Clever and compelling!
The prose was what sucked me into this one, which rarely happens. There wasn’t a lot of action at first… the story started out with young Cassie, closing up at the bookshop where she works, while speaking to an elderly customer whom she had befriended. Distracted when it begins to snow, Cassie turns back around to find that Mr Webber has quietly died. In the hubbub of the authorities taking the body away, Cassie realizes that stacked on top of the book that Mr Webber was reading is a book with a note to her inside, from Mr Webber. It’s the Book of Doors, and it appears to be largely blank pages… at first. Later, though, Cassie realizes through experimentation with her roommate Izzy that if she envisions a door, any door she’s ever walked through before, anywhere in the world, the book will act as a portal to that place, through that door.
At first this just seems like a fun novelty, but like there probably wasn’t a lot more the author could do with that idea… until they run into one good guy (Drummond–great name) and a couple of very bad guys who are after them, because they want the Book of Doors desperately. This is because the book will not just open any door in the world now, but at any time in history–past, present, and future, too. Not only that, but the Book of Doors is one of many magical books, created for some unknown reason and at some unknown time, but desired by various nefarious villains for their own private reasons. These include the Book of Shadows, The Book of Mist, The Book of Illusions, The Book of Despair, the Book of Pain, The Book of Joy, and many others.
Once we introduce the idea of time travel, Cassie, Izzy, Drummond, and those later in league with them race through time to try to outsmart several of the villains and prevent them from ever getting their hands on the books. The prose is gorgeous, as is the characterization, and the twists and turns were actually not too hard to follow, even though there were some backward causation paradoxes involved, like there nearly always are in time travel books. The main villain is a complete sadist, and that was overdone, I thought… I got the idea without having to dwell on it to the extent we did. And there is a decent amount of bad language. But other than that, it’s very well done.
My rating: ****1/2
Language: it’s there… kind of a lot.
Violence: yeah. Pretty gnarly
Sexual content: none
Political content: none
Leave a Reply