Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

The concept of a door to another world has been a popular one in science fiction and fantasy for well over a century. Beginning with the rabbit hole in Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and including the more literal wardrobe door in C.S. Lewis’ “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,” intrepid fictional explorers have gone through these portals and emerged in all sorts of fantastic worlds. To those numbers, we can now add January Scaller, who finds not one, but many doors to other planets in author Alix E. Harrow’s enchanting debut novel, “The Ten Thousand Doors of January.”

The doors referred to in the book’s title are literal doors, of all shapes and sorts, and there are many of them hidden all over the world, usually in obscure locations. People go through them in the usual manner and emerge in a distant planet. Fortunately, this being fantasy instead of science fiction, they don’t wind up someplace like the surface of Pluto, which would make for a very short book. Also, this being fantasy, the author doesn’t attempt much of an explanation, which would only slow the book down and break the mood.

And mood is what ”The Ten Thousand Doors of January” is all about. January is a precocious girl in the early 1900s who grows from seven to seventeen or so over the course of the novel. Her mother died when January was young, and her father was subsequently given a job by Cornelius Locke, an eccentric multimillionaire. Locke’s passion in life is collecting rare items on behalf of the New England Archaeological Society, so he hires January’s father to find such artifacts for him. Since that job sends Dad to distant lands for months on end, Locke takes January in as his unofficial ward. Accompanying Locke on his travels leads to January discovering a Door (January capitalizes the word to distinguish it from an ordinary door) for the first time at the age of seven. She then goes through the Door for a few moments, but the experience shapes the rest of her life.

On the surface, ”The Ten Thousand Doors of January” might seem to resemble a pre-World War I version of “Little Orphan Annie” (January even has a dog named Bad that accompanies her on many of her journeys), but Locke is no Daddy Warbucks. His relationship towards January varies between admiration and heartless callousness, and some of the members of the Society with whom he hobnobs are decidedly nasty sorts. To get away from the pain in her life, January soon retreats to what becomes her passion, reading. One book, in particular, an odd volume called “The Ten Thousand Doors,” which she stumbles across one day, becomes her favorite. |The Ten Thousand Doors” is the story of a woman, who, like January, found some Doors decades earlier, something with which January instantly identifies.

“The Ten Thousand Doors of January” is a book filled with twists and surprises (most of which aren’t too difficult to anticipate) and delights (which often spring from entirely unexpected places). For that reason, I don’t want to give away too much concerning what the book is about. Instead, it’s easier to give a few details about what it’s not about. The worlds that January encounters aren’t described in the extravagant detail with which Lewis Carroll and C.S. Lewis acquaint readers about Wonderland and Narnia. Nor is ”The Ten Thousand Doors of January” a series of “Star Trek”-like adventures on exciting and dangerous new planets. Instead, Alix Harrow gives readers just enough detail of a handful of worlds to suggest the vast possibilities of what lies beyond the Doors. She also drops hints that much of what we believe of as myth and magic are, instead, forces and beings from those other worlds that have “leaked” into ours.

While fantasy is indeed an element of ”The Ten Thousand Doors of January”, the book is more concerned with the power of words and, to steal a phrase, the joys of reading and of writing. As she grows older, January discovers that written words can have powers of their own, and that discovery helps her do battle with the various evils that she periodically comes across.

For a book like ”The Ten Thousand Doors of January” to work, its author has to have a certain dexterity with words, and Harrow does. While I didn’t believe that even a precocious girl of seventeen, let alone seven, could pen something like January’s supposed memoir, Harrow’s descriptions of what January encounters and the discussions of the girl’s thought processes are frequently captivating. Occasionally, there’s a bit too much aimless description, and the story then drags a bit, but, for the most part, this book is simply a joy to go through and savor the exact words and phrasing that the author uses. I could easily fill this review with excerpts from the novel, but one example will have to suffice. When January first discovers “The Ten Thousand Doors,” she describes its unique smell as: “Cinnamon and coal smoke, catacombs and loam. Damp seaside evening and sweat-slick noontimes beneath palm fronds. It smelled as if it had been in the mail for longer than any one parcel could be, circling the world for years and accumulating layers of smells like a tramp wearing too many clothes.”

It takes considerable effort to come up with descriptions like this, yet Harrow does so over and over again, on nearly every page. The net result is a book that, even when nothing seems to be happening, is a delight merely for the enjoyment of how it is written. Actually, Harrow’s work is two books in one, alternating between the story of the earlier explorer (a book-within-a-book that even has its own set of footnotes) and January’s recollections. In the wrong hands, this type of storyline could turn into a complete mess, but Harrow keeps everything relatively easy to follow, and the switching between the two works proves highly revelatory, for both January and the reader.

When most people think of fantasy nowadays, they think of “Game of Thrones”-like tales of wizards and dragons. But ”The Ten Thousand Doors of January” is a story of what might be right around the corner, if we could only recognize it, and of the power of words and language, as wielded by one young girl and one talented novelist, to bring those hidden Doors to light right in front of a reader’s eyes. The word “compelling” is often overused and clichéd in book reviews, but ”The Ten Thousand Doors of January” is a story that keeps readers in its grasp for nearly 400 pages. At the end of that journey, the reader’s only regret will be that he or she didn’t get to open more of those Doors.

I was bewitched by Harrow’s stunning writing when I read her sophomore novel, The Once and Future Witches, back in 2020—it was one of my favourite reads of that year. So I’ve been meaning to read her debut novel ever since. This one is another whimsical tale full of magic and adventures, but unfortunately I didn’t enjoy it as much as her second novel. I can’t put my finger on what made me feel indifferent about the story, but something was missing for me.

The Ten Thousand Doors of January is a story set at the turn of the 20th century about magical doors that lead to other worlds and a girl who starts to unravel her origins. I really enjoyed the premise and once again loved Harrow’s writing, but I have to admit that I lost interest in the plot as the book progressed. That said, this is not a bad book by any means, it just wasn’t for me. But I’ll definitely check out the author’s future works.

Well, here we have it. My new favourite book.

This book had everything I love in a book. It had the vibes of The Starless Sea by Erin Morgernstern, Piranesi by Suzanne Clark, The Winter Garden by Alexandra Bell, The Spellbook of Listen Taylor by Jaclyn Moriarty - all of which are some of my most favourite books. So it was almost inevitable I was going to fall in love with The Ten Thousand Doors of January.

The writing is captivating and enticing, and I loved the uniqueness and the vibes of the story. I loved the story within a story, the magic, the necessity to keep reading, the sorrow when it was over, and that satisfying ‘a-ha’ when things click into place. January as a main character is fierce and determined and flawed in a way that I like my protagonists - relatable and yearning to be rooted for.

I have only read A Spindle Splintered so far by Alix E Harrow but I absolutely loved it and I am now desperate to read her other books too.

The is by far the most cleverly plotted and well executed book I’ve read in a long time - and you know when you’re kicking yourself for not having read it sooner?? I can’t quite express my love for this book but I’m sure I won’t be shutting up about it anytime soon

Thank you to the publisher for my earc copy of this!
I started this twice, as the first time I wasn’t in the mood for it and I’m so glad I tried again!
I loved the writing style, characters and plot and can’t wait to read more of this author!

I absolutely loved Alix E. Harrow's second novel, The Once and Future Witches, so I was so looking forward to reading her debut, The Ten Thousand Doors of January, and had quite high hopes. Unfortunately, it fell a little short of my expectations, and I was kind of disappointed.

I love the premise of the novel, and the whole idea that all of the fantasy stories we know are actually real and not fiction, that they just slipped through a door between our world and others, where magic is real. It's not exactly original, there are so many portal fantasies out there, but this book takes those stories and says, no, they're actually real. That there really are doors in the world, which had me thinking of the Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy and The Starless Sea. The fact that doors exist that can take you elsewhere makes The Ten Thousand Doors of January seemlessly fit with so many other stories we know, and I just loved the idea of this huge, expansive multiverse, where all stories are connected. It just blew my mind and I loved it.

However, I also expected the story to be more about stories than it is. From the blurb, I expected the book January finds to be the key to other worlds. Stories are doors, and this book smells of other worlds, so it's going to take her to them, right? And she's going to have so many adventures in so many worlds! Actually, no. The story is about January, her life and her family, and her past. She lives with Mr. Locke, a very wealthy man for whom her father works, who travels the world looking for archelogical finds to steal from other cultures for the museum that is Mr. Locke's home. It's set in a time when racism is rife, and being a biracial young women, January is an oddity and anomoly herself that Mr. Locke parades at the party he hosts, for others to gawk at, along with his other treasures. But there's more to January's life and her past than she realises, and she's about to discover it with the help of a book, titled The Ten Thousand Doors, that tells of doors to other worlds.

The book tells the story of other people who found doors and went travelling, and in telling the story of these people and what they found, certain truths about January herself are revealed. January does not herself travel through ten thousand doors and visit ten thousand worlds, and that is where the story really disappointed me. In the great scheme of things, she barely goes anywhere. Because this isn't really a story about doors and other worlds, it's about January, the life she lives, and the lies she's been told.

We do get to read The Ten Thousand Doors along with January, so there's a story within a story. And you would think maybe through this story, we get to see and visit the worlds January doesn't. But not really. The book she is reading is very much tell instead of show. We find out very little about these worlds, just little glimpses that tell us the doors to those worlds exist, and someone went there and came back - again and again. Honestly, I just found it so frustrating! I honestly feel the title and the blurb are misleading. And having read The Once and Future Witches, which is absolutely incredible, I expected so much more to take place than actually does. I was so completely underwhelmed. Don't get me wrong, things do happen; January does have an adventure of her own, and at times the story is terrifying, and at others absolutely devastating. But I expected more. I do think I would have enjoyed Harrow's debut more if I had read it before The Once and Future Witches - a book in which so much happens - but I still would have been disappointed by the lack of actually travelling through ten thousand doors.

The story I wanted, that I expected, is very likely The Ten Thoudand Doors that January reads, but novel length, with more show than tell, expanded, to show us the worlds these people travelled to, what they saw and experienced there, and the bittersweetness of discovering such incredible things, but not finding what they were actually looking for. That story could even be a series, and one I would absolutely have lapped up. But that's not the story we have, and for me, January's story was really disappointing.

But that's just me. There are many others who have loved The Ten Thousand Doors of January, so do make sure you read other reviews before deciding whether or not you'll give it a go.

Trigger/Content Warnings: This book features racism, an animal attack, animal cruelty, forced instituionalisation, self-harm, abduction, and torture.

Sadly this book was a DNF for me. I absolutely loved the whimsical writing of this book and the curiosity of doors to other places. This also had fantastic writings on books.

However, the plot did not intrigue me enough to keep interested with the plot, and I was forcing myself to read it.

I started this book nearly 2 years ago, and I finished it just now. You might think that means that I disliked this, but that is not the case at all!
While it took me a while to get used to the flowery writing, so much so that I put this book on the back burner for MONTHS on end, I ended up really liking it the moment I picked it back up.
And while it felt like this book was 3000+ pages long at some points, and the story dragged on sometimes, it's actually somewhere around 375 pages and A LOT of things happened in that small amount of pages!
I loved the whole book-within-a-book-within-a-book thing. I loved Bad. I loved Samuel, I loved the concept of the Doors to different worlds.
I just didn't really love January. She went from being pretty useless during the first 75% of the book to being a total world-traveling badass from one page to the next and I just didn't buy it.
Overall, a solid read, and it's best if you go into this blind the way I did, so I'll keep this short and sweet for now!

I know this book is very popular in the book community, and I felt very lucky to be given an eARC to read. However I started this book in January (2021), and read about 10% until I got another book through the post and decided that I wanted to read that more as this book wasn't holding my interest. Once I finished that other book, I never felt the need to pick this one up again. I just didn't get sucked into the world or the story, and I wasn't over keen on January as a characters either. But I am sure this book would be perfect for other readers, it was just not for me.

I'm not a fan of flowery language to be honest and I felt this book was just that. I struggled to get through the story from all the verbage. Such as shame as I know this is quite a popular read.
I'm just not a massive fan unfortunately.

Honest review in exchange for a EARC.

Many thanks to Netgalley and Little Brown Book Group. This was not at all the kind of book I'd usually choose, being a historical fantasy/magical book, but I quite enjoyed it. It is well written and very moving in parts, however I did find it quite confusing and hard to keep track of the different places and events.

The synopsis of The Ten Thousand Doors of January sounded as though it had been written specifically for me. It sounded like this book had all the charisma, whimsy and magical realism that I love in a book. However, I soon realised within a few chapters that the one thing this book was missing was charm.

January is a ward of Mr Locke, a rich and important member of high society who makes his living finding unusual objects around the world and adding them to his well renowned collection. To obtain these objects he employs January's Father Julian to travel the world and retrieve them. January is a lonely girl and spends much of her time daydreaming of adventure and reading books (don't we all?) and it is on one of these lonely days that she comes across a mysterious door in the middle of nowhere but when she opens it she does not go through, unlike the children of Narnia and other such fantastical tales. It's soon after this that we jump to a story within a story after January is given a book called The Ten Thousand Doors Of January. This book delves deeper into the age old stories of these doors that are dotted all over the world and the people that hunt them some for exploration and some have a more sinister agenda.

I am often a fan of flowery writing, I like to get lost in beautiful prose, but this book was flowery just for the sake of it. The elongated descriptions did nothing to add to the story and instead dragged out what would have been a fast paced adventure novel into something dawdling and unconvincing. I was so disappointed. I found no connection with January, who may be one of the saddest child narrators I've come across. The only character I enjoyed was Jane but her ending was left unclear and that left me slightly miffed. I have given an extra star rating for some of the imagery used and the ideas contained in the story but I found it a hard slog to get through the last half of the book and I just wanted it to end which is never good.

The Ten Thousand Doors of January is the book I’ve waited my whole life to read. It’s a beautiful, magical, magnificent story that will always have a place in my heart. There wasn’t one emotion I didn’t feel throughout this wonderful novel. It made me laugh, it made me cry, I felt dread and despair, but I also felt hope and wonder.
When I was done reading at 3am I had this surreal feeling that this story was true and I was almost 100% sure that if I opened my door I’d discover a fantastic new world. I obviously knew deep down this wasn’t true, but this is the power this book has. It makes you believe in magic and doors and the stories we all read as children. It makes you believe.
You would never know that this was Alix's debut! Her lyrical writing and her ability to weave a story so beautiful and magical will make you think it's at least her 5!
The characters are so full of life and a realness that you don't feel often. They're flawed and human and because of that it made the characters one of the big reasons I love this book.
I don't want to say much of the plot as it's truly a magical experience going into this book and nkt knowing whata coming and experiencing things along side Janurary.

From the first page of Ten Thousand Doors, I was enchanted. The whimsy. The emotion. The story of January Caller is both powerful and beautiful and is a masterclass in worldbuilding without over-complicating or compromising the plot and flow of the story. This is a tale full of messages of strength, fighting back against prejudice, and finding the courage to stand up and be yourself in a world that would push you down. January has spent her whole life cast an outsider and treated with disgust and suspicion, and now she is finding the courage to push back and explore her origins to find out who she truly is.

I had both an ARC and the audiobook version, and within a chapter had discarded the ebook altogether as the casting was perfection, the narrator, also called January, articulating every character and dramatic scene to sublime perfection. There were many times I lost myself in the performance of January LaVoy, much to the amusement of others when I walked into a door on one particular moment!

The emotional atmosphere gripped me on every page. I laughed. I cried. In one particularly emotional scene, I had to step away for a while as I was so distressed by the emotions, I physically couldn’t keep listening. Alix Harrow has a way with emotion that is a rare gem, with characters that make me wish they were real just so I could meet them and hear their stories, and a plot with just enough intrigue to keep me guessing right until the end.

So why is it I only gave four stars? I had a couple of issues with the structure of her writing. I loved the world-building and the lyrical flow of the book, but often found the text so heavy-laden with similes that I started to struggle to picture what was being. When I say heavy-laden, I mean a few sections where every sentence included either a simile or metaphor. It did start to lose me as I began focusing more on trying to skip the at times over-explained pieces of text and less on what was happening within the plot.

There were also a few issues with the characters themselves with some characters needing a little more development for me to have more than a passing interest. unfortunately, the characters I struggled most with were January herself and her friend/potential romance interest. There was something that didn’t feel quite fleshed out for either character, and I was left feeling a little let down by the ending because of this. Maybe they needed more ‘screen time’, or maybe their story just wasn’t quite the right one and could have been written differently. I felt this also affected the ending, as the last few chapters didn’t feel as fleshed out as the rest of the book, almost a little rushed. I know it is meant to be more open-ended, but as a standalone, I would have liked more certainty in the fates of the characters we’d grown attached to.

All in all, this was one of the most creative novels I’ve read in a long time and no doubt would have made it to the top of my list for 2020 if I hadn’t found the writing to be a bit too full of over descriptive language that bogged down the flow. This is one hell of a debut novel that has launched the name Alix E harrow into many ‘Ones to Watch’ lists, and I for one can’t wait to read what she comes up with next.

Unfortunately, I have not been able to read and review this book.

After losing and replacing my broken Kindle and getting a new phone I was unable to download the title again for review as it was no longer available on Netgalley.

I’m really sorry about this and hope that it won’t affect you allowing me to read and review your titles in the future.

Thank you so much for giving me this opportunity.
Natalie.

I had to DNF this book 30% in.

It's not the book, it's me! I am not a fan of flowery writing and lyrical writing and therefore just didn't gel well with this book. However I know plenty of other people who will love this writing style.

DNF
Was quite intrigued for the first 50 or so pages but it's just not my cup of tea - Undoubtedly beautifully written but for me it was unnecessarily wordy and dragged out - this does have lots of really good reviews so I'm sure that if you like extremely literary books where prose is as important as story line that you will have a better experience than I did :)

Thank you for the advanced copy of this book, but this was not for me.
The writing is too long-winded and I didn't find it easy to follow. Great for someone who likes everything described in full, but just not for me - gave up. .

In this book, we follow January Scaller who is the ward of a very wealthy man named Mr Locke. Her father scours the earth for mysterious treasurers for Mr Locke to keep in his home. As the ward of Mr Locke, she often feels out of place within the walls of his home surrounded by objects that just sit pretty and do nothing, and that’s not what our girl wants to do in her life, even when Mr Locke and his friends say that she must. In addition to her being a woman, she is also blessed with being a mixed race girl but those like Locke’s friends are cautious around her because of this very thing that makes her different in her high society life. She may seem like she has the perfect life, but it is far from that.

When her father disappears when she is 17, leaving her to be vulnerable in the caste of society, she discovers something that will change her life; a book. This book tells the tales of secret doors and magical worlds filled with adventure, danger and truths that she has been waiting her whole life to hear. She finds a blue door in a field and her journey of self-discovery starts there.

As a debut author, Alix E. Harrow does a wonderful job of creating such a vivid world where our main character feels like she is an outsider, as many of us will feel at some point in their lives, but through out this portal fantasy comes to find herself and why she just might feel out of place even more than normal people. Or whatever normal people are. I personally love portal fantasies as you get the exploration of many different worlds within one another. It’s like multiple stories within one book. The writing is beautiful and really captures what it’s like to go to other worlds by being descriptive and flowery.

4 out of 5 stars.

Not for me. The writing is very wordy and long-winded in a way that I just do not particularly enjoy. I realized this early on, read another 50 pages and decided to be done with it. Perfect for fans of flowery, description heavy writing with a dose of fairytalesque framing devices.