I could go on about how the relationships between the characters are the main driving points of the story and January at the heart of it. I wanted danger and mystery and adventure*.* I wanted wide-open horizons and worn shoes and strange constellations spinning above me like midnight riddles. “Yes,” I answered, and in answering realized it was true. “Do you want to leave?”I swallowed, tucking my fear away for some future time when I would be strong enough to look directly at it. Years pass while the shackles of the restrictions placed upon her chafe, but it is not until she hears dire news that events are set into motion which will free her from those restrictions and set her on a journey of discovery and truth. January, desperately needing to please and feel worthy obliges. “You are going to mind your place and be a good girl.”
Being of mixed race, January knows very well that she is, for the most part, tolerated due to her white, aristocratic benefactor, but it is made clear to her that temerarious behaviour is unacceptable. The era that Miss Scaller grows up in is fraught with prejudice and racism, the world being the playground of wealthy aristocrats wielding power over their subjects. Then one fateful day, she discovers a very unusual book that will lead to her rediscovery of Doors, changing her life in ways she cannot imagine. Years pass, and memory turns to myth as January grows up. Mr Locke has taken January with him on a trip to Kentucky, and she has snuck away to explore when she finds an old blue door in a lonely, overgrown field, opens the door, and steps through into another world. She has been his ward since she was a baby, with her father working as one of Mr Locke’s field agents securing treasures for his collection. It is the summer of 1901, and seven-year-old January Scaller is the ward of the mysterious Mr.Locke - almost billionaire and collector of artefacts. Harrow, delivering a tale that speaks to one of humanity’s oldest fantasies - visiting another world.
The Ten Thousand Doors of January is an emphatically stunning debut by Alix E. A riotous swirl of adjectives, all apt and all applicable. That is the feeling that came over me upon finishing this book, and I basked in every second of its warmth. The sheer bliss of surrendering to the moment evident in their eyes. Languid stretches and lazy yawns and leisurely rolls. I have been watching my cats lazing about in the warm, reposeful afternoon sun. They lead to Faerie, to Valhalla, Atlantis and Lemuria, Heaven and Hell, to all the directions a compass could never take you, to elsewhere.” “…there are ten thousand stories about ten thousand Doors, and we know them as well as we know our names.
0 kommentar(er)
