Review: THE TEN THOUSAND DOORS OF JANUARY by Alix E. Harrow

"That afternoon, sitting in that lonely field beside the Door that didn't lead anywhere, I wanted to write a different kind of story. A true kind of story, something I could crawl into if only I believed it hard enough."

~THE TEN THOUSAND DOORS OF JANUARY

Portal fiction is a genre that so many of us have read and/or watched since childhood, perhaps never quite knowing the terminology for us. Who didn't grow up with Dorothy riding a tornado to Oz in The Wizard of Oz, fly to Neverland with Peter Pan, or step through a wardrobe with the Pevensie children and experience the wonders of Narnia? When we step through a doorway and leave one world for the wonders of another, it is called "portal fiction."

Last year, BroadwayWorld reviewed the fantastic Wayward Children series by Seanan McGuire, and when THE TEN THOUSAND DOORS OF JANUARY was advertised at this year's annual Book Expo Conference, it immediately brought fond memories of Wayward Children to mind. Both books are adult fantasy with YA crossover appeal. The cover is absolutely stunning. It is a book about books, and what reader doesn't love reading about people who also love books? It has been blurbed by so many award-winning authors, from beloved fantasy novelist Tamora Pierce (SONG OF THE LIONESS) to Kat Howard (AN UNKINDNESS OF MAGICIANS, ROSES & ROT), Christina Henry (MERMAID, THE LOST BOYS), Peng Shepherd (THE BOOK OF M), Erika Swyler (THE BOOK OF SPECULATION), and newcomer Melissa Albert (THE HAZELWOOD). With so much going for it, this was one of the very first books to be read after the conference, and with its release this coming Tuesday, September 10th, the time to talk about it is finally here.

January Scaller is a curious girl. Her father is always away for work, and she is largely raised by his employer, a ward of the well-esteemed Mr. Locke. It is hard for a girl to be on her own in the early 1900s, especially one of color, and her childhood is an unusual one. When she finds a mysterious door she doesn't realize how fundamentally her life is about to shift over the next several years, especially when she later discovers a book that becomes the key to a stunning revelation about the existence of other worlds...

Harrow's writing style is beautiful. There are so many sentences readers enamored with word usage will want to grab and clutch to their chests. A beautiful sentence has its own way of hooking the reader, desperate to find more beauty on future pages. Other readers may say there is too much purple prose, reading the same sentences. It's all in the type of reader. It's also an homage to readers everywhere. For example, a passage about books:

"Those of you who are more than casually familiar with books -- those of you who spend your free afternoons in fusty bookshops, who offer furtive, kindly strokes along the spines of familiar titles -- understand that page riffling is an essential element in the process of introducing oneself to a new book. It isn't about reading the words; it's about reading the smell, which wafts from the pages in a cloud of dust and wood pulp. It might smell expensive and well bound, or it might smell of tissue-thin paper and blurred two-colour prints, or of fifty years unread in the home of a tobacco-smoking old man. Books can smell of cheap thrills or painstaking scholarship, or literary weight or unsolved mysteries."

The writing style makes for a slower read, as it is denser, but it makes it easier to read at a steady pace and not just inhale it in a too-greedy gulp. Books that utilize this writing style can walk a fine line with readers from having the perfect amount to having too much and bogging it down. THE TEN DOORS OF JANUARY was a mix of both. At times, the pacing worked well, at others, it dragged more than expected with not much happening. It takes a large chunk of the book for the heart of the story to be introduced and get underway as the world's foundation is laid and January grows up to the age she needs to be in order to truly start her journey.

The concept of the doors to other worlds is far from revolutionary, but the execution of it was lovely. The way doors are here and gone, the way they can blow out smells from that world or ideas that become reality and change the world they're blown into, were fascinating. I love the idea that worlds can be affected by one another without knowing it. If one world is in revolution and the tale of it slips into another world, it may lead to revolution or change in that other world, forever altering it. It's a heady thought.

As a lover of portal fiction expecting to be sucked into another world Wayward Children style, the read may be more disappointing to fans of the sub-genre than expected. The idea of the worlds is amazing. The doors can be extraordinary. However, the majority of the novel takes place in our world, in our reality. There is very little interaction in other worlds for a book that talks so much about those worlds and exploring them. This was perhaps the biggest disappointment of the novel, that it spent so little time actually being portal fiction. Readers shouldn't go into this one expecting to be taken to other realms and introduced to new wonders. Instead, the focus is on a mystery in our world, on a group who has discovered the doors and is bent on destroying them so that our world is the only one. The mystery is compelling and will keep readers turning pages, but it wasn't the story expected at the onset.

January grows up over the course of the book, aging from a child to a young woman, and as she does, her relationships help her evolve and become the fire to fuel her curiosity about what she is discovering. Because of the fact that so much is a mystery, it's spoilery to talk about much of the plot and characters in this regard.

THE TEN THOUSAND DOORS OF JANUARY is a mixed bag for this reviewer. It has beautiful writing, though at times, the metaphors could have been whittled down a bit to make for a faster read and the pacing is bogged down at times. The doors were fascinating, but their worlds weren't explored enough for lovers of portal fiction. The mystery revolving around a group bent on destroying doors gave the book the fuel it needed to become a page-turning story and keep readers invested all the way until the end. Don't go into this one expecting the next Wayward Children or you'll be disappointed; instead, go in with average expectations understanding it isn't truly portal fiction that will transport you to another world and you won't be disappointed by the results! This is a book -- an an author -- with a lot of potential, and while not fully executed to the fullest, I would be interested to read another book from Harrow in the future and see how her writing and storytelling evolves and grows.

THE TEN THOUSAND DOORS OF JANUARY by Alix E. Harrow publishes from Red Hook / Orbit on September 10, 2019.

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