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Which is now WAIR Thursday, because boy did I ever get taken down by a sinus infection last week. So much for Snowflake Challenge and all the other things I meant to do.
What I Just Finished Reading
The Graveyard Book – Neil Gaiman
I read The Jungle Book at seven and remember liking it (but not much of it), and have not revisited it as an adult because oof. Thus, I don't know to what degree the tropes that irritate me in The Graveyard Book are lifted directly from its inspiration, but boy do I love Mistress Owens, and Miss Lupescu, and Liza, and Silas.
The Ten Thousand Doors of January – Alix Harrow
Despite its great premise—the young POC ward of a 1910s robber baron can create doors to other worlds by writing them into existence—this book fell massively flat due to problems with almost every aspect of its execution. Cut for spoilers. To start, it features one of the stupidest—in the literal meaning of the word—protagonists I’ve encountered in recent reading. As in, she repeatedly makes decisions a reasonably intelligent human would recognize as bad—we’re talking “sticking your hand down a running garbage disposal” bad here—and then bemoans the predictably (to all but her) poor results. It’s not a great way to build sympathy for a character.
Life is pretty bad for Protagonist, but when it gets really bad, Robber Baron Guardian leaves gifts for her in a chest. Only it’s clear (but not to Protagonist) that these aren’t actually from him. The pivotal gift is the eponymous Ten Thousand Doors of January, a novel-in-a-novel about a young, American Civil War-era woman who falls in Instalove with a POC man who walks into her world through a door from another before they’re tragically parted that same evening.
It’s clear (but not to Protagonist) that the woman is Protagonist’s mother and the novel-in-a-novel was written by her father. To Harrow’s credit, she introduces this big reveal to Protagonist halfway through the novel, but there’s still 2/3 of the novel-in-a-novel left to go after the reveal itself, requiring Protagonist’s father to ricochet between first and third person for its remainder while writing tortured explanations for why he’s doing so directly into the novel-in-a-novel.
It’s not Harrow’s only linguistic blunder. She’s firmly of the “nonsensical language = beautiful language” camp, presenting readers with narrative doozies like “The man’s voice changed, shedding its unctuous skin as if dropping a fur coat to the floor” (unctuous and fur coats: not two things one typically connects with the other) and this description of terror: “My own body felt as if I’d been submerged in cold honey” (Do people typically associate terror with honey? Why cold honey? And how does Protagonist know what being submerged in honey feels like to begin with?)
We also get dialogue like this: “Instead, I said, ‘But what was my father even doing? And if there were mysterious villains following him around the world—and I guess I shouldn’t roll my eyes because you did just shoot an actual vampire—who are they?’” This isn’t dialogue so much as first draft placeholder language indicating where actual dialogue should go. And have you ever explained to someone that you were rolling your eyes at what they just said? Or do you just roll your eyes and assume they’re smart enough to figure out what you're doing and why.
By the way, this book also has vampires. I’ll spare you my thoughts on those.
Additionally, while it’s absolutely possible to write the fantastical in a believable way, Harrow does not, and knows she's not, and expends a lot of verbiage trying to convince herself and readers that this isn’t the case, as in this example in which Protagonist tries to escape Robber Baron Guardian:
“I didn’t expect to see anyone on my way out. I should have—several Society men were staying as Locke’s honored guests...and the house was still crawling with hired servants...but Running Away from Home involves a very particular and time-worn script: Bad and I were supposed to slip out the front door and down the drive like a pair of ghosts.”
Actually, I can think of multiple time-worn scripts for Running Away from Home: climbing out of a window onto a tree branch that may or may not bear your weight, knotting bedsheets together to escape your attic prison, dressing like the hired help and slipping out with the kitchen staff, waiting till the dead of night and tiptoeing through the house, terrified that the creaking floorboard just woke your captor as you crept past his bedroom.
None of them involve waltzing past the villain who just locked you in your room and his hired muscle in broad daylight.
But Harrow does have Protagonist try to waltz past the villain who just locked her in her room and his hired muscle in broad daylight, to predictable results. She does this because it’s the easiest way to have Protagonist’s attempt fail when the narrative needs it to, but it’s lazy writing and again—remember what I said about Protagonist's literally stupid choices?
There are other weaknesses. Special powers only work when they advance the narrative but never when they would make it more difficult for Harrow to get the characters to where they need to go next. Random words are Capitalized to indicate when characters are making Deep and Philosophical Insights. Although society mistreats Protagonist because she's a POC, female characters travel freely as lone women through 1830-1910s America—hitchhiking, riding trains across the country, taking employment on steamboats—without facing any threat of sexual violence. To lean hard on the realism of one type of societal violence while handwaving away the other is jarring. And on and on.
TLDR: This book has a great premise but stumbles mightily in its execution.
What I Am Currently Reading
The Hazel Wood – Melissa Albert
I’m only a third of the way in so my initial impressions may change, but thus far, this is the gripping YA fantasy I was hoping Ten Thousand Doors would be.
Intermediate Korean – Andrew Sangpil Byon
Still working through the second chapter on auxiliary verbs.
What I'm Reading Next
I have acquired a copy of Patricia Wrede's Dealing With Dragons in contravention of this year's goals. At least it will be a quick read.
これで以上です。
What I Just Finished Reading
The Graveyard Book – Neil Gaiman
I read The Jungle Book at seven and remember liking it (but not much of it), and have not revisited it as an adult because oof. Thus, I don't know to what degree the tropes that irritate me in The Graveyard Book are lifted directly from its inspiration, but boy do I love Mistress Owens, and Miss Lupescu, and Liza, and Silas.
The Ten Thousand Doors of January – Alix Harrow
Despite its great premise—the young POC ward of a 1910s robber baron can create doors to other worlds by writing them into existence—this book fell massively flat due to problems with almost every aspect of its execution. Cut for spoilers. To start, it features one of the stupidest—in the literal meaning of the word—protagonists I’ve encountered in recent reading. As in, she repeatedly makes decisions a reasonably intelligent human would recognize as bad—we’re talking “sticking your hand down a running garbage disposal” bad here—and then bemoans the predictably (to all but her) poor results. It’s not a great way to build sympathy for a character.
Life is pretty bad for Protagonist, but when it gets really bad, Robber Baron Guardian leaves gifts for her in a chest. Only it’s clear (but not to Protagonist) that these aren’t actually from him. The pivotal gift is the eponymous Ten Thousand Doors of January, a novel-in-a-novel about a young, American Civil War-era woman who falls in Instalove with a POC man who walks into her world through a door from another before they’re tragically parted that same evening.
It’s clear (but not to Protagonist) that the woman is Protagonist’s mother and the novel-in-a-novel was written by her father. To Harrow’s credit, she introduces this big reveal to Protagonist halfway through the novel, but there’s still 2/3 of the novel-in-a-novel left to go after the reveal itself, requiring Protagonist’s father to ricochet between first and third person for its remainder while writing tortured explanations for why he’s doing so directly into the novel-in-a-novel.
It’s not Harrow’s only linguistic blunder. She’s firmly of the “nonsensical language = beautiful language” camp, presenting readers with narrative doozies like “The man’s voice changed, shedding its unctuous skin as if dropping a fur coat to the floor” (unctuous and fur coats: not two things one typically connects with the other) and this description of terror: “My own body felt as if I’d been submerged in cold honey” (Do people typically associate terror with honey? Why cold honey? And how does Protagonist know what being submerged in honey feels like to begin with?)
We also get dialogue like this: “Instead, I said, ‘But what was my father even doing? And if there were mysterious villains following him around the world—and I guess I shouldn’t roll my eyes because you did just shoot an actual vampire—who are they?’” This isn’t dialogue so much as first draft placeholder language indicating where actual dialogue should go. And have you ever explained to someone that you were rolling your eyes at what they just said? Or do you just roll your eyes and assume they’re smart enough to figure out what you're doing and why.
By the way, this book also has vampires. I’ll spare you my thoughts on those.
Additionally, while it’s absolutely possible to write the fantastical in a believable way, Harrow does not, and knows she's not, and expends a lot of verbiage trying to convince herself and readers that this isn’t the case, as in this example in which Protagonist tries to escape Robber Baron Guardian:
“I didn’t expect to see anyone on my way out. I should have—several Society men were staying as Locke’s honored guests...and the house was still crawling with hired servants...but Running Away from Home involves a very particular and time-worn script: Bad and I were supposed to slip out the front door and down the drive like a pair of ghosts.”
Actually, I can think of multiple time-worn scripts for Running Away from Home: climbing out of a window onto a tree branch that may or may not bear your weight, knotting bedsheets together to escape your attic prison, dressing like the hired help and slipping out with the kitchen staff, waiting till the dead of night and tiptoeing through the house, terrified that the creaking floorboard just woke your captor as you crept past his bedroom.
None of them involve waltzing past the villain who just locked you in your room and his hired muscle in broad daylight.
But Harrow does have Protagonist try to waltz past the villain who just locked her in her room and his hired muscle in broad daylight, to predictable results. She does this because it’s the easiest way to have Protagonist’s attempt fail when the narrative needs it to, but it’s lazy writing and again—remember what I said about Protagonist's literally stupid choices?
There are other weaknesses. Special powers only work when they advance the narrative but never when they would make it more difficult for Harrow to get the characters to where they need to go next. Random words are Capitalized to indicate when characters are making Deep and Philosophical Insights. Although society mistreats Protagonist because she's a POC, female characters travel freely as lone women through 1830-1910s America—hitchhiking, riding trains across the country, taking employment on steamboats—without facing any threat of sexual violence. To lean hard on the realism of one type of societal violence while handwaving away the other is jarring. And on and on.
TLDR: This book has a great premise but stumbles mightily in its execution.
What I Am Currently Reading
The Hazel Wood – Melissa Albert
I’m only a third of the way in so my initial impressions may change, but thus far, this is the gripping YA fantasy I was hoping Ten Thousand Doors would be.
Intermediate Korean – Andrew Sangpil Byon
Still working through the second chapter on auxiliary verbs.
What I'm Reading Next
I have acquired a copy of Patricia Wrede's Dealing With Dragons in contravention of this year's goals. At least it will be a quick read.
これで以上です。
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I can't wait til my library gets the The Night Country in so I can read the second book I really enjoyed the first.