If we address stories as archaeological sites, and dust through their layers with meticulous care, we find at some level there is always a doorway. But then, on page 164 to be exact, or much earlier if you spotted the clue that Harrow leaves lying in plain sight, everything falls into place. It is not clear to begin with what these stories have to do with each other. (She is not from Kansas, and she does not travel there on a whirlwind this is not that book.) That book tells the story of a young farm girl from Kentucky who finds a door to another world. Nin is not in our world, so it is no surprise that their calendar is different. January, meanwhile, has come into possession of a book called The Ten Thousand Doors, produced by an academic in the city of Nin in the year 6908. He tries hard to make a proper young lady of her, but he is working with entirely the wrong materials. As her mother is dead, January lives as a ward of Mr Locke in his rambling Vemont mansion around the start of the 20th Century. We are first introduced to Miss January Scaller whose father is an archaeologist, forever off on expeditions on behalf of his employer, Cornelius Locke. There is certainly a book within in a book. For a long time The Ten Thousand Doors of January seems like it might be that book. Ideally it should contain nested stories, after the fashion of Scheherazade, or Cat Valente’s The Orphan’s Tales. If you want your book to appeal to a literary audience, one of the best ways to win them over is to make your book about stories. It is a story of people whose love endures even though they are literally worlds apart. The Ten Thousand Doors of January is, as the back cover blurbs suggest, a love story. Mary did, after all, have the ability to conjure magical portals to other worlds. You might think, when Miss Jane Irimu sweeps into January’s life like some Bantu Mary Poppins to save her from the grim governess, Miss Wilda, that you were in a different book entirely.

If I tell you that the January in question is a young girl who acquires the ability to travel through magical portals to other worlds you might think there is something of Seanan McGuire’s Every Heart a Doorway going on here. Her debut novel is called The Ten Thousand Doors of January. This year she won the Short Story Hugo for something called, “A Witch’s Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies”. She does, however, appear to have a thing about doors. Nor does she appear to have a thing about bones. Alix E Harrow is not a necromancer from the Ninth House, though she may sound like it from her name.

The 10 000 doors of january