Saturday 9 November 2019

Book review: The Ten Thousand Doors of January

The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow occupied the last few Saturday's at Waterstones for me. Definitely a great improvement on Naomi Klein's awful On fire. The Goodreads link will provide you with all the enthusiasm you need, so I won't contribute any more to that. But yes it's nicely written, tends towards the lyrical, and is entertaining.

Criticism: about two thirds of the way, it starts to drag a little. Rather than fresh interesting new things, we get rather to a stage of here's a thing, here's another thing, oh here's another thing. Too linear, too similar. The villains start taking on that implausible invincibility and omniscience that villains so often have (Mrs Coulter in The Subtle Knife). And the ending (I'm not sure if I'm criticising this or not) is a slight mixture of the same implausible degree of attachment shown in Interstellar and a genuinely touching reunion.

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