: On her seventeenth birthday, January finds a leather-bound book titled The Ten Thousand Doors , which contains academic studies and stories of portals between worlds.

: January realizes that Mr. Locke and his secretive "Society" are dedicated to closing all Doors to maintain a rigid, "modern" order and suppress the chaos of other worlds.

: The son of a local grocer and January's childhood friend. His belief in her and their evolving romance empower January to embrace her identity.