With the baseless arrogance that so often plagues young men, Yule never once considered the possibility that Adelaide would not be waiting for him.

— Alix E Harrow, The Ten Thousand Doors of January

January has been a good month for reading so far. It felt like a good time to be reading this book, so aptly named. I was first attracted to the book because of it’s absolutely gorgeous cover. Then I kept seeing great reviews and that it won the Goodreads Choice Award for Fantasy and for Debut Novel in 2019. So, during my vacation this last week I took it on.

I would rate this book as 3.75 / 5 stars. I really wanted it to go higher, given all of the hype and the lyrical writing, but I can’t in good conscience say it merited a 4 star or higher rating for me. There are distinct high and low points to the book. The writing, as I said, is lyrical and descriptive in a compelling way. It also puts a great premium on words and books, which is always a selling point for me (don’t we all feel a compulsion to love things that show similarity with ourselves?).

The biggest problem is that the plot was pretty boring. It got a lot more interesting about halfway through the book, and then most of it was pretty good for plot line. It just took so long to get there, that it felt more like dreaming your way through a book than reading.

The book follows January Scaller through her childhood into early adulthood. January’s life is unusual – she’s a bit of an odd color (which can be a significant problem in the early 1900’s), but she lives with an eccentric benefactor who collects odd things while her father travels the world to collect these oddities. She is a wild and willful child, who eventually is reigned in by her very white, very rich surrogate father.

The world changes for January when she finds a strange book, and her father disappears. She begins to discover the world isn’t what she thought, as doors begin to open for her.

As I said earlier, after the world changes the book’s plot emerges and it becomes part romance, part a tale of coming into your own, and part science fiction. It’s a lovely blend, and the author clearly feels the power of words and weaves them gracefully throughout the story.

On the other hand, I really wish that more of the story emerged earlier. Additionally, the only character that was really well drawn was January. She has companions, but they aren’t particularly interesting and they aren’t explored well. They play relatively large roles in the conclusion of the story, but aren’t described well enough to care much one way or another.

I did enjoy the book after I stuck to it long enough to get to the meat. The dreamlike quality of the beginning is also interesting, as it is well written. If you’re ok with taking some time to just kind of acquaint yourself with a world, peaking around like you’re an observer people watching, rather than being pulled along by the plot, then this won’t bother you at all.

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Nuggets of gold from The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E Harrow
1. 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.

2. There’s only one way to run away from your own story, and that’s to sneak into someone else’s.

3. The truth is: Adelaide was the most beautiful being I have seen in this world or any other, if we understand beauty to be a kind of vital, ferocious burning at a soul’s center that ignites everything it touches.

4. One does not fall in love; one discovers it.

5. “Maybe,” he said slowly, “Maybe I did not make myself clear before, when I said I was on your side. I meant also that I would like to be at your side, to go with you into every door and danger, to run with you into your tangled-up future.