Mister Monday (Keys to the Kingdom, Book 1) (original 2003; edition 2003)

I still cannot get over how freakin' good this book was! Once I started it, I could not stop. I put it up there with any book from The Narnia Series (which I could not pick a favorite book out of). I have to get the next book. There's no doubt about it! I *loved* this book!

I'm starting to realize what I absolutely love about these children's book is the story is fantastic and you don't have the added sexual innuendoes. It's just a great read and I can stay pure in mind. It's fantastic!

Adrianne ( )

This is definitely a book designed for avid modern fantasy readers. It's one of those massively creative books where everything is basically built from scratch, and the reader has to embrace a whole world to keep up with the plot. There's no denying Mr. Nix's creativity. But another unavoidable truth is that this series is written for a niche market. I happen to be a part of that niche and I loved the series. I'm finishing the seventh book as I write this.

However, the fact is that a lot of the people who I've recommended it to weren't into it and didn't really understand what was going on, and I completely understand that. Just trying to describe it is enough of a mouthful to turn off some potential readers. The House, the Secondary Realms, the Architect, the Will, the Trustees, the Denizens, and the Piper's Children all require separate explanation and that doesn't even account for all the bizarreness the series contains.

Its redemption comes from the balance Nix strikes between simple, human storytelling and high concept. Arthur is a very identifiable character. I really felt great empathy for him, particularly in this first story, where he seems most vulnerable to every pitfall dropped in his path. Overall, Mister Monday is an underwhelming villain, but Nix doesn't rely on Monday for much aside from one brief scene with a mostly foreseeable result.

Overall, what reading this first volume of the series will tell you is whether or not the rest of the books will be worth your time. If you don't like the first one, it's not going to get any easier later on. The weirdness doesn't subside, it intensifies. The setting changes, the supporting cast grows, the villains get more intimidating and conniving, the consequences for Arthur's family and friends get worse, but if you love Arthur and his comrades now you're going to keep on loving them until the end. ( )

Thrilling and exciting. Cliff hanger leaves you wanting to read the rest of the series. Suitable for Year 8 onwards. ( )

I read this, oh, at least six years ago, originally. Probably close to when it first came out. I loved it, read it really quickly, but didn't read much of the rest -- I think I might've read Grim Tuesday, and possibly even Drowned Wednesday, but I have a bad attention span for uncompleted series, and wandered away, intending to come back someday when it was done. Well, I'm back, and I decided I'd reread the first two or three books to refresh my memory of what's going on.

I love the way Garth Nix writes. It's easy to read, often amusing, and I like the weird and wonderful way he puts together worlds. Stuff like the Paperwings in the Abhorsen 'verse, and the whole set up of the House in these books.

If we were going for realism, maybe Arthur's rise to hero-dom would seem a little too fast. The Arthur we see at the beginning doesn't seem really capable of what he does at the end, though very little time has passed, as far as I could tell -- a few days, at most. If I have a criticism of these books, it's that from the lofty age of twenty-one, I don't really believe in him, in some ways. Not in the way I believed in, say, Sabriel, in Garth Nix's other work. I don't quite believe in the emotional background of the story, either: Arthur's need to rescue the victims of the Sleepy Plague, etc. It seems to fall by the wayside for large stretches -- maybe that's my problem. Still, it's the same old story of a young boy being swept by events bigger than himself toward heroism. I can suspend my disbelief for this.

There's something about the writing and the pacing that just sweeps me up, whenever I read Garth Nix's work. It's nice to just flop back and read it, without too much being expected of you. Yet, at the same time, it doesn't go straight down into the old tropes without stopping to look at them. For example, the Will is sometimes questionable, from a mortal, sympathetic-to-Arthur point of view, misleading him and manipulating events. And the Architect is referred to as female, when so often creation stories have a male god bringing forth the world.

I also love the background to this story: so matter-of-fact, but not actually the world as we know it. The flu outbreaks, the laws about quarantine... Believable, and different, without being shoved in one's face. Interesting.

Looking forward to reading the rest of this series, finally. ( )

I read it and expect I'll read the others, but not half as good as the Abhorsen series. It just wasn't very surprising in the ideas it had. ( )