While we are learning all this, January is growing up. The boy, Yule Ian, spends his life studying doors, also looking for a way to find Adelaide again. But when Ade comes back on the third day, the door has been destroyed, and there is no way to find him.Īde takes off on a journey to discover more doors and find her way to him. He is obviously foreign, but he knows English and they connect. He has come through a doorway from another world. One day, Ade meets a boy in the grass behind her house.

She is a young, wild woman growing up in a run-down house full of aunts after her father walked off and her mother died. That book begins with the story of Adelaide Lee Larson.

One day, January discovers a book in a chest in Mr. Locke presses her into acting like a responsible young lady. Locke, January opens a door to another world. Locke to travel the world searching for relics and treasures to bring back to Locke Mansion. We first meet January Scaller when she is a young girl. This book begins with alternating chapters of different stories. The story was well written and I liked the characters. Fortunately (and surprisingly) I enjoyed reading this one. One book club friend is a big fantasy reader, and she’s made me read so many dreadful (to me) Hugo and Nebula award finalists that I now have immediate, negative connotations with those awards. However, my book club chose Ten Thousand Doors to read. I’m not a big fantasy reader, and there are so many books on that list it’s inevitable that I’m going to miss out on some.

Harrow was on NPR’s Best Books of 2019 List, but despite my avid perusal of that list every year, it didn’t catch my attention. (Sept.The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alex E. Harrow’s novel will hold strong appeal to readers who enjoy portal fantasies featuring adventuresome women. Harrow weaves in commentary on race: Julian is black and January’s mother is white, and, in a clever inversion, in one of the worlds January visits, everyone is black and racism is nonexistent. Throughout the novel, Harrow quotes at excessive length from The Ten Thousand Doors, a book Julian owns, and January gradually discerns a connection between her own life and that of Adelaide Lee Larson, a character in Doors. January discovers that she has the power to write words that open doors leading to other worlds, including the City of Nin. To fill the void left by January’s traveling father and her mother, whose absence is initially unexplained, Locke ensconces January in his mansion as his ward. The immensely wealthy William Cornelius Locke employs Julian Scaller as a plunderer of valuable artifacts, a job that prevents Julian from being a proper parent to his daughter, January. Harrow imbues her debut, set primarily in early-20th-century Vermont, as well as in an alternative world called the City of Nin, with genealogical mystery.

The 10000 doors of january review