The Ten Thousand Doors of January

This is a tried and tested format. Lonely girl, January, gets abandoned in a mansion whilst her much loved father goes travelling.

As tends to happen January stumbles on a magical book, that opens to doors to other worlds. January suddenly finds herself on a terrifying journey escaping those who have appeared to protect her all her life, and having to find her much absent father

Although it’s a tried and tested format it works well, and January develops as a very sassy, independent heroine not afraid to stand up for herself. Her companions Jane, Samuel and Sinbad the dog really add to the story, Jane could almost have had a book to herself. Added to the plot is a mysteries book within a book, and different themes of feminism, racism and sense of self. (January is bi-racial, and Samuel is an Italian Immigrant).

Whilst reading this I was reminded of Aldus Huxley’s Doors of Perception which was no bad thing.

This would be a 4.5 for me. Looking forward to the next instalment!

What a magical, wonderful reality to escape into. A story so very reminiscent of McGuire's Wayward Children series, which is such a good thing! This absorbing tale tells all on treacherous villains, stately prisons, whimsical escapism and dark hidden secrets.

The language used keeps you hooked, it isn't so often anymore when I come across authors who use language as the exciting, playful and witty vehicle it can be. I'm so happy I read this. 10/10 recommend!

Glorious and magnificent are two words to describe this book.
This book may be the best written book that I have ever read.
Iam amazed that this is a debut novel and cannot wait to read more by this author

This was a complex, elegant story. Everything about it was beautifully done, from the writing, to the plot to even the pacing.
I was fully engrossed in this story and was charmed by the characters, who were very well done.

Cannot recommend this enough.

I desperately wanted to love this. It sounded so incredible, and unique, and just amazing. Sadly, I really struggled to get into it. I found it really hard to connect with the plot and the characters, and if I'm honest, I found it a bit boring. I ended up skim reading most of the second half, and was quite relieved when I finished it.

I do seem to be in the minority with this approach though, so don't let me talk you out of it! You might get the reading experience I was so keen to have, but sadly missed out on.

What a beautiful, absolutely stunning book this this is and I can’t believe it is a debut as the writing is superb, full of magic and so poetic it takes your breath away. This is a story that’s hard to describe because it’s so very different and unique so I’m not even going to try it just has everything I would want in a book and I was sad to finish it as I felt lost because I had lived in the world of January Scaller travelled with her in her trials and tribulations as she discovers the doors to somewhere else.
When you read a book like this that is written so beautifully you realise the power of words and their ability to move you, transport you to other places but most of all to forget everything else and just to live in the wonder of an exceptional story. More than a five star read and totally recommended.
A book I will treasure always and many many thanks to Alex E Harrow who I hope to hear much more from in the future.
My thanks also to NetGalley and Little, Brown Book Group UK, Orbit for giving me the chance to read the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

January Scaller and her father live with the wealthy Mr Locke. This is set in the early 1900’s. Her father travels and finds Mr Locke curios from all over the world. January is a ward of Mr Locke and he often introduces her as his adopted daughter. One of January’s great loves is reading and she devours pretty much anything she can get her hands on. When she finds a book about doors, something she has always thought held more to them than just a shape between two rooms, she is fascinated as these doors are more like portals. we are treated to not only January’s story but that of between the pages of her book Ten Thousand doors and the characters within. In their land the greatest number is ten thousand (think infinity). Mr Locke also wants to know how she knows of such things, Does his secret society have more to hide than she realises and where on earth has her father got to? It took me a little while to get into this but I quickly developed an empathy for January. A child alone having few friends and mostly adult company who treat her as almost an ornament to be gazed at. A wonderful fantasy tale with a little romance, a hint of adventure, a tad of Alice in Wonderland.
(rest of links as part of blog tour)

Alix E. Harrow's debut novel is a journey through worlds, a cult disguised as a society of intellectuals trying to prevent doors opening in our reality to other realities and a girl named January. If you, like myself, always wondered about passageways into fantastical worlds this book is a great example on how this sort-of world jumping could, theoretically, happen (at least in the world of fiction). It is an engaging story about January's struggles in a world of white, rich men on a quest to find her parents.

The story was engaging enough for me to read on, although I wish that we've learned more about January as a character more than that other (read white) characters thought her different and "unique". Some glimpses of this was noticeable in the novel but always in comparison with her guardian Mr. Locke, and not so much her own thoughts about her being "different".

Other than this critique I did enjoy the diversity amongst our group of heroes, and their obvious care for one another - it was very endearing to read about characters that genuinely cared and liked one another in a believable way.

Thanks to the publisher, Little, Brown Book Group UK, for letting me read the book. I feel great things about Alix E. Harrow and am looking forward to more books by her.

I will publish my review on my Goodreads account on September 10th 2019.

"stories, even the meanest folktales, matter. They are artifacts and palimpsests, riddles and histories. They are the red threads we may follow out of the labyrinth"

As soon as I saw this title I knew I had to read it. There is something so compelling about doors which speak to my imagination of Other Worlds, adventures, magic, escapism. Even looking at doorways and the way that they are carved, defined, decorated and adorned can speak to you of some magical realm just hidden behind it. This is why I collect pictures of doors on my Pinterest, they are full of wonders and what lies behind them is only limited to the imagination. Maybe I just read too much Secret Garden as a child.

"sometimes I feel there are doors lurking in the creases of every sentence, with periods for knobs and verbs for hinges"

Based in the early 1900s Ten Thousand Doors is a story about January, a 17 year old girl who lives with Cornelius Locke, a rich man who is part of the mysterious Archelogical Society. January's father works for Locke as the collector of various artifacts and rarely sees his daughter. One day when she is seven years old, January finds a Door in a field. And the doorway leads to a world rich with the smell of the ocean. It is sometime later, however, when January is 17, that she discovers a leather-bound book, called The Ten Thousand Doors, written by one Yule Ian Scholar, that she realises that these Doors are real and the implications of this for her future (Doors with a capital D as this is important. )

Harrow is a word-smith , she plays with words and sentences in a way that just brings the whole story to life. Ten Thousand Doors is a beautiful, lyrical treat for anyone who loves words, parrallel worlds, Other Worlds. It's a portal fantasy unlike any I've ever read. I find it hard to articulate just how wonderful this book is. I think I was a few pages in when I realised this was a special book. I was a few more pages in when I realised this book was going to be a new favourite.

Everyone needs to read this. It's beautiful, amazing and wonderful.

Thank you so much to Netgalley for making my whole year and providing me with an e-arc of this book. I cannot wait to receive my pre-ordered copy.

I was really excited to receive an ARC of this book from Netgalley. The cover is beautiful and really stands out and the concept of the book looked great. However I really struggled with this book, I don't really know why because it wasn't badly written or anything, I just could not connect with the characters. I was extremely bored and felt I was skimming parts just to get through it. I know I'm in the minority and I really tried to like this book. I just didnt.

Without question or hesitation, this is a special book. I want to push it into the hands of every single person and get them to read it.

The overall story is excellent, I love the way it's constructed to allow the reader to work things out moments before the characters. I love the layers of complexity that become more transparent as the story moves on.

The characters are wonderful and the relationships between them are written perfectly. The decisions and actions taken are all in character and every one feels 'right'.

The pacing is spot on.

The concepts of Doors, change and being in-between are though provoking and will resonate with everyone at some level.

The prose flows beautifully and nothing in it jars you out of the story.

Overall this is a fantastic, engrossing read.

This book blew me away. Quite possibly some of the most beautifully descriptive writing I've ever had the pleasure of reading.

"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 rifling 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."

The Ten Thousand Doors of January follows January Schaller, a girl who doesn't fit into the high society world she was raised in. At seven years old, she finds her first door, as the years go by January starts to feel she imagined the door and the sea and cliffs she saw when she passed through it. That is until a book appears in an old box. As she starts the book, she realises that not only was her door real, but there are over ten thousand of them, leading to ten thousand different worlds.

"But you still know about Doors, don't you? Because there are ten thousand stories about ten thousand Doors, and we know them as well as we know our own names. They lead to Faerie, to Valhalla, Atlantis and Lemuria, Heaven and Hell, to all the directions a compass could never take you, to elsewhere."

This book is wondrously imaginative, the writing is lyrical and flows with an ease that had me reading chapters and chapters without even realising it. The main theme in the story is love. The love between family, the love between friends, romantic love and the love of possession. It shows how love can transcend not only time, but worlds, how love can be the one thing that keeps you going, and how love can be your downfall. Every story is so well entwined, twisting and turning until you are brought to an ending you cant believe you didn't foresee from the start.

January is a headstrong girl, raised by her fathers employer, she is shifted into the world of high society, a world which January with her coloured skin and temperament simply do not fit in to. Her only safe havens are her dog Bad, her governess/friend Jane and Samuel, the boy who used to sneak her stories in Milk cartons. Though January is definitely self sufficient in so many ways, her story would never have come to an end without her companions help.

This book took me back to a time when I believed in faeries, when I was so sure that If I walked though my wardrobe I would end up in Narnia, when the monsters under my bed used to keep me awake at night. But what made this book so magical is its ability to make me believe again. Not to make me believe in magic the way I did as a child, but to see the magic in love, in friendship and in family.

Harrows writing style had me falling into the book like Alice into Wonderland, until I was right there alongside January on her journey to find out who she was and where she was from. Utterly immersive and wondrously imagined, her lush writing style had me so fully engrossed in the story. I experienced a rigmarole of emotions and by the end of the book I felt like I had become January, I needed to know her outcome, happy or sad.

"It's a profoundly strange feeling, to stumble across someone who's desires are shaped so closely to your own, like reaching toward your reflection in a mirror and finding warm flesh under your fingertips."

This is probably one of the easiest 5* I've given this year, if not ever. I would pick up anything else this author writes and she has cemented herself as a favourite author of mine based on this one book alone. Out September 2019 you should get on those pre-orders now because this is one book you wont want to miss!

The post will go live on 1/8/19 on my blog & Goodreads

If there is a part of you that has always felt there is magic in the world ever since childhood, despite voices to the contrary, and have a penchant for the whimsical, then Alix Harrow has written the perfect novel for you. It is a story of doors, portals if you will, existing in places of particular resonance, stepping through the void, into fables, folklore, adventure, love and sanctuary, and the infinite power of words and stories. In 1901, at the age of 7, the red skinned, wilful and cantankerous January Scaller lives with her guardian, the enormously wealthy, white and powerful William Locke on a sprawling estate, in a house crammed full of stolen treasures in his collections, mostly acquired by her black father on his global adventures, occasionally returning, whilst she stays behind in Vermont. January is in Kentucky when she encounters her first door, but Locke does not believe her and she is punished. In her efforts to please him she grows up trying to be a good girl, curbing her natural instincts and desires, to conform to his stringent expectations.

January is a strange oddity, only tolerated by the outside world riven with racism because she accompanies the man of substance that is Locke, the Chairman of the Archaeological Society, on his business trips. He informs her ' Power, my dear, has a language, a currency....and a color', as she grows up lonely, with only one, below the radar, non-fictional friend, Samuel Zappia, who gives her a beloved dog, (Sin)Bad. Until Jane arrives, a brave and courageous Amazon woman, sent to protect January by her father. A griefstricken and drunk January responds with unpalatable truths to Locke and his much vaunted Archaeological Society, an act which is to shatter the world as she knows it. In the gripping narrative, the lives of Adelaide Larson and Yule Ian (Julian) are outlined culminating in a meeting that triggers adventures, journeys through doors and dedicated scholarly research that is to results in a remarkable book, The Ten Thousand Doors, which falls in the hands of January, with its shocking revelations. As January is ferociously hunted and facing grave dangers, will she be able to find the inner resources to fight the deadly threats?

Harrow writes a bewitching story, about powerful underhand forces that are determined to eliminate all threats to the existing political establishment, about family, loss, grief, and a coming of age tale. The characterisation is stellar, a January facing life altering challenges, and her poignant battles to fight the ingrained responses instilled in her from childhood, and I adored Jane, Samuel and the loyal Bad. This is an enchanting read, lyrical, full of charm, that manages to connect with our inner desires and belief that there is magic and hope out there, although perhaps it is unlikely to appeal to those who have a more sceptical nature. An unmissable read for those who adore this type of fantasy, brilliant, colourful, vibrant, with echoes of the darkest of fairytales, and infused with the grim realities of our contemporary world when it comes to issues of race. Highly recommended. Many thanks to Little, Brown for an ARC.

Thank you to Netgalley, Little, Brown Book Group and Alix E Harrow for my arc of The Ten Thousand Doors of January in exchange for an honest review. 

Title: The Ten Thousand Doors of January 
Author: Alix E Harrow
Format read: Ebook
Publication date: 12th September 2019
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group UK
Page Count: 384 pages
Genre: Fantasy
Star rating: 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟
Synopsis: In the early 1900s a young girl tries to find her place in the world after discovering a mysterious books. As a ward of the wealthy Mr Locke, January Scaller lives in a beautiful mansion full of curiosities from around the world, January herself is a bit of a curiosity. When January stumbles across a mysterious book which carries a whisper of Doors and a whiff of magic, her whole life begins to change.

This book started as a bit of a slow burner for me. I found the cover beautiful and the plot interesting but I felt at first that it wasn't going to get going. But fear not, all of a sudden I was lost in the kind of wonderful world that I haven't entered since I was a child. It was like this book was a Door through to those early years of reading which truly enchant you. A world no matter how much I love reading as an adult, I hadn't thought to enter again.
This book is beautiful, magical and important. It uses the magic of other worlds and Doors to explore deeper issues like politics, race, sexuality and human nature itself. Beautifully written this is one of the most stunning debuts I've ever read.

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Review** spoiler alert ** 

This was a blinking good book to loose a few hours .
A world of doors that lead to other world,that realistically could have January taking us on adventures for many pages.
Just the right amount of menace,and violence and realism (I'm thinking particularly how easy it was to lock your young ward up in the asylum) and absolutely bags of love and hope.
Throw in some superb side kicks (mainly I'm thinking Jane,but the dogs not bad. 😁) and it ticks all the boxes for a book to get lost in.

An interesting premise, elegantly executed with sympathetic characters and a pacy story. Great for a younger audience.

This will be a marmite book - and it won’t be for everyone. A beautiful and mesmerising read with depth, beauty, intrigue and wonder - wrapped up in a tale of many worlds.

It’s a little like the Night Circus - where you have to suspend your belief and allow your imagination to run free. Take one lonely girl, January, growing up in her benefactor’s house whilst her father goes travelling in search of wonders from far away. Take another girl, who steps into another world and meets a boy.

The stories intertwine and a wide variety of characters are introduced- each of them brings a different aspect to the tale.

An unusual book - I was privileged to read an advance copy. A strong 4*, just a little too odd to give 5* but it will certainly stay with me for a long time!

I found this book a little strange to read at first as it’s essentially a story within a story. January herself is an unusual girl, she has reddish skin and in a world where society is divided by the colour of their skin, no ones know quite where she is from.

She’s a ward of the wealthy Mr. Locke who has hired her father to travel the world finding oddities. She finds a door when she was young and upon going through it, finds a strange world and a silver coin. Unbeknown to her, this encounter will change the fabric of her life. After her father disappears and her life with Mr. Locke taking a turn for the worse, she is institutionalised and eventually freed and learns that that little door she found was just the beginning.

This is a tale of doors that take you to magical and terrifying places. Of people searching worlds to find each other and a girl out of place, looking to belong. The idea that there are special doors, if you know where to look for them and feeling like you don’t belong in one world, may mean you might very well belong in another.

It was a beautiful book, whimsical, charming, spirit lifting and magical. I loved the ending and feel like this is already a classic!

Thank you to Netgalley and Orbit/Little Brown Book Group UK for this e-copy to review.

I was so excited for this book as it sounds amazing! Sadly though while the themes and ideas were brilliant, I found the pace and plot of the book dragging. Even half way through it seemed as if nothing much had happened and those amazing worlds behind doors that had been discussed in length where still no closer to being part of the main story with January.
I really enjoyed the writing style and normally have no problem with slow paced books but this one just didn't do it for me which makes me sad as I was so hoping it would be a new favourite.

"She accumulated the dust of other worlds on her skin like ten thousand perfumes, and left constellations of wistful men and impossible tales in her wake"

* * * *
4 / 5

I don't believe I've ever read a book quite like The Ten Thousand Doors of January. It was whimsical, charming, adventurous, strange, and daring. It wasn't what I expected it to be and I loved it for it.

"There was no room, it turned out, for little girls who wandered off the edge of the map and told the truth about the mad, impossible things they found there"

I probably didn't read the synopsis properly before cracking this bad boy open, because I was surprised to find it set in the early 1900s, America. January Scaller is the dark-skinned ward of a business man who employs her often-absent father to go on archaeological digs around the world, stealing artefacts and sending them back home. When she is seven years old, January finds a Door. Capital D. A Door that leads to another world of sea salt and brine and scholars and tattoos. When she is an older teenager she has forgotten this experience; when her world begins to change around her, January finds The Ten Thousand Doors, a scholarly work on the existence of magic and Doors. Perhaps stories are more than that. Perhaps they creep through doors to other worlds. Perhaps you can walk through them.

The Ten Thousand Doors of January is about love and self-belief and mystery and finding out who you are and where you belong. It's about loving people that don't deserve it. It's about adventure and pain and sacrifice and having a disappointing father. This book is a stunning debut that threads together all these ideas into something deliciously readable. 

"She scoured the Earth, wandering and ravenous, looking for doors. And she found them."

I loved January. She is wild and imaginative and eager to please her guardian. She is disappointed in her father, curious, an avid reader. She is angry at a world that views her as a curiosity because she isn't white, but still comes across as mature rather a petulant child. There's also a great cast of supporting characters, from the grocer's boy who is January's secretive friend, to her female guardian who used to be a vicious hunter in a different, dangerous world. 

Something to be cautious about is the storytelling style.  The prose itself is beautiful, lyrical, and descriptive, without being overly flowery and tiresome. January's story is interspersed with the chapters of The Ten Thousand Doors, which itself tells the tale of a young woman who meets a boy, Yule Ian Scholar, from another world, and spends her adult life chasing stories to the far-flung corners of the world. This sort of style doesn't work for everyone, and whilst it is well done here, it may put some off! 

"I'd been powerless my whole life, and the shape of the leopard-women as they leapt into battle was the shape of power written on the world"

The Ten Thousand Doors of January was a far better reading experience than I had ever imagined I would get when I started. It is surprising and eloquent and thoughtful in equal measures. 

My thanks to Netgalley, the publisher, and the author for an ARC of The Ten Thousand Doors of January.