Grim Tuesday by Garth Nix

[meganbmoore]

This is the second book in Nix’s The Keys to the Kingdom series. While the first book took place over a period of weeks, beginning and ending on a Monday, this book takes place in just one Tuesday, and picks up right after Mister Monday.

Grim Tuesday, one of the keepers of a portion of the Will that Arthur Penhaligon is meant to be the master of, has found a way to try to avoid handing it over to Arthur. Specifically, Mister Monday, whose peoples and possessions Arthur is now in control of, borrowed many things from Grim Tuesday, and now Grim Tuesday is demanding repayment, which Arthur doesn’t have. To get to the bottom of things and to claim Grim Tuesday’s portion of the Will (and because Grim Tuesday is trying to buy up Arthur’s neighborhood and turn it into a mall), Arthur enters Grim Tuesday’s domain.

The dangers Arthur and Suzy, the castoff child (as in stolen, not biological, as far as we know) of the Pied Piper face in Grim Tuesday are technically worse than what they faced in Mister Monday, but it didn’t set off my “Nooooes! Bad things happening to children!” alarms the same way. I still think the Old Kingdom books are better, but I love the time-based worldbuilding here. It also helps that none of the leads annoy me. (But then, there also isn’t one I love as much as I do Lirael, so those things may cancel each other out.)

I also like that Arthur is the one who’s always trying to consult the magic book, while Suzy is the more practical and action-minded of the two, not that Arthur can’t rise to the occasion on both when he needs to. (I’m also very fond of the scene when Arthur is expecting the Atlas to save him, and his friend Leaf is the one going “Hey, let’s try putting something big and heavy in front of the door to try to slow the monsters down!”) I also like how incredibly gender-neutral the various titles and positions are, with both genders filling roles you’d usually see only one gender filling, and the fact that you genuinely can’t tell what gender a mentioned character is until they show up, or have a gender-specific pronoun attached to them.