The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow

It was one of those things you want so much it burns, so you keep it deep in the center of yourself like a banked coal. These are quotes for those who seek to wander. It shows Harrow’s mastery down to the sentence level. Many of these quotes hold such power, within the context of the book and in the quote itself. It’s only fitting I utilize the month of January to return to this beautiful book and list a few quotes that spoke to me. It’s also a portal fantasy about finding doors to worlds that belong to us, as well as building a better world in the one that we’re in. The Ten Thousand Doors of January is a historical fantasy novel about stories and love.

It was a good type of sob, a “the-heart-of-this-book-connected-to-the-heart-of-me” type of sob. After reading the last page, I curled into a fetal position, the book pressed to my chest, and sobbed. Harrow.Įver since I read the summary of this book, long before its release, I wanted it. (Sept.It’s January, and as such it is the perfect time to show love and adoration to one of my favorite books published in 2019: The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow’s novel will hold strong appeal to readers who enjoy portal fantasies featuring adventuresome women. Harrow weaves in commentary on race: Julian is black and January’s mother is white, and, in a clever inversion, in one of the worlds January visits, everyone is black and racism is nonexistent. Throughout the novel, Harrow quotes at excessive length from The Ten Thousand Doors, a book Julian owns, and January gradually discerns a connection between her own life and that of Adelaide Lee Larson, a character in Doors. January discovers that she has the power to write words that open doors leading to other worlds, including the City of Nin. To fill the void left by January’s traveling father and her mother, whose absence is initially unexplained, Locke ensconces January in his mansion as his ward. The immensely wealthy William Cornelius Locke employs Julian Scaller as a plunderer of valuable artifacts, a job that prevents Julian from being a proper parent to his daughter, January.

Harrow imbues her debut, set primarily in early-20th-century Vermont, as well as in an alternative world called the City of Nin, with genealogical mystery.