The Ten Thousand Doors of January - February CC Book Club Selection

Parent Cafe
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And even after she learns of her power, she refuses training – which struck me as the hubris of youth:

…my father and grandmother begged me to stay and apprentice to a real word-worker, on the grounds that I’d done impossible, powerful things with my words and ought to be properly instructed; I argued that it’s much easier to break the rules of reality when you don’t know exactly what they are, and anyway I was through with studies and lessons…

I don’t know girl, seems like pretty good advice from Dad and Grandma. Every Luke Skywalker needs a Yoda.

Ten Thousand Doors has a premise that would be fitting for a TV series, like “Dr. Who” or “Star Trek” – with every episode a trip through a different door, to “seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before” and all that.

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100%! As a book I found it just OK, but I think a screen adaptation would have some serious potential.

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I remember seeing this:

AI Overview:

Alix E. Harrow developed The Ten Thousand Doors of January from her earlier short stories, which she began writing while working as an adjunct instructor before transitioning to novels. Her background in short fiction helped shape this acclaimed debut fantasy novel, which was eventually published after an editor noticed her work.

  • Origins: The novel arose from shorter fiction work, following her success with stories like the Hugo-winning A Witch’s Guide to Escape.
  • Development: The book was developed from ideas in these stories before being picked up by an editor at Orbit, leading to a two-book deal.
  • Structure: The final book retains a “nested” narrative style, featuring stories within stories.

So that’s how it happened.

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I started with the CC Book Club in 2009. Sometimes there’ve been a goodly number of participants and sometimes not. Sometimes the discussion has been robust and sometimes not - and it isn’t necessarily contingent on the number of participants. Sometimes the book has taken us by surprise in a good way but not always. I guess it mirrors real life book clubs in those ways.

Sometimes it means nothing more than the usual posters had life interfering and didn’t get to the book.

No matter, the next book will be chosen once again and it will be read by many (or a few). Let’s also not forget those who’ve read the book, follow the thread, but prefer not to post. I’ve been one, so waving to you.

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I couldn’t get this one from my library and saw iffy reviews so wasn’t inclined to spend the money to buy it.

My library changed their Libby system which seems to have really limited the selection, and I can’t put as many books on hold as I’d like.

I wonder if we could consider trying to choose the next books even further in advance?

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I’m still waiting to get the book. Read it too long ago and need the refresh. I’ve been waiting for over 5 weeks now and am still not first in line. I tried borrowing it from two different libraries but similar wait times. Just not enough copies, I guess.

I wonder if it would make sense to set up in advance a list of 10-12 books to which we can add a couple at the end of every discussion. This way we may all be able to add the really popular/scarce books to our library waitlists early enough.

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LOL. The idea that giving things their true names gives someone power is as old as the hills. (Rumplestiltskin, an Egyptian myth where Isis tricked Rad into telling her his true name to Ursula LeGuin’s Wizard of Earthsea.)

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I believe Mary does try to be cognizant of the availability/difficulty of getting suggested books. I know some have been bypassed for that reason as potential readers report in. I was very surprised that I couldn’t get this in a month and do think something changed in the library or Libby system. I was 2nd in line for two copies for four weeks; now I’m first in line for one copy.

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I was surprised to get it with no problems and even be able to renew it with no issues. I did have to buy a book or two over the years because I couldn’t get them quickly enough but generally, thanks to @Mary13 ’s considerate stewardship I’ve been able to get the books in time to read before the discussion.

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Same! I thought this would be an easy one for everyone to get their hands on, but there is a lot of variance in library systems I guess.

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I had no problem getting the book or renewing it either. I’m surprised others had trouble.

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I’m surprised too. It’s not a new book, but it won a Hugo award which should mean that libraries would buy it, but there shouldn’t be a great run on it now.

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I found parts of the book quite funny, (not always a given in fantasy which is often apt to take itself too seriously), this was a line that made me laugh, (page 102), In this way Ade suffered precisely the sort of fall from grace her aunts and grandmother most feared, and in so doing made a discovery: fallen women are afforde a species of freedom." This BTW was followed by a footnote about the arbitrariness of social rules of our world.

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The book was published in 2019, so I am a bit surprised that it was so had to get. I do know that e-books are very expensive for libraries. The libraries receive the license to have the book for either a specific amount of time or a limited number of times that it can be checked out.

Our small library has some e-books within the consortium that they belong to. They simply can’t afford much. I had to purchase it and a lot of books that we read. I won’t be able to donate this one because it is older than 5 years. The library won’t shelve any additions over 5 years unless they are replacing a damaged book or it is one of a series of books.

This article sheds light on the library’s issues with digital and audiobooks.

The True Cost of eBooks and Audiobooks for Libraries - Spokane Public Library

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I enjoyed Yule Ian’s wry observations. In fact, I preferred his storytelling style to January’s. I thought at first that his sometimes absurd footnotes were made up, such as this:

Consider Thomas Aikenhead, a young man both an orphan and a cripple, who published an ill-advised manifesto suggesting that heaven was an actual place located just on the other side of a small shabby door in an old Scottish church. He allowed for the possibility that the place was actually hell, or perhaps purgatory, but concluded that it was certainly a “warm, sunny place, much preferable to Scotland.” He was hanged within the year for blasphemy (p. 101).

Lol, so over-the-top, but also…real – with a few embellishments (e.g., no evidence that Aikenhead ever wrote anything called “A Tract on Magick and the Entrance to Heaven" as Yule says). Thomas Aikenhead (1676-1697) | Humanist Heritage - Exploring the rich history and influence of humanism in the UK

Here’s another of Yule Ian’s footnotes:

Consider Edith Bland’s seemingly innocent The Door to Kyriel: Five English schoolchildren discover a magic door that takes them to a new world. As the children return home, the youngest and most fearful of them falls into a “great darkness” and is never heard from again. Critics considered it too grim and and strange for healthy children.

Again, real. Or mostly. Yule adds a few questionable (i.e., fictional) details about Edith Bland’s work (aka E. Nesbit, author of The Railway Children). There is a lot of blending of reality and imagination in Yule’s Ian’s story – not just in the footnotes, but also in Ade’s adventures. In 1888, for example, she joins Dr. Carver’s Rocky Mountain and Prairie Exhibition, which was a real thing (part of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show).

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Woo hoo - guess what just came off hold! And I meant to reread it slowly! I will start again in the morning and revisit the comments above.

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I had thought I remembered a lot of literary references but hadn’t looked into the reality of them.

Side note - when I first read the book, it reminded me of a 2024 episode of Doctor Who called The Story and the Engine which I didn’t really understand. But the essence of it was that a guy felt mocked by the gods so he set about destroying all the stories, myths etc. about the gods in order to destroy them. Without the stories, the gods disappeared. The Doctor says that destroying the gods would destroy humanity itself. Or something to that effect!

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That “Doctor Who” episode does have similar themes! I struggled a bit with Mr. Locke’s motivation for closing all the doors. In the final analysis, wouldn’t he be killing the goose that laid the golden egg? He would no longer be able to plunder these worlds for treasures. He tells January that the doors “let in all manner of dangerous things” that threaten his comfortable existence, his “lovely, soft world” (p.333), but I found that explanation unconvincing.

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I only just started re-reading, but was reminded how much I enjoyed the descriptive language and how it flows along.

Just a couple in the first few pages:

the raggedy western edge of Kentucky, right where the state dips its toe into the Mississippi.

Sometimes I feel there are doors lurking in the creases of every sentence, with periods for knobs and verbs for hinges.

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There are many beautifully crafted sentences in this book that I enjoyed. However, I thought the author was overly fond of similes. Here are a few examples – all within just a few pages of each other:

Then she frowned again and refocused on my face, her gaze circling like a compass needle unable to find true north.

The old woman…collapsed and lay on the threshold as motionless and crumpled as a pile of tossed laundry.

My thoughts slowed, as if they were slogging through hip-deep syrup.

She looked so shrunken and fragile in her rocking chair, like something plucked from its shell and slowly fossilizing.

It was like kissing a page in an ancient book, musty-smelling and dry.

The joviality slid from Locke’s face like clown paint washing away in the rain.

I felt suspended, like some unlucky prehistoric girl preserved forever in a glacier.

I felt like something recently taken apart, scrubbed clean, and reassembled, except nothing was quite where it used to be.

I have no objection to similes and metaphors, and Harrow created some really nice ones. For example, after January’s injury, when adrenaline was keeping her from feeling the effects, she wrote that the pain “waited politely at the edges of my vision, like a well-bred houseguest.” Good imagery!

Here’s another, from Yule Ian’s section: “Here my memories grow reeling and confused, blinking in and out like a bad bulb in a projector.” Perfect description (at least for those of us who still remember projectors)!

So it’s not that they were bad, it’s just that there were too many of them. At one point, I had to set the book aside because it became distracting: I was watching for the next simile instead of the next plot development. :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

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