The Ten Thousand Doors of January - Alix E. Harrow - ★★★★.¼

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AUTHOR: Alix E. Harrow
GENRE: Low Fantasy
RATING: 4.25 stars.

There are books that zoom like an express train, rushing ahead at top speed, leaving you breathless & eager to find out what lies beyond.

There are other books that move at a snail's pace, meandering all over, with no end in mind, leaving just a trail of slime behind.

And then there are books like this one! Books that make you want to rush ahead and yet proceed slowly! Let me attempt an analogy...

Imagine you have been given a jigsaw puzzle. You have to put the pieces together but you haven't been given any reference image. So how exactly the pieces have to be fitted is entirely up to you. In addition, each piece is mesmerising. You get so absorbed in admiring each tiny clue that you forget the motive, the puzzle. But once you see signs of the picture emerging, you find it very difficult to stop and relish the individual pieces. You just want to reach the end asap so that you can appreciate the completed picture where each little gem fits in perfectly.

That's The Ten Thousand Doors of January for you. It starts off nicely enough, with the narrative and the vocabulary providing you with enough soul-food. You read at your own pace, relishing the journey. But as the chapters move on, you find that your strides are quicker. Once in a while, you may still stop to appreciate the beauty within the words but the rest of the times, you just want to surge ahead to satiate your curiosity.

This is not from my preferred reading genre. I read very few books on Fantasy. But this is a book I enjoyed to the core. The story is quite different from anything I have ever read. But more than that novelty factor, the command of the author over the language was terrific. I'm a sucker for books where words are used appropriately as per the situation, but most novelists today seem to have forgotten the art. This was a surprising exception. Alix E Harrow won the Goodreads Choice Awards for Best Debut for this work in 2019. Now that I've read the book, I'll just say it was completely deserved. Along with Gail Honeyman, Alix Harrow joins the authors I'll keep a lookout for in future.

Special mention for the fabulous cover image! I could look at it all day! 😍

Give the book a try if you want to read something literally "out of this world", and if you are a person who enjoys the journey rather than just being intent on reaching your destination.

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