Reviews with content warning for Gaslighting - The Ten Thousand Doors of January

Reviews tagging 'Gaslighting'

The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow

37 reviews

isabelmary's review against another edition

adventurous emotional reflective medium-paced

3.0

This book was such a mixed bag for me. The prose was lovely, and the sense of atmosphere the author evokes is wonderful. The path that January takes - from subdued “good girl” to untamed and free - is compelling, but overall I won’t be revisiting this book or investigating the author’s other works.

Some pros:
- Gorgeous prose - describing the Doors and the other worlds etc
- it was nice to have race actually play a realistic role in a historical fantasy
- the ending was satisfying
- the work itself is clearly well crafted with a lot of love
- the premise is great
- the interweaving of the stories works overall

Some cons:
- it took the protagonist a LONG time to realize things that felt very obvious to me, and that was frustrating
- the interpolation of the two different first person narrative accounts felt contrived (For the middle half of the novel, January ends every chapter picking up a book and reading a chapter of it. In some ways this must’ve taken a lot of clever planning to pull off, but it ended up getting a little unlikely and irritating)
- both narratives were written from the character’s future, and both of them take multiple moments to decry the decisions of the past eg “if only I’d been fast enough”…. That stressed me out
- the love interest has no personality of his own and seems to have a totally improbable attachment to her
- the ending confrontation was actually pretty anticlimactic to me

Locke was clearly evil from day 1, and January’s shock at realizing that did nothing for me. It was realistic for her, sure, but annoying as a reader. There was no real explanation for how she withstood his will and so his death felt unearned to me

Content Warnings

ijustreallyliketrees's review against another edition

Go to review page

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? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

heytherekaity's review

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adventurous 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

hello yes I LOVE this book!!!!!

do you like portal fantasies? have you ever wished the Wayward Children series were full length books instead of novellas? do you dream of a grown up version of The Magician's Nephew? because if so, WOW do I have the book for you!

The Ten Thousand Doors of January is an absolutely PHENOMENAL book and you should read it as soon as you possibly can!!!

and also Alix E. Harrow is one of my ALL TIME FAVORITE authors and somehow I ended up reading her debut THIRD (I read A Spindle Splintered first, then The Once and Future Witches) and OH MY STARS it's just SO GOOD! her writing style just really works for me and I wish she had at least ten more books for me to read RIGHT NOW! (but there will be more soon and I will wait. patiently. or at least attempting to wait patiently)

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Content Warnings

allisonleora's review

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adventurous mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

I think I expected this book to be more than it was. It started our incredibly slow, but was helped by the book within a book aspect. I love multiverse stories, so was drawn to this book with the hope it would be like His Dark Materials. While adventurous and an imaginative view on the multiverse, it didn't quite scratch that itch. When the story finally picked up in the second half of the book, I did start enjoying it. But I never fell in love with the characters. Never empathized with any of her pain or suffering. It also seemed the use of symbolism was pretty heavy-handed and sometimes the vocabulary or descriptions of things were dense. I enjoyed the time we spent in alternate worlds, though, however brief!

Content Warnings