Review: The Ten Thousand Doors of January

The Ten Thousand Doors of January The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Portals into other worlds? Yes, please. (It's been a long time since the parallel universes of Fringe and even longer since I stepped foot into Narnia.)

Harrow's depiction of January, a peculiar and intriguing young woman who knows words like
"temerarious" when she is seven, who has a peculiar living situation and a peculiar origins story, engaged me from the first chapter.

January's words, written on a page, have power, and even if she doesn't see it right away, I did, and I was hooked. Where was this going? What would happen?

It takes her almost the entire book, but she finally realizes, "Words and their meanings have weight in the world of matter, shaping and reshaping realities through a most ancient alchemy."

Harrow employs visual, olfactory, and aural descriptions to draw pictures of characters, settings, and action, and these made me feel like I was there, in the story.

Fantasy books like this one, that straddle the world we live in and worlds we invent (or do we?), can annoy some people. To enjoy this book requires what Coleridge describes as a "willing suspension of disbelief," one I was willing to embrace as I moved through the pages.

View all my reviews

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review: Shalom and the Community of Creation: An Indigenous Vision

Image
Shalom and the Community of Creation: An Indigenous Vision by Randy Woodley My rating: 5 of 5 stars The culture I grew up in, an American culture, shapes the way we interpret Scripture. The thing is, my culture is not itself Christian, and so it may shape Scripture in ways God did not intend. Woodley, a Cherokee native and university professor, lays out another way to view God's word through the shape of another culture, the culture of Native Americans. This shape expands my view of God, his creation, and humanity's role in serving him. God has not uniquely spoken to us, and Woodley demonstrates how Native Americans have a concept they call the Harmony Way, which is stunningly similar to the biblical concept of Shalom. This book challenged me to see things I have not previously thought of. At the same time, Woodley examines how my culture decimated and lied to the people who lived in this land when Europeans arrived and how the ripples of th...
Read more

Book Review: What Sam Knew by Steve Higgs

Image
What Sam Knew by Steve Higgs My rating: 3 of 5 stars Yawn. Patricia Fisher's husband cheats on her, she goes on a world cruise and solves a few crimes, and then a Maharajah gives her the use of his estate in her home town and ail of his luxury cars and his staff for perpetuity, so she goes home, starts a detective agency, and lives like a rich woman even though she isn't. She also doesn't actually seem like a very good detective since she ignored major clues that were obvious to readers but hidden to her, and she talks about that cruise incessantly. Apparently there is a whole series about the cruise, and so she is just talking about it in case we didn't read that series. I did not. She also talks about her cars and the size of her house. She also doesn't know what a booty call is and doesn't take the time to Google it, but mentions several times that she doesn't know what it is despite the fact that people keep saying tha...
Read more

Review: The Girl from Vichy

Image
The Girl from Vichy by Andie Newton My rating: 3 of 5 stars I've read a lot of novels about espionage during World War 2 and the role of female agents, and this was one of them. I liked the storyline, and I appreciate Newton's moves to illustrate complexity of human beings as they try to navigate difficult times. Why do people support their leaders despite the evidence that the leader is taking the people down a dangerous path? Why do some people collaborate with enemies? Why do some people risk everything to change the course of history? How does war change us? Unfortunately, this story and the simplistic character and plot development never quite achieve what I believe Newton wanted to achieve. For example, the protagonist's recruitment into the resistance was based on the fact that she wasn't a spy for the opposite side and because she fled marriage to a collaborator. She was actually a bit flighty. The resistance members shared na...
Read more