'Seven days. Seven keys. Seven virtues. Seven sins' Garth Nix
Mister Monday is a relatively new book by Garth Nix, that is the beginning of the Keys to the Kingdom Series.
The story starts on what seems to be a perfectly normal day. Arthur Penhaligon has his first day at a new school, so it’s not really a great day to die whilst doing P.E. But then his life is saved by two rather strange people, Mister Monday, and his manservant Sneezer, and by a golden key shaped like the minute hand of a toy clock.
However, although Arthur is still alive, his ownership of the key brings Mister Monday’s servants, Noon, Dawn and the Fetchers, dog-like creatures that bring with them a terrible plague upon Arthur’s world, and the only thing Arthur can do in order to try and help find a cure is to journey into the mysterious house that has just appeared in his street, that he can only see.
The rest of the story is a cunningly crafted world of mystery, Nothing, talking frogs, invisible staircases and the Old One, the giant trapped in the bottom-most part of the house, to suffer a most terrible fate, to have his eye-balls removed one-a-day, at midnight, much like Prometheus in Greek mythology.
Again, Garth Nix has excelled himself in this book, which is the first of the Keys to the Kingdom series, which has two sequels, Grim Tuesday, and Drowned Wednesday, which are both out at the moment. Although the book is good, I do not think that it quite matches the skill which Garth put into his writing of the Old Kingdom series (Sabriel, Lirael and Abhorsen).