Reviews tagging 'Gun violence'

The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow

57 reviews

skbat's review

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adventurous dark inspiring mysterious tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0


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milenaaax98's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I have never annotated and underlined so many things in a fiction book. This book is written so beautifully, some sentences make your heart ache. We should all try to be like January

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spineofthesaurus's review

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adventurous emotional hopeful reflective
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes

5.0


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321zeggy's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.75


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twistykris's review

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adventurous emotional mysterious medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

An absolutely enchanting, magical book about portals into other worlds and the blatant racism, sexism, and classism of early 1900s America, all wrapped into two love stories. I loved so many of the characters in this and especially admired January's voice as a mixed-race young woman growing up in a rich household without her parents. 

I switched back and forth between a physical copy and the audiobook and the story-within-a-story was fantastic, if a little confusing in the audiobook (at first it was hard to tell when the inner story was starting and ending).

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athryn's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional mysterious tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

This took a while to get to the actual adventure part, which was where it really took off for me. Before that, there's quite a bit of trauma to go through, and I will say that it made it so I had to put it down quite a bit. I thought the interspersing of the two narratives to be pretty interesting. I thought this was a good spin on a concept done by a few other people recently.

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tangleroot_eli's review

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adventurous emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Big mixed feels about this one. I like so many things about it: January herself; Ade and Yule Ian's story - actually, I found all of the characters fairly well written.

But I struggled with the pacing, especially in the first 2/3. While January is an interesting character, her story kept me less engrossed than Ade and Yule Ian's, even though she's ostensibly the main character. For me, the story really starts in the last third, when everyone's threads come together.

Ultimately, my biggest disappointment with the book is the the conventionality of Harrow's other worlds. They're "completely different from our own," but in very limited ways. Where were the worlds with people but without capitalism? Where were the worlds where people weren't "somewhere in between [men and women]" but just people? The refuges in Arcadia clearly include same-sex couples; were none of them looking for a world where that was the norm, or did the idea of such a world not occur to Harrow? It often seems like, in Harrow's mind, the best a queer and/or BIPOC character can hope for is a world where their identity is ignored or, at best, tolerated, rather than one where it's celebrated.

In 2001, astronauts carry paper notebooks because Arthur C Clarke, however vast his imagination, couldn't conceive of computers so small they fit in the palm of our hands. In The Ten Thousand Doors of January, all worlds, no matter how superficially different from our own, at core are quite similar, because Alix E Harrow, however vast her imagination, couldn't conceive of what real, fundamental difference looks like.

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third_bookworm's review

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adventurous dark emotional medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

A very fun take on portal fantasy! I enjoyed the intergenerational storytelling a lot and the structure of the because being addressed to a particular person throughout. Also a fun magic system, and Harrow's historical settings are wonderful as always. All around a good time, but not so light-hearted as to feel frivolous.

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green_amaryllis's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0


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hecubatohim's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75


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