by Gareth Brown ★★★★☆
Time travel is tricky. There are scores of movies and books that have featured it, and inevitably there comes a moment when rules are established. Things like "you can't meet yourself in the past", or "if you change something in the past it will (or won't) change the present, because it's already happened". It has the potential to quickly become convoluted, and depending on how it is handled, it can open enough gaps to throw a wrench into an entire story.
The Book of Doors opens in a bookstore, where an aging man (Mr. Webber) is passing the time, as he regularly does, reading an old favorite (The Count of Monte Cristo) and shooting the breeze with our main character, Cassie, as she tidies up the store at the end of the day. In a moment, he will be dead, and he will have bequeathed to Cassie what we come to learn is the Book of Doors.
Cassie soon discovers this odd book has the power to transport her anywhere: all she has to do is imagine the door, and walking through a door in her current location will exit her into the location she is imagining. After she validates with her roommate Izzy that she's not hallucinating, they spend an evening transporting around New York City, and soon farther abroad to places Cassie had visited on a European trip.
The Book of Doors is not unique, however, and we soon come to learn that there are dozens of magical books, all with unique powers. We find out about the Book of Pain, the Book of Shadows, the Book of Memories and several others. We also realize there is an underground society of collectors, both good actors and bad, that are striving to get their hands on as many of these books as possible. Cassie and Izzy soon meet one of these collectors, a man named Drummond Fox who is known as "the Librarian", shortly before a confrontation with one of the bad actors, Dr. Hugo Barbary (who, incidentally, possesses the Book of Pain). Fox helps the young women escape, and in doing so teaches them that the Book of Doors does more than travel to different locations in the present: it can also allow you to travel through time.
With the evil Dr. Barbary (and others) hot on their trail, peril and danger ensue, from which Cassie and Izzy need to protect themselves, and this is where things start to go a bit sideways. Despite author Brown's best efforts to explain the set of rules under which everything shall operate once time travel is introduced, the rules governing things in The Book of Doors are more open than in other media that tackled the complex topic, and so the number of possibilities for how Cassie might resolve her predicament grows exponentially. I found myself, unfortunately, not able to buy-in completely to the premise, because I kept coming up with alternate ways to solve the problems. "Why don't they just (fill in the blank)?" became a common recurring mental refrain for me while reading. The Book of Doors, frankly was way too powerful, and with a mastery of it (which Cassie seems to miraculously have from nearly the start -- something explained away as "some people have a natural talent for things"), the possibilities became infinite.
It's a bit of a shame, because I thought the premise of The Book of Doors was really interesting, and Brown coupled that with moments of emotional heft, particularly around Cassie's relationship with her grandfather (who raised her) that was nicely done. At the same time, however, the mild romantic relationships that are lightly introduced felt like a throwaway half-hearted inclusion. And perhaps therein lies the diluted summary: potential is repeatedly on display in various areas of the book, only to have it ultimately unfulfilled and incompletely realized.
When a book includes as part of its premise the ability to open doors into other places, my mind naturally goes to Alix E. Harrow's The Ten Thousand Doors of January (my top book of 2019), one that manages to take a slightly-related topic but fence it in and handle it in a loophole-free way. Had Brown chosen to limit the number of powerful books (I didn't take the time to count, but there are at least 25) to something like 7, and created a slightly less powerful Book of Doors (i.e. - one that only allows teleportation in the present as opposed to teleportation plus time travel), I think it could have elevated his strong premise. Despite some of the inconsistencies, it was still an enjoyable and creative read, but I'm primarily left with a feeling of unfulfilled potential.