2019; 371 pages. New Author? : Yes. Genres : Magical-Realism; Fantasy;
Coming-of-Age. Laurels: nominated for the Hugo Award
(2020) – Best Novel, Nebula
Award (2019) – Best Novel, Locus
Award (2019) – Best First Novel, and at least seven others (you can see the list in Wikipedia). Overall Rating: 9½*/10.
By any measure, young Miss January Scaller is
living a privileged life. As
the ward of William Locke she gets to grow up in a mansion and learn the
genteel way of social life. Sometimes she even sees the world by accompanying Mr. Locke on his
business trips. Once they went to
London!
Yet hers is also a lonely
life. Her mother died soon after she was
born, and January has no memories of her.
Her father is still alive, but she rarely sees him and even then, it’s
only for a brief amount of time.
He’s constantly undertaking lengthy expeditions all over the world on behalf
of Mr. Locke, searching for rare artifacts that Locke then either sells to other
rich people or displays in some of the museum-like rooms at his mansion. Frankly, it seems like
glorified graverobbing to January.
A life of privilege also
means not having any friends. Oh,
there’s Samuel, who’s about her age, but he’s poor, and all he does is deliver
groceries from his family’s store to the Locke mansion. Sometimes he waves, but that’s about it. Mr. Locke keeps January under close watch.
January yearns for more freedom and some excitement in her life.
Something weird. Like that time
when she was seven years old and traveling in Kentucky with Mr. Locke and
stepped through an old doorframe sitting abandoned in a field. And was suddenly somewhere else.
And wherever that “somewhere
else” was, it definitely wasn’t in Kentucky anymore.
What’s To Like...
Alix E. Harrow sets The
Ten Thousand Doors of January in the latter half of the 1800’s and the
first decade of the 1900’s, with occasional jumps to the 6900’s for reasons
that would be spoilers to reveal. Locke
mansion is in Vermont, but Ninley, Kentucky plays an important role as
well. The initial storyline is told in
the first-person POV (January’s), but
starting around page 50, a second storyline is introduced. It’s told in the third-person POV (for the most part anyway), which is how you
can keep the two plotlines straight.
It’s not a spoiler to reveal
that the titular “Doors” (and according
to January that term should correctly be capitalized), are portals,
but we’ll leave it to the reader and January to figure out the where, when, how, and why of their usage. The book’s story is a clever mix of intrigue,
quest, fantasy, and coming-of-age genres, with a dash of romance and science
fiction thrown in.
Some of the divisions in the
book are labeled “chapters”, some are labeled by the name of the Door that is
featured therein, and a couple are labeled in what I’d call “thesis”
fashion. It isn’t as confusing as it
sounds. There are twelve of the “Door”
chapters, so rest assured, you’re treated to lots of portal-hopping.
I liked the literary nods to
the various popular novels of January’s time, and the fact that most people read them
as dime novels and/or penny dreadfuls. I
thought the “feel” of London at the opening of the 20th century was
nicely done, ditto for life at that time if you had the misfortune to be involuntarily committed
to an insane asylum. And the mention of “mangles” as part of an old-fashioned laundry dryer brought back childhood
memories; back then I called them “rollers”
The ending addresses the
“quest” aspect of the story. It’s a
reasonably happy resolution, but it also left a lump in my throat. It allows room for a sequel, but doesn’t
necessitate one, and I don’t believe Alix Harrow’s following (and only other) book, The Once and Future Witches, has any tie-ins to
this one. Still, in light of the great
success of The Ten Thousand Doors of January, I’m hoping the author opts
to set another novel in this world.
Kewlest New Word ...
Temerarious
(adj.) : reckless; rash.
Others: Feckless (adj.); Fricatives (n., pl.).
Ratings…
Amazon: 4.4*/5, based on 4,168
ratings.
Goodreads: 4.07*/5,
based on 59,810 ratings and 10,927 reviews
Excerpts...
He leaned toward me, hands crossed atop his
cane. “We’ll talk more soon, my
dear. Are you free tomorrow night? I’d hate to be interrupted again.”
I licked my slowly warming lips, tried to
sound braver than I felt. “Don’t–don’t you have
to be invited in?”
He laughed.
“Oh, my dear, don’t believe everything you read in the story
papers. You people are always trying to
invent reasons for things.
Monsters only come for bad children, for loose women, for impious
men. The truth is that the powerful come
for the weak, whenever and wherever they like.
Always have, always will.” (pg. 160)
If you’re some stranger who stumbled over
this book by chance–−perhaps rotting in some foreign
garbage pile or locked in a dusty traveling trunk or published by some small,
misguided press and shelved mistakenly under Fiction – I hope to every god you
have the guts to do what needs doing. I
hope you will find the cracks in the world and wedge them wider, so the light
of other suns shines through; I hope you will keep the world unruly, messy,
full of strange magics; I hope you will run through every open Door and tell
stories when you return. (pg.
364)
What a shameful
thing, that a Scholar of the City of Nin should become a story-eater. (pg. 227 )
For me The Ten Thousand Doors of January was a near-perfect effort, so the
following quibbles are miniscule.
I struggled a bit at first to
figure out what was going on and where the storyline was headed. But there was a backstory and some
worldbuilding to do, and once Alix Harrow got those out of the way, things came nicely into focus. I was also slow to pick up on the significance
of some of the names, and they play a crucial part of connecting the two main
plotlines. Finally, and worst of all, the
dog dies.
I suspect all this was
deliberate on the author’s part; she treats the readers as adults and expects
them to pay attention. All the plotlines gradually come together, and it was a treat to watch the author deftly accomplish this, particularly in her debut novel.
The Ten Thousand Doors of January is a
fantastic book, full deserving of all the literary awards nominations it garnered. It's a standalone novel and is
suitable for all readers, YA or adult, male or female. Yes, there are couple of cusswords, but nothing that little Susie and Timmy haven't heard before, and that is the extent of the R-rated stuff.
9½ Stars. What impressed me most of all about The Ten Thousand Doors of January was the freshness of its storyline. Fantasy tales tend to almost always fall into one of two categories (or both): a.) a kingdom needs to be saved, or b.) some Ultimate Evil needs to be vanquished. Neither happens here.
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