alix e harrow the ten thousand doors of january

“My heart – and I don’t think any heart has ever been so exhausted and wrung-dry in the history of the world – stuttered to life in my chest.” (p. The price she pays for using these powers curiously becomes less and less, making her near unstoppable at the end – maybe because she’s filled with a glorious purpose. And I mean it she has special powers nobody else has, and what takes others decades of careful training she does naturally, instinctively, and more powerfully than anybody else. There’s no going around it: the protagonist is a special snowflake in the extreme. All the usual YA trappings are here, with vengeance: a teen protagonist with a chip on her shoulder, in the throes of first love (or wuv, really, because that’s how it feels here) angst and emotionality turned up to 11 the bad, bad world not understanding nor caring about the utmost uniqueness of the protagonist DRAAAMAAA!!! and the worst offense in my book: a thoughtful construction of the world is substituted with a mishmash of tropes. It’s also incredibly earnest, in that endearing puppy way, all big eyes and enthusiasm.īut, as most debuts, it also suffers from the usual maladies of adolescence: first and foremost, it’s a YA book, and I’ve no more patience with this genre. It is an entertaining, character-focused book, with languorously meandering action and an interesting cast of secondary characters. You see, there are indeed many things that The Ten Thousand Doors of January should be praised for, particularly a highly inventive use of the symbolism and meaning of portals, thresholds and doors, successfully employing plenty of references to various myths and folktales I’m a sucker for. I should’ve paid more attention to the elements that weren’t complimented, I think, armed as I am now with hindsight. And that’s what I remembered about them: they were all positive, sometimes even raving, and all praising the author’s imagination and poetic language. Harrow’s debut novel, The Ten Thousand Doors of January, has made its rounds around the blogosphere over the last two years, with predominantly – almost exclusively, in fact – positive reviews.

Alix e harrow the ten thousand doors of january