I was so excited for this book as it sounds amazing! Sadly though while the themes and ideas were brilliant, I found the pace and plot of the book dragging. Even half way through it seemed as if nothing much had happened and those amazing worlds behind doors that had been discussed in length where still no closer to being part of the main story with January.
I really enjoyed the writing style and normally have no problem with slow paced books but this one just didn't do it for me which makes me sad as I was so hoping it would be a new favourite.

"She accumulated the dust of other worlds on her skin like ten thousand perfumes, and left constellations of wistful men and impossible tales in her wake"

* * * *
4 / 5

I don't believe I've ever read a book quite like The Ten Thousand Doors of January. It was whimsical, charming, adventurous, strange, and daring. It wasn't what I expected it to be and I loved it for it.

"There was no room, it turned out, for little girls who wandered off the edge of the map and told the truth about the mad, impossible things they found there"

I probably didn't read the synopsis properly before cracking this bad boy open, because I was surprised to find it set in the early 1900s, America. January Scaller is the dark-skinned ward of a business man who employs her often-absent father to go on archaeological digs around the world, stealing artefacts and sending them back home. When she is seven years old, January finds a Door. Capital D. A Door that leads to another world of sea salt and brine and scholars and tattoos. When she is an older teenager she has forgotten this experience; when her world begins to change around her, January finds The Ten Thousand Doors, a scholarly work on the existence of magic and Doors. Perhaps stories are more than that. Perhaps they creep through doors to other worlds. Perhaps you can walk through them.

The Ten Thousand Doors of January is about love and self-belief and mystery and finding out who you are and where you belong. It's about loving people that don't deserve it. It's about adventure and pain and sacrifice and having a disappointing father. This book is a stunning debut that threads together all these ideas into something deliciously readable. 

"She scoured the Earth, wandering and ravenous, looking for doors. And she found them."

I loved January. She is wild and imaginative and eager to please her guardian. She is disappointed in her father, curious, an avid reader. She is angry at a world that views her as a curiosity because she isn't white, but still comes across as mature rather a petulant child. There's also a great cast of supporting characters, from the grocer's boy who is January's secretive friend, to her female guardian who used to be a vicious hunter in a different, dangerous world. 

Something to be cautious about is the storytelling style.  The prose itself is beautiful, lyrical, and descriptive, without being overly flowery and tiresome. January's story is interspersed with the chapters of The Ten Thousand Doors, which itself tells the tale of a young woman who meets a boy, Yule Ian Scholar, from another world, and spends her adult life chasing stories to the far-flung corners of the world. This sort of style doesn't work for everyone, and whilst it is well done here, it may put some off! 

"I'd been powerless my whole life, and the shape of the leopard-women as they leapt into battle was the shape of power written on the world"

The Ten Thousand Doors of January was a far better reading experience than I had ever imagined I would get when I started. It is surprising and eloquent and thoughtful in equal measures. 

My thanks to Netgalley, the publisher, and the author for an ARC of The Ten Thousand Doors of January.

Put simply, one of the best books I've read this year. January's story is a must read for anyone who believes in the power of words, and the magic of books. Each chapter is laid out in poetic but oftentimes humorous prose, with January herself as witty narrator most of the time. Although the star crossed love story of her parents is beautiful, I'm much more invested in what happens next not only with Samuel but also in worlds beyond The Written. I imagine that January's tale could continue through all sorts of doors and I would happily open each one.

Highly enjoyable period fantasy. It reads like a book within a book - we discover more of our protagonist, January, through the book she is reading - there are corollaries and mirrors between the texts, and what starts as almost a diary style setup develops in to a wild adventure with January in the lead.
I loved it. The doors are fantastical and magic, the heroine is wilfull and full of adventure, and the story just blossoms from the pages.
Highly recommended for anyone that enjoys Phillip Pullmans books, or even Charlie M. Holmberg.
Would buy a beautiful hardback copy.

Somehow, this book managed to plunge a hand deep into my childhood, root around, and pull out all that nostalgia-inducing wonder exactly.

January Scaller is a young mixed-race woman in early 1900s America. Her father travels the world collecting wondrous curiosities for his wealthy patron Mr Locke, a member of the New England Archaeological Society. While her father is away, January lives in Mr Locke’s mansion: well-cared for but desperately lonely. As a child she discovers a Door leading to Elsewhere, but soon starts to believe she imagined it. Then, when she’s 17, her father goes missing and January discovers her childhood Door may not be the only one.

If you’ll allow me an intensely unrelatable anecdote… So, the USSR and post-USSR countries were very, ah, loose about copyright law. I grew up not with Dorothy but with Ellie Smith, whose slightly re-written Wizard of Oz came with five original sequels. And in the 90s, an exciting new 11-book sequel series about Ellie, written by yet another author, started coming out. Then we moved to the US, and I found out Ellie’s name was actually Dorothy and that she’d been made up by F.L. Baum and not A.M. Volkov. And also, to my great astonishment, that there were 13 more sequels.

Reading The Ten Thousand Doors of January has given me the bizarre, off-putting, and wonderful feeling that I’ve found a fourth version, written by Alix E. Harrow, and her name is actually neither Ellie nor Dorothy, but January.

I don’t mean that The Ten Thousand Doors of January is a children’s book. But there is something magically old-fashioned about it. Both the characters and plot are straightforward and fun; the romance is adorable in that first-time-love way; the fantasy aspect feels limitless and wondrous; and the whole book is seeped deep in old-fashioned Americana. Whatever book-inspired delights you felt as a kid, whether it was scouring the book bazaar in the summer heat or curling up all rainy afternoon with a library book, Harrow aims to bring back.

It does update the familiar tropes to the 21st century however. Unlike many older works, it doesn’t shy away from examining race and gender. Although Mr Locke basically treats her as his foster daughter, most people in January’s everyday life do not fully accept her because of her skin colour. There is also a theme of anti-imperialism intertwined with the Archaeological Society, as January’s father steals priceless objects, basically people’s history, from around the world for it. I thought The Ten Thousand Doors of January struck a great balance between keeping the overall tone of the works it draws on while thematically exploring current ideas.

Speaking of other books, the power of stories is another important theme. January escapes her confines sometimes through Doors, and sometimes simply into books. A large chunk of the book is a story-within-the-story. That always takes me some time to warm up to, but it works well here. Fittingly, the prose is gorgeous, particularly the descriptions of other worlds. Here’s January trying to describe her first experience through a Door:

“I–I was just playing and I went through this door, see, and it leads to someplace else. There was a white city by the sea.” If I’d been older, I might’ve said: It smelled of salt and age and adventure. It smelled like another world, and I want to return right this minute and walk through those strange streets. Instead, I added articulately, “I liked it.”

And now after all that raving, I have to be a stick-in-the-mud and admit that I have problems with the book’s core concept. Doors are change, Doors lead to revolution, says the book both metaphorically and literally. The metaphoric version is beautiful: reading, dreaming, letting yourself imagine a different world can lead you to want to better the one you live in. Literally though, multiple characters mention that revolutions can only happen if somebody slips through a Door, and one character describes outright that that’s how the Indian Rebellion of 1857 started. Because of how central the Doors are, the book ends up with the idea that rebelling against an oppressive system can only happen through outside, magical interference. I find that uncomfortable on multiple levels. (Though I would tear through The Ten Thousand Doors of Mao Zedong on release day.)

In short then, I recommend The Ten Thousand Doors of January to everyone but stick-in-the-muds wholeheartedly, and I recommend it to us stick-in-the-muds with caveats. Find a long, sunny afternoon, crack open the book, and slip inside!

This book is absolutely beautiful. It has the kind of poetic writing that feels very flowery and introspective - I do think you have to be in the right mood to read it. I wouldn't suggest this if someone were looking for a quick read to blast through of an afternoon - though the book itself isn't very long - it's something to be savoured and to be pondered on. Sometimes I find this kind of writing difficult because I read so quickly, especially when I'm doing reading challenges, and I don't like having to slow myself down to get to grips with someone's writing. This isn't the most flowery book, however, and there are faster moments interspersed to stop it having that 'is this just a poem' feeling that some books get. I think the writing style is probably the strongest and most distinctive aspect of this book so if you're looking for gorgeous prose I'd definitely recommend picking it up. 

I found the plot a little confusing to start with, partly because I was expecting January to start going through doors - where actually she spends a lot of the book staying where she is. Perhaps that was a side-effect of me having recently finished the Wayward Children series where the general consensus is 'you see a door you go through it and you don't come back'. That being said, there is more exploring, both real and introspective, in the book than I might have thought there was. 

Introspective is probably one of the keywords I would use to describe this book. It's not exactly an adventure story but more of a slow burn, ponderous story. I don't always love that kind of book but in this case, I think it works because January is such a strong character that I didn't mind some of her more 'thoughtful' passages because they were balanced out by her being epic and rule-breaking in other ways. There is a lot more action towards the end of the book though so don't worry if that's your jam. 

There's also a dog, which is almost always a surefire win for me (unless the dog is used as a metaphor for grief in which case I refuse to read on). This dog is called Sinbad (Bad for short) which was extra special for me as my Mum's dog when she was a child was called Sinbad too! If you are also a dog lover I would recommend this as having a good representation of loyal pet dogs (something I've been reading a lot of lately too...maybe it's a sign). 

I thought this book was beautiful, it's a palette cleanser for anyone who feels like their fantasy has become devoid of meaning. It takes the idea of the magical doorways we all want to fall through and it spreads them across generations, it reminds us that sometimes we can't go through a doorway right now, but that doesn't necessarily mean we never can. 

My rating: 4/5 stars

I received a free digital advanced review copy of this book from the publisher. All opinions are my own. 

The Ten Thousand Doors of January publishes September 12th!

Thank you to NetGalley and the Publisher for providing me with an early copy of this book to review. All opinions are my own and have not been influenced by this opportunity.

Oh man! Did I love this book so so much? YES, I DID!
The characters were very nicely fleshed out and the story was very compelling. Loved every single word in this book. HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT!

This was magical, powerful, emotional...this book was everything.

Everyone should read this book. It sounds so cliche and has probably been stated on thousands of reviews for other books, but this is one of those ones that is so imaginative yet so real and intertwined and connected that it will genuinely linger with me for a long time.

"Words draw their vitality from their writers, and thus the strength of a word is limited by the strength of its human vessel.." This quote is clearly appropriate for the story it's in but I must say, Alix Harrow is a word worker as well. If she didn't fully believe in every word she wrote, I wouldn't be sat here in as much awe as I currently am.

This was one of the most imaginative novels I have read in as long as I can remember. I was moved by this and invested in this. Usually I blitz through novels this size in a day or two, but I savoured this one. I needed to read it slowly and with intent. Not just to write a review and tick it off my list, but to really envelope myself in this novel and feel every emotion it needed me to feel.

I so incredibly highly recommend this novel. It is now on my short list of my most loved reads ever.

Thank you NetGalley and Little, Brown Book Group UK for the opportunity to read this novel in exchange for an honest review.