The Ten Thousand Doors of January

Harrow, Alix E. The Ten Thousand Doors of January. New York: Redhook 2019. Print

First Sentences:

When I was seven, I found a door.

I should capitalize that word, so you understand I'm not talking about your garden- or common-variety door that leads reliably to a white-tiled kitchen or a bedroom closet.


Description:

I'm not much of a fantasy book reader unless it happens to be about a hobbit or boy with a lightning bolt scar on his forehead. However, I found myself totally engrossed with Alix E. Harrow's The Ten Thousand Doors of January with its journeys into parallel worlds through randomly-placed doorways scattered over the Earth.

January Scaller is a seven-year-old girl living in 1901 as the ward of the wealthy Mr. Locke. January's father works for Locke, travelling extensively around the world to purchase (or steal) exotic treasures for his employer's pleasure. One day January stumbles on an abandoned door in the scrubby landscape of a deserted Kansas farm. Just an ordinary door, she discovers as she walks through it ... that is until afterward when she sits down to write a story about the door in her diary.

"Once there was a brave and temeraryous (sp?) girl who found a Door. It was a magic Door that's why it has a capital D. She opened the Door."

As these words hit the paper, suddenly January smells a salty fragrance of the ocean that draws her back to the door. This time when she steps through it, she finds herself on a bluff overlooking a world of a vast ocean and exotic smells. 

After stepping back into her own world, of course no one believes her tale. But the next day she finds that the door is gone, burned away to ashes. Later, January finds an ancient book called The Ten Thousand Doors tucked away in a box sent from her world-traveling father. In it, she reads a story describing other doors and the worlds behind them. It is a beautifully written, albeit sad, love story telling of a chance encounter between a boy and girl from different worlds who, after separation, spend their lives independently searching for another door that will lead them to the other person's world. 

When her father disappears, it is up to January to puzzle out the truth behind the book, to pick up the lovers' search for hidden doors, and to understand what role, if any, she plays in the story.

Maybe this plot line sounds too corny, too romantic, or simply too fantastical to bother with. But believe me, as a man with little time for such tales, The Ten Thousand Doors of January is a page-turner that simply swallows you up into new worlds of stubbornly strong characters and a secret society with an agenda of their own.

I became deeply involved with this book and characters. Writing, plot, character, and setting - my four criteria for great books - were all delivered in to the highest degree of skill. Naturally, it gets my highest recommendation. 

There are ten thousand stories about ten thousand Doors, and we know them as well as we know our 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. A dividing point between here and there, us and them, mundane and magical.

Happy reading. 

Fred

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Lewis, C. S. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.   

Four children find, in the back of an old wardrobe, a doorway that leads to the secret world of Narnia where they have heroic adventures galore and even rise to become royalty.