The First Book of 2026: The Ten Thousand Doors Of January
Finished reading January 9, 2026
Please excuse the huge size of the book cover on the web version of this page. I can't figure out how to make the feature illustration smaller. Maybe next time...
There are two cheats here: first of all, I started reading this in December 2025, and second of all, it's a re-read. I remember enjoying Alix E. Harrow's debut novel when I first read it in 2021, but I don't remember much about it. Perhaps that's why I re-read things, not only to enjoy them again, but to deepen the grooves they carve in me.
January Scaller is, for all practical purposes, an orphan, the ward of a mysterious rich man in early 20th century Vermont. Her mother is apparently dead, and her father is continually absent on artifact-gathering missions for her rich guardian. There is, of course, much more to January than being a pampered near-orphan, and more to the people around her. Such mores are essential to making a good story, and this is a very good story.
It's also a story about stories. It's an epic journey, a healing, a quest, about how doors open and close and admit strange and wonderful things into the world. It's two books, one inside the other, skillfully and gradually revealing unexpected depths.
The Ten Thousand Doors Of January reminds me a little of John Crowley's Little, Big. That novel moves back and forth in time, while this moves back and forth between worlds. Both are books about how stories affect whatever world they touch.
A very satisfying book, and one that's not easy to write about. I re-read this in anticipation of picking up Harrow's latest book, Starling House, which I'll report on eventually.
