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carolinapie 's review for:
The Ten Thousand Doors of January
by Alix E. Harrow
adventurous
emotional
inspiring
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I'm rating this book 4 starts because it is sooooooo slow to get into and the chapters are stupid long. I found myself not wanting to commit to reading 40 minute chapters so it took me a while to get through it. Additionally, I was reading it with my kindle and I didn't really feel the urge to keep picking it up until I was maybe 40% through because that's when a bunch of pieces of the puzzle started coming together. It still took me to almost 60-70% of the book before I wanted to really keep reading and find out what happened.
One of my friends recommended this book to me as her favorite book she read last year, and, due to the fact that I find she has good taste in books, I decided to read it. She mentioned to me while I was reading it that she nearly DNFd it 3 times before she got all the way through it because it did move so slowly.
That being said, the story is really fun and interesting. The author has a way of foreshadowing that has you guessing what is going to happen a long time before your suspicions are confirmed but I guessed nearly every big "plot twist" that happened. The story was still wonderful and I enjoyed reading it but I would have maybe liked it a bit more with slightly less foreshadowing or slightly more ambiguous foreshadowing.
The book is written as a book within a book and every other chapter is from each book. It took me two (or four, depending on how you look at it) chapters of the non-January book to figure out why the other book was included, but it made sense further on.
The extra existence of vampires and wereleopards and ogres felt like a little much... I understood some of the extra magic and Locke's magic cup but it still felt like a bit too much to be shoved into the book when it wasn't really explored too much. Maybe that was the author trying to hint that there were more dangerous worlds out there and fairy tales come from something, sure... but it still felt a bit unnecessary.
January's magic felt very limited. Most of it, obviously, had to do with opening doors, but she also got Bad by using word magic, so I was a little disappointed that she didn't use more of that type of magic, though you could argue the epilogue used that type of magic.
I was also really annoyed with January that she didn't even try to help Jane get back to her own world until she had come back from the Written and solved her own problems. I thought that would have been a good way to practice using her magic that also helped her friend.
Spoiler but not: the dog does NOT die in this book but there is animal abuse mentioned.
One of my friends recommended this book to me as her favorite book she read last year, and, due to the fact that I find she has good taste in books, I decided to read it. She mentioned to me while I was reading it that she nearly DNFd it 3 times before she got all the way through it because it did move so slowly.
That being said, the story is really fun and interesting. The author has a way of foreshadowing that has you guessing what is going to happen a long time before your suspicions are confirmed but I guessed nearly every big "plot twist" that happened. The story was still wonderful and I enjoyed reading it but I would have maybe liked it a bit more with slightly less foreshadowing or slightly more ambiguous foreshadowing.
The book is written as a book within a book and every other chapter is from each book. It took me two (or four, depending on how you look at it) chapters of the non-January book to figure out why the other book was included, but it made sense further on.
January's magic felt very limited. Most of it, obviously, had to do with opening doors, but she also got Bad by using word magic, so I was a little disappointed that she didn't use more of that type of magic, though you could argue the epilogue used that type of magic.
I was also really annoyed with January that she didn't even try to help Jane get back to her own world until she had come back from the Written and solved her own problems. I thought that would have been a good way to practice using her magic that also helped her friend.
Spoiler but not: the dog does NOT die in this book but there is animal abuse mentioned.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Animal cruelty