Dear me. I boarded the hype train and never reached the promised destination.

[b:The Ten Thousand Doors of January|43521657|The Ten Thousand Doors of January|Alix E. Harrow|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1548174710l/43521657.SY75.jpg|63516505] is a book I had been waiting to read for the longest time, since I saw it one of those 'to-read' lists. I'd like to preface this by saying I really wanted to like the book. Truly. Fantasy fiction is my favourite genre of all time, and I have allowed this partiality to perhaps cloud my judgement of a lot of books that concern themselves with it. Perhaps this is why I managed to get through so many pages before the dawning realisation that this book was, um, not great.

This is not a fantasy fiction book as much as it is a book concerned with political posturing and sermonising. There are other ways in which concepts of colonialism, race, gender biases and white supremacy could have been conveyed without detracting from the fantasy element, but they dominate the narrative in a rather crowded, ungainly fashion. The prose is beautiful, but not enough to hide the fact that the plot is rather simplistic, the story unidirectional, and that various parts of the story seem to have been tailored too smoothly, almost as if to make sure that everything proceeds slickly (towards a rather predictable ending).

I found it hard to connect with any of the characters, which in turn made it difficult for me to be sympathetic to their plight, and therefore rendered me a mere spectator as the story panned out.

Perhaps you might overlook these details in favour of the overall message of the book, that of the door as a conduit for change, but I could not, much as I wanted to.