The Ten Thousand Doors of January Review

Title: The Ten Thousand Doors of January
Author: Alix E. Harrow
Date Purchased: 8/09/2020
Price Paid: $4.23
Date Finished: 3/24/2022
Rating: 4/5

I have spent a lot of time lately thinking about how much life changed in 2020. That statement seems obvious as I write this in April of 2022, but I think we are yet to see all of the ripples that were caused by the events of that year. While many of the changes are readily apparent, some will take longer to coalesce in our collective consciousness.

Events of the year caused me to look at my life with a little more introspection, and my reading habits fell under scrutiny. While I didn’t think I was guilty of reading problematic works, my shelves were filled with books written by white men. I knew I could do better and I wanted to broaden my reading horizons, so I turned to the Hugo nominees for that year and picked a couple up.

Before I dive in to my review, I want to give a little tip to any authors that might stumble upon this blog: if you set a science fiction or fantasy book in Vermont? Even partially? I will buy it and I will read it. Needless to say, when I saw that first mention of Vermont I put the book down, opened Google, and read more about Alix Harrow. Ah. That makes sense – she is a UVM grad.

First and foremost I’d like to give the author a lot of credit – she wrote this book in a style which can go off the rails for the reader in a hurry, but kept things structured enough to prevent that from happening. We don’t have one narrative in this book – there are actually two storylines, one “main” story and a secondary story which the main character, January, is reading in a book.

While the book-within-a-book approach is a new one for me, I’ve seen similar dual-narrative styles in the past but few of them have been successful. Perhaps it is the way that Harrow approaches this style – the chapters which are excerpts from the book are not just shoved into the story. January will open the book, begin to read, and we are able to read along with her.

I can’t really dig into the plot without spoiling a bunch of the book, and for once I’m not looking to do that to anyone. But I will say that I wish I had read this book when it first came out. Harrow, through the characters in the book, speaks about racism, classism, and misogyny in a very frank and poignant manner. It’s set in the 1900’s, but we are unfortunately still seeing these issues today.

She also tackles both love and loss in a very compelling way. Perhaps my recent transition to becoming a parent has made me look at things through a different lens, but I felt more deeply for the characters in this book than I have any others in a long time.

But, of course, this is me we’re talking about…so there had to be a good dose of strange in here, right? Dear reader, I was not disappointed. As I stated earlier I’ll reserve the spoilers for another day, but suffice to say I was very happy with the multi-dimensional trappings of this book.

So, so glad that I’ve read this.

Final Thoughts: I was struck by how many topics and issues are covered so eloquently in this novel. Highly recommended.