The Book: Mister Monday: The Keys to the Kingdom #1, by Garth Nix
The Story: The main character of this book, Arthur, suffers a should-be fatal asthma attack and is visited by some creepy dudes who babble off some crazy stuff and then give him a book and a “key” that looks like the minute hand to a clock. He ends up in the hospital and recovers quickly.
On his way home, he sees this new “house” in his development that is huge and crazy and no one else can see it. Of course, the book that he was given by the creepy dudes shows him how to get in. When he gets “visited” at school by some more creepy guys who start a fire and plague in his town, Arthur figures that he should head to that new crazy house and try to figure out what is going on.
So, he goes and it turns out to be this whole wild city. He finds out that by having that minute hand, he has a lot of power within the city. To stop all the bad stuff that is happening, he’s told that he has to get the hour hand that matches the minute hand he has. A fun little quest begins.
What I Thought: Let me preface this by saying that I was buying some Hunger Games/Catching Fire goodies at the bookstore and the guy who was checking me out asked me if I liked that “type” of book, by which I kind of took to mean dystopian books- which I love. Of course I said yes. He said that the best series being written like this right now was the Keys to the Kingdom series. I immediately went home and requested it from the library, knowing almost nothing about it.
Maybe it was that I was expecting something like Hunger Games/Catching Fire, which I thought was incredible. I cannot even comprehend where the comparison came from. I’m not entirely sure, now, what he meant by “that type of book.” Maybe just YA fantasy? Which I’m not into at all. So maybe it was just that my expectations were just off.
This was not great. I would be struggling to call it good. I guess that the premise has promise, but the follow through was cringe-worthy. The writing was clunky and the dialogue was all the way unbelievable. I realize that it was science fiction, but the world just seemed so… fake. Even the “real” part of the world. All of it. The “rules” that existed seemed arbitrary and I never found myself in suspense at all. It was just silly.
I kind of kept thinking that it was going to come to life at some point and that something amazing was going to happen. No such luck.
Conclusion: Meh. There are so many better YA books out there right now. I wouldn’t waste my time on this. I will not be continuing on with this series. And if you’re a bookstore worker or librarian, don’t compare mediocre books to great ones. It’s not fair to the mediocre ones.