The Book of Doors

The Book of Doors is a debut low fantasy novel by British author Gareth Brown. It portrays the author’s love of traveling to new places through the lens of magical realism, and it explores themes of power, knowledge, and personal responsibility in the face of forces greater than oneself. In the story, main character Cassie Andrews receives a magical gift from her favorite customer: a book that takes her wherever she wants. As she and her best friend, Izzy, explore the wonders of the book and the places they can now visit, they encounter others who want the power for themselves. They’re forced to rely on the help of Drummond Fox, a mysterious man with his own library of magical books, to combat the evil powers that now hunt them all. Note that direct quotes and character names are in the novel’s original European English.

This guide is based on the 2024 hardcover edition from Bantam.

Plot Summary

Cassie Andrews is a bookseller in New York. One day, one of her regular customers, Mr. Webber, passes away while in the store. He leaves her a book entitled The Book of Doors, which grants Cassie the power to travel through any door to anywhere in the world. She and her roommate, Izzy, use the book to travel around the world, although Izzy is cautious about the book’s power. Cassie explains that she wants to travel because her grandfather never had the opportunity, as he was too busy raising her. While traveling, they encounter a man named Drummond Fox, known also as the Librarian, who warns them that they’re in danger. He has been watching them, as he’s been searching for the location of The Book of Doors. Soon they’re attacked by a vicious man named Hugo Barbary, who wants the book for himself. Elsewhere, an ominous figure called the Woman is also looking for the books, as well as for Drummond.

Drummond uses a magic book of his own, The Book of Memories, to remove Izzy’s memories of the attack. He and Cassie visit his home at the Fox Library, a storehouse of magical books that was created by his ancestor, which Drummond hid using his Book of Shadows to keep the Woman from finding it. He explains that the Woman killed three of his friends years ago. He reveals that The Book of Doors can also enable the user to travel in time, and to convince her, they travel back to see Cassie’s late grandfather.

While they’re gone, Izzy is attacked by two men, Azaki and Lund. Azaki employs Lund, and the two source magical books and perform other scams for money. When Hugo Barbary finds them, he shoots them both and tortures Izzy for information using The Book of Pain. Lund wakes up and rescues her, and together they run away, though Azaki appears to have died in the attack. They go to see a woman called the Bookseller, who acts as an intermediary to help them sell The Book of Pain, which they took from Barbary.

Meanwhile, Cassie and Drummond return from the library and confront Barbary, but he takes Cassie’s Book of Doors and uses it to lock her a decade in the past. She finds herself lost and alone until she comes up with a solution: find Mr. Webber, who gave her the book in the first place. She meets him and tells him her story, but he doesn’t know anything about the Book of Doors. They become close friends and spend the next decade together. When Cassie catches up with her own time, she goes to confront Barbary again. She and Drummond overpower him, and Cassie sends him even further back into the past where he can’t hurt them.

At the Bookseller’s auction, a range of book hunters arrive to bid on the stolen book. After a heated argument, Barbary enters, having grown elderly in his time away. Cassie and Drummond also arrive, and they fight. The Bookseller uses magic to locate all the internal pain and suffering that Barbary has experienced in his life, which implicitly made him so villainous. She tries to rid him of it, then they send Barbary back to the past to live the remainder of his life with a renewed perspective. In the present, the Woman arrives and kills several of the guests, including Izzy. Devastated by loss, Cassie opens a door to nothingness and enters a realm between worlds. There, she discharges her emotions into creating the magical books, sending them back through time and across the world.

When she emerges, she learns that Izzy isn’t dead after all; she projected a false death to save herself using the Book of Illusions. Cassie catches up with her, Lund, and Drummond, and sets a new plan into motion to stop the Woman. It involves going back in time to save Azaki and having the Bookseller hold a false auction to lure her. Before the auction begins, the group steals the Woman’s magic books and replaces them with illusionary fakes. However, they learn that the Woman has managed to hide the Book of Despair on her person and uses it to disarm them all. At the last moment, Izzy sets the book on fire, releasing them. Cassie sends the Woman into the empty place between worlds. It is revealed that when Barbary was sent to the past a second time, the pain that had been magically withdrawn from him left his body and entered the nearest person at the time: the Woman as a young girl. This explains the source of her evil behavior. In the aftermath of the battle, the friends return to the Fox Library. They agree to band together and protect the remaining magic books in the world from malicious use.