Review: The Ten Thousand Doors of January

The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Almost good. I think that best sums it up. There's a strong voice with excellent prose and interesting characters, but there's just a lacking in structure and plot that brings it down. I think the best way to describe my issue with it is that there is a very strong sense of being in the moment, but very little sense of what is actually going on in a meta sort of way. There isn't a strong threat or thread that ties everything together. The main character travels from world to world with little reasoning and much of the actual plot seems to just happen to her. Excellent colorful writing but no through-line. Like it keeps walking through a door into another world and forgetting why it came in here in the first place.

Also, much of the book is written like a narrative memoir. Something I still haven't decided is good or bad. The book-within-a-book structure is charming for about a hundred pages before it gets annoying. Both aspects might be more appealing to another reader, but it mostly didn't click for me after a while. I knew there was a problem when I started to feel like I was reading a lengthy novel when it is, in fact, rather short.

If you like books that are almost good, then you'll probably have a great time. There's a lot to like here and I look forward to reading more from Harrow if some of the structural problems are realized and worked on. In fact, I fully recommend you check this novel out. Just because I didn't connect with it, because I have a heart of dark slug, doesn't mean you won't.

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