Category: Books

It’s not often that I feel compelled to review a book, but then it’s not often I read a book like THE TEN THOUSAND DOORS OF JANUARY.

THE TEN THOUSAND DOORS OF JANUARY, by Alix E. Harrow, came out in 2019, but I only stumbled upon it recently. It will most likely be my favorite book this year. It falls into one of my favorite genres of sf: portal fantasy. If you’re not familiar with the phrase, you’re almost definitely familiar with the type of story. In a portal fantasy an ordinary person is transported from one world to another via magic, perhaps through a secret door, a piece of furniture (like a wardrobe), or some other magical mechanism. Think the Narnia books, THE WIZARD OF OZ, PETER PAN …

As TEN THOUSAND DOORS opens, young January Scaller lives in a sprawling mansion with her guardian, a wealthy gentleman archaeologist.  January is sort of an orphan, and spends her days largely by herself, exploring the mansion’s collection of mysterious artifacts.  All that changes when January discovers a strange book that tells a story filled with secret doors, adventure, other worlds, long-lost lovers … and as she reads on, she begins to her connection to the story is very personal.  Adventure ensues.

I am a sucker for a book that features a book-in-a-book as a narrative device, and it’s expertly done here.  I won’t talk about that aspect any further, so as to not spoil it, but it’s a lot of fun.  Harrow’s writing is vivid and full of wit, and the story just completely reeled me in.  January goes on a Hero’s Journey, as one would expect from this type of book, but it’s done in a way that’s organic to the story.  She doesn’t just level up at the end of each chapter.  It’s earned, and certainly not easy.

Most of the main characters are BIPOC, and as the story is set in the early 20^th century, Harrow doesn’t shy away from dealing with how, uh, challenging not being white in that era would be.  It never feels heavy-handed or clunky, though.  The characters’ non-whiteness doesn’t define who they are; it just makes them more richly drawn.

If I were to describe how reading TEN THOUSAND WORLDS made me feel, I would compare it to MR. PENUMBRA’S 24-HOUR BOOKSTORE and THE INVISIBLE LIFE OF ADDIE LARUE. That’s not to say that the plot bears any resemblance to those books; they don’t, other than – and this is just now occurring to me – they too feature stories as a plot device. No, what I’m saying is that when I finished each of them, I sat back, happy, knowing I’d just read a hell of a book.

The story goes that in 1944, after being dropped by parachute into Nazi-occupied France, Nancy Wake’s parachute became caught in a tree. A member of the local French maquis that greeted her said he wished all trees could bear such beautiful fruit. “Don’t give me that French shit,” was Wake’s reply.

This story isn’t recounted in Wake’s autobiography, THE WHITE MOUSE, but it’s one she liked to tell after the war, and one of my personal favorites because it succinctly gives you an idea of the kind of woman Nancy Wake was. Like I do with so many things history, I first learned about Wake during a deep-dive into Wikipedia’s bloated compendium on World War II. I was reading about the fall of France, and there was a quick mention of a British SOE agent who parachuted into France in 1944 to help lead the maquis groups of the French Resistance. Prior to joining the SOE, Wake served as a courier for the French Resistance. So effective was she at evading capture, the Gestapo called her “the White Mouse.”

I’d been searching for a copy of THE WHITE MOUSE for several years, and recently, finally, found a copy that wasn’t ridiculously expensive. At a hair over 200 pages, Wake’s autobiography is a short, compelling book. The prose is straightforward but engaging, and reads as though Wake were casually telling you her story over drinks. There are numerous asides and anecdotes about the people she knew and worked with, or the insane situations she found herself in — like bicycling several hundred kilometers across France, avoiding Nazi patrols, in 72 hours to get and receive critical messages. The war years take up the bulk of the book and are the most fascinating, but the rest of the book rounds out the story and provides good context on who Wake was and who she became. Her stories about living in Paris before the war are especially vivid, and made me want to go back again.

All in all, Wake’s tale is equal parts witty, grim, and charming. It’s an excellent book by a remarkable woman.

THE WHITE MOUSE, Nancy Wake (Goodreads)