Another Hugo award nominee. A young girl, January, lives in a large mansion as the ”ward” of a peculiar gentleman collector. Her father works for the same millionaire and seeks out curious items all around the world and spends most of his time traveling. The girl is colored and no one never can guess her actual heritage as she apparently has an unusual exotic look; her father is black. As a small girl, she once found a door that seemed to go to another world. As she told her ”guardian” about it he reacted it to it pretty heavily, and told her to forget such imaginary nonsense, and started to raise her as a “real” lady with proper manners. She wasn’t allowed to play with her friend, a boy from a nearby village anymore either. Later the boy manages to give her a dog which grows up to be large and fiercely protective. She finds a book, which seems to tell about portals between different worlds. Soon after that, she gets bad news: her father is apparently dead, and her guardian might not be the nice old gentleman she thought…
A well written exciting and even moving book. The plot was exciting, the book-inside-a-book device worked so well I was surprised, and the character of January was very well described and interesting. I was sad to find that there is no second part available or even announced. On the other hand, the story was wrapped up fairly well in this book. I am looking forward to the new adventures of January, as many doors were left open for many new adventures for January and her friends.
385 pp
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