From the Bookshelf of Nothing But Reading Challenges…

The Ten Thousand Doors of January

Alix E. Harrow

Start date: December 16, 2019

Finish date: January 16, 2020

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What Members Thought

Sep 04, 2019 Beth Tabler rated it it was amazing

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me with a copy of this to review in exchange for my open and honest opinion.

I walked through this book languidly over days. I took my time sipping each chapter like the fine wine that it is. After it was over, the last words were read, the last emotions evoked, I sat in stunned silence. I had no other option to declare that this book was indeed magic: unadulterated, unfettered, otherworldly magic.

Books can change people. They can mold you l Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me with a copy of this to review in exchange for my open and honest opinion.

I walked through this book languidly over days. I took my time sipping each chapter like the fine wine that it is. After it was over, the last words were read, the last emotions evoked, I sat in stunned silence. I had no other option to declare that this book was indeed magic: unadulterated, unfettered, otherworldly magic.

Books can change people. They can mold you like a sculpture. They can place you in a furnace and scorch you upon dialog and flay your heart. Sometimes you come out the other side of a book altered and changed.
I have experienced this phenomenon a few times in my life. I honestly have never read a book like this and from the first ten pages of the book, I knew that what I was in for was a different kind of experience entirely.

"Let this ignoble origin story stand as an invaluable lesson to you that a person's beginnings do not often herald their endings."

The main narrator of the story is January Scaller. We first meet her when she is seven years old. Small, slight, wild, and bright. All of the wrong things for the age in which she was born, but all of the right things for a main character you love. "I was what Mr. Locke called an In-between sort of thing." She was in-between everything. At this point in the story, January discovers a door. It was brief, but it left an inalienable impression. Books and doors and the adventures that lay betwixt become the stories of January's life. The narrative is told in the form of stories discovered by January and moments lived by January. These moments and stories of discovery and interwoven so that at times you can not tell when the magic of one stops to begin the magic of another.
Moments like this. "Ade spent her childhood in exploration, crisscrossing through their seven acres as if she'd dropped something precious and hoped to find it again or, more accurately, like a dog on a short lead straining against her collar."

All I can say is that this is one of the most beautiful books I have read this year, might be ever. This book is love. Love for the written word, for the reader, for magic, and finally for those magical moments when readers get lost in a story. When words dance and images flow through your mind.

It was such a wonderful read and I cannot recommend it highly enough.end it highly enough. ...more

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Nov 10, 2019 Heather rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy, 20th-century, magical-realism

4.5 stars

A beautifully written fantasy of a time when magic was present and there were doors to other worlds. January is a child of two worlds - straddling both and not sure where she belongs.

There were not many surprises, but that didn't bother me. I thoroughly enjoyed the ride, however predictable.

About halfway through I had a sense of it reminding me of another book. But I'm not sure what book I'm thinking about. Possibly The Time Traveler's Wife? I'm not sure. The more I think about it, the ...more

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Jan 23, 2021 Nicole rated it really liked it

Mysterious girl shows up with her father at the house of a wealthy man.
The father will be working for the man, collecting things for a secret society.
January stumbles across a book, and that changes the course of her life.

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Sep 07, 2020 Jenn rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy, 2020-finished

This book was a surprise for me. If I had known what it entailed I would of read it a lot sooner. The entire concept of time traveling is something that I love, which is basically what the foundation of this book is.

I loved the main character, January. Not only is her name unique but her story and upbringing also was. Her upbringing wasn't like typical children as her father, Julian, was always on business so she was pretty much raised by Mr. Locke. I love January's "sidekick", Bad, a dog which ...more

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