers, as if admitting to a profession other than moneymaking might sully their reputations.

Sometimes I feel there are doors lurking in the creases of every sentence, with periods for knobs and verbs for hinges.

Calluses knotted her palm like a topographical map of a foreign country.


1) Who looks at a P and thinks, "Yes, surely it is a woman." Why can't it be a cowboy resting his foot against a saloon wall? A bugle? A kettle? Or just an upside-down b?

2) I pooped. Yep, there's a door in there.

3) I, too, look at calluses and immediately think of foreign countries. Also, maps that show hills and valleys can be on paper, so are her hands actually smooth? The author should have said globe or model or changed the simile completely.


If you read those sentences and think they're mesmerizing and perfect, go ahead and read it. I prefer books that let me see how clever they are without feeling the need to desperately throw "gorgeous" and "lyrical" trash at my head.

This was so good. It was almost so so so so so good but couldn’t quite open the Door all the way.

(Get it? The book is about… Doors. I write these reviews for free, okay? Don’t come here expecting high quality jokes.)

Know what was high quality, though? The writing. Every sentence is an absolute gift, a little treasure to hold, squeezing so tightly it’s hard to breathe. You can play that game where you close your eyes and randomly flip to a page and point your finger at any sentence and you’re guaranteed to read a line to take you to another time and place and feeling.

Where the writing falters is in its characterization. I didn’t love any of the characters because they felt flat to me, and I think I was supposed to fall in love with them just because this is the sort of grand, sweeping romance and adventure book where you’re supposed fall in love with the characters. They had no trouble insta-loving each other, though. Usually this ruins a story for me, but this time it seemed like “true love” fit into the magic and wonder of the world. Of course, that could be because of how non-existent their personalities were….

If the characters had been more real and well rounded, I could’ve ignored the cliché plot easier. Even though nothing in this story is particularly original, it’s all incredibly well done. I couldn’t put the book down, despite knowing exactly where we were going. I’d go back again: any time, any Door.