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Alix E. Harrow.
The Ten Thousand Doors of January.
Orbit. 2019

rating : 3 : worth reading
review : 7 February 2025

As the ward of the wealthy Mr Locke, January Scaller feels little different from the artefacts that decorate his sprawling mansion: carefully maintained, largely ignored and utterly out of place. But when she finds a strange book – one that tells a tale of secret doors, of love, adventure and danger – for the first time, January realises she can escape her story and sneak into someone else’s…

Young January Scaller is left as the ward of rich Mr Locke, while her father spends all his time searching for rare artefacts for his employer. Then one day she discovers a portal to another world, and everything changes. Although the portal is destroyed, she discovers a book that describes a world of many portals, a lost love, and an ongoing search. Slowly, she comes to realise that this book enables her to find her own portals, and eventually, to escape her current dreary, and increasingly dangerous, position.

An interesting tale of discovering a world bigger and more wonderful that January could have ever imagined, with tragedy, hardship, danger, and adventure, and a strongly satisfying conclusion.

Alix E. Harrow.
A Spindle Splintered.
Tor. 2021

“Sleeping Beauty” is the worst fairy tale, pretty much any way you slice it, It’s aimless and amoral and chauvinist as shit. Even among the other nerds who majored in folklore, “Sleeping Beauty” is nobody’s favorite. The romantic girls like “Beauty and the Beast”; vanilla girls like “Cinderella”; goth girls like “Snow White.” Only the dying girls like “Sleeping Beauty.”

It’s Zinnia Gray’s twenty-first birthday, which is extra special because it’s the last birthday she’ll ever have. When she was young, an industrial accident left Zinnia with a rare condition. Not much is known about her illness, just that no one has lived past twenty-one.

Her best friend, Charm, is intent on making Zinnia’s last birthday special with a full sleeping-beauty experience, complete with a tower and a spinning wheel. But when Zinnia pricks her finger, something strange and unexpected happens, and she finds herself falling through worlds with another sleeping beauty just as desperate to escape her fate.

Alix E. Harrow.
A Mirror Mended.
Tor. 2022