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.

A vividly imagined, gorgeously magical story.

I’ve seen a lot of Night Circus comps for this, but I’d liken it more to The Explorers Guild in spirit.

The magical system isn’t really anything new (the concept of the doors is a fantasy trope we’ve all seen before in various iterations), but it still feels clever and the richly-imagined world makes up in likability and atmosphere what it lacks in complete originality.

Our heroine is also a familiar type, but you’ll love her anyway, and most of the secondary characters are compelling in their own right, especially Bad and Samuel.

The structure felt a little jumpy because of the manner in which January’s story and the story in the book within a book shift back and forth, but they come together satisfyingly in the end.

In all, this was less moving and emotionally evocative than I expected, but it’s fun and clever and the ending will put a bounce in your step and a smile on your face.

This was an absolutely fascinating read. A story within a story within a story. I couldn't put this book down. Excellently written, with beautifully described and deep characters. I found myself all I get to the story not wanting to get out. It truly is way different than any book I've ever read and I look forward to reading more from this author. I cannot recommend it enough!

I would like to thank the author/publisher/Netgalley for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for a fair and honest review

A lovely book that packs a potent final act, "The Ten Thousand Doors of January" marks the advent of a remarkable new voice in fantasy. If it begins a bit slowly, well, that's not so much a weakness as it is a sign that Harrow does not take the direct and easy route to meddling with readers' emotions; she's comfortable with the slow burn and the relentless build of subtle emotional pressure, bursting into full flood and flower only when one has finally been lulled into the satisfied slumber of the reader who thinks they've read this story before—a story of oddball girls and doors portaling into green woods and onto salt sands. We've all stepped through the wardrobe. We've all unlocked the gate to Moria. Readers of contemporary fiction will probably also have struck matches off the woodwork alongside Seanan McGuire's wayward ones. How can an author possibly reinvent the wheel?

Without spoiling the magic underlying this winsome-throughout, surprising-at-the-last voyage into imagination, I can only tell you to hold your children close and make sure they know you love them, for there's a world full of hurt just waiting to close doors on them. The love of parents for their children and the yearning of children for their (emotionally or physically) absent parents sinks its fingers deep into the heartwood of this book, and it never lets go. The book also ticks other boxes, including A) side conversations about race and class issues in America, B) the gaslighting of trauma victims and the weaponization of mental healthcare infrastructure against those who really need it, C) an important LGBTQIA+ side character with a delightfully scrappy personality, and D) an ownership of all its tropes. This is not a book that shimmies around the margins of its own toolkit; Harrow knows what she's up to, and she isn't shy about tackling time-worn tropes and techniques to transport her readers. Just like January herself, Harrow looks her readers straight in the eyes and says: "Are you with me?"

The Ten Thousand Doors of January is not like an fantasy I have read. I think that's why I enjoyed it so much. It was a refreshing and charming read. Alix E. Harrow writes an intelligent book with a unique and endearing characters. With a too precious dog (Bad) I'm a sucker for animals in books especially spunky ones. the Ten Thousand Doors of January isn't just a magical book filled with fairy tales it also highlights racial and social discrepancy in society and the oh so prominent powerful white men will do anything to get what they want.

Overall The Ten Thousand Doors of January is a lyrical thoughtful book filled with unique characters, fairy tales and that also tackle some tough subjects. Highly recommend.

.I can’t say enough about this book! An imaginative storyline coupled with a touch of magic, family, love and beautiful pros. I couldn’t put it down and I was thinking about it all day while I was too busy to read!

Thank you for this complimentary copy!

I received this book for review from Netgalley and Redhook books (Thank you!).


It's hard for me to put this book into words for some reason. Basically, this is a story about a girl who found a Door and then all hell broke loose.

January is under the care of a Mr. Locke while her father hunts treasure for a mysterious orginaztion that Locke is part of. This seems like a good deal, but it does nothing, but rip January and her father apart.
January finds a Door and Mr. Locke loses his mind. He then tried to mold her I to the perfect societal specimen effectively dousing her imagination and belief in the Doors.
Some terrible things happen to January during this book and looking back she realizes that she didn't really handle it as well.as she could have. But at least we have growth in the end.
In the midst of all these things, January finds out just how extraordinary she is and just like the Doors that bring change, January will bring a little change of her own.

This book belongs, in my mind, in the highest echelons of beloved portal fantasy stories. Right up there with the His Dark Materials series by Philip Pullman, up there with Narnia. The world building is absolutely top-notch, the characters are unforgettable. I loved this book deeply and have plans to buy it for many of my reading buddies. If you have ever ached to walk through an ordinary door to another world, this book is for you.

The portal tale has been a staple of fantasy for decades. In this subgenre, a character– usually a young person– in the ordinary world opens a strange door, walks through it, and finds themself in a different and much stranger world. They have adventures there but they tend to return home in the end to discover that they are very different from when they left. In her debut novel, Hugo Award-winning author Alix E. Harrow* turns the standard portal fantasy askew, weaving a beautiful tale of two girls coming of age in different times and how their separate discoveries of strange doors changes their lives forever.

January Scaller lives in a sprawling mansion filled with antiquities from around the world. Though she is well-cared for and given everything she needs, January longs for a different life where she can see the world and meet people more interesting than the strict governess who oversees her education. One day she finds a strange book that smells of sea air and tells a story of magical doors, an undying love, and an adventure spanning this world and others. As she delves deeper into the book, she realizes that the world she knows is stranger than she ever imagined and that sinister forces are closer than she thinks. But January is not helpless. She is a clever girl who believes in herself, and with her beloved dog at her side and a pair of erstwhile allies, she sets out to discover the truth about Doors- and about herself.

“Now, I didn’t know about Doors at the time, and wouldn’t have believed you even if you’d handed me an annotated three-volume collection of eyewitness reports. but when I saw that raggedy blue door standing so lonesome in the field, I wanted it to lead someplace else. Someplace other than Ninley, Kentucky, someplace new and unseen and so vast I would never come to the end of it.”

With sumptuous prose that unfolds at a leisurely pace, Harrow builds her turn of the Twentieth-century world in such a way that everything seems so very ordinary. As a child visiting rural Kentucky with her guardian, Mr. Locke, January finds an odd door in a meadow. She opens it with the hope that she will find a different world behind it, but all she sees is more of the same old meadow. Disappointed and frightened by a subsequent encounter with a strange woman, January runs away and when Mr. Locke finds her again, he tells her he understands and that he wishes she would be a good girl. And so January spends the next ten years being the best little girl she can be until a strange book appears. The ideas it contains suggests that January’s childhood hopes were not unfounded, and this pushes her to start believing in herself again.

Mr. Locke is not the only man January looks up to. Her father, Julian Scaller, is Mr. Locke’s employee. He has spent most of January’s life traveling the world to find artifacts for Locke and his explorer’s club, some of which they sell and some of which they keep for themselves. The immorality of ransacking historical sites for profit is lost on January at first, though as she starts thinking for herself, she develops a moral ambiguity towards her guardian’s associates which grows into anger as she learns more about herself and the Doors she learns about in the book.

“… my long years of research have taught me that all stories, even the meanest folktales, matter. They are artifacts and palimpsests, riddles and histories. They are the red threads that we may follow out of the labyrinth.”

Harrow’s story is not a typical portal fantasy wherein the story’s hero goes through a door and emerges into an amazing adventure. While January finds Doors and discovers her own strengths and abilities, her adventure is an inner one. She must look inward to discover the woman she can be, and while secondary characters like Jane and Samuel have their own stories and help her as much as they can, January must draw upon her own strength to find her own path. This fact shows Harrow’s skill as a storyteller, given that she doesn’t take the obvious path. We all must find our own strengths and define our own stories before we can become the people we were meant to be. No one could have blamed Harrow for writing the obvious, but that would have made January and her story that much smaller. Instead, Harrow gives us a rich tale that encourages us to look beyond the ordinary and find a way to become the authors of our own stories.

Thank you Netgalley for providing this ARC in exchange for my review.

Four days have passed since I read this book and I still can't stop thinking about it.

January Scaller is a living curiosity in early 20th century America. She's not quite white in a country who abhors colors. She's wild, independent, willful, and fails to fit the narrow mold her wealthy benefactor wishes for her. January knows she's not like other girls her age -- she hates the parties and sitting pretty like one of Mr. Locke's treasures. Instead she dives into books wishing she was part of their swashbuckling adventures in far away places. One day she comes across a door in a field. It's not like any other door. It's a Door. With a capital D. This Door isn't connected to a house or any building, and when January steps through it, little does she know her adventure is just beginning.

The only complaint I have is that the book ended. I wasn't ready for it. Please write more! There's still so much left to explore!

What immediately pulled me into The Ten Thousand Doors of January was Alix E. Harrow's lyrical writing. It's beautiful. She could describe a piece of paper and make it seem magical. The story was original and the use of tropes minimal. I liked that the character was of mixed heritage and found the discussion of being colored and foreign in 20th century America an important piece to this story. I hope others find this value too.

This book is both fantasy and historical fiction. The Ten Thousand Doors of January explores themes like color, belonging, self-discovery, and empowerment. And is perfect for adults, teens, and anyone seeking adventure. ;)

The Ten Thousand Doors of January is easily one of my most favorite books of the year.