{"id":2435,"date":"2004-11-17T14:43:21","date_gmt":"2004-11-17T19:43:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2004\/11\/17\/2435.html"},"modified":"2018-03-12T16:47:26","modified_gmt":"2018-03-12T21:47:26","slug":"book-report-grim-tuesday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2004\/11\/17\/book-report-grim-tuesday\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Report: Grim Tuesday"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When I read the Mister Monday<\/I>, the first in the Keys to the Kingdom<\/a> series by Garth Nix<\/a>, I enjoyed it, more or less, but wasn’t knocked out. Sometime this summer, I bought the second, Grim Tuesday<\/I>. My recollection was that I read it and didn’t like it, so when I picked it up off the shelf as a bathtub book, I was ready to put it right back down. Looking at the first few pages, I thought “I don’t remember any of this. Did I read this book?” In fact I hadn’t.\n

Now I have, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. I think it’s better than Mister Monday<\/I>, which surprises me. Usually, in books like these, much of the fun is in setting up the world, and later books in the same world are only going to be fun if the story is good. That hasn’t been one of Mr. Nix’s strong points; in The Old Kingdom<\/I>, the books seriously declined in quality between the first and second, and the second and the third. (Likewise, I enjoyed the first Harry Potter much more than the others, just because it introduced me to Hogwarts.) And in fact what makes Tuesday<\/I> so much fun is the plot. Not that it’s terribly complex; it’s just fun. The threat at the beginning is creepy and powerful. There are two or three nice set pieces (particularly the ascent from the Pit on paper wings, whacking at gobbets of nothing with a copper pipe). The final confrontation is won in a way that is both in character and sweetly pedagogic, without being obnoxious. And, as it happens, Arthur’s character develops, somewhat, which doesn’t do him any harm, either.\n

Anyway, I’m looking forward to Drowned Wednesday<\/I> more than I was looking forward to this one.\n

Thank you,
-Vardibidian.\n<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I read the Mister Monday, the first in the Keys to the Kingdom series by Garth Nix, I enjoyed it, more or less, but wasn\u2019t knocked out. Sometime this summer, I bought the second, Grim Tuesday. My recollection was…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[194],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-report"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2435"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2435\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17204,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2435\/revisions\/17204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}