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    Mister Monday
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    Mister Monday
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    Mister Monday
    Audiobook8 hours

    Mister Monday

    Written by Garth Nix

    Narrated by Allan Corduner

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    On the first day, there was mystery.

    Arthur Penhaligon is not supposed to be a hero. He is, in fact, supposed to die an early death. But then his life is saved by a key shaped like the minute hand of a clock.

    Arthur is safe-but his world is not. Along with the key comes a plague brought by bizarre creatures from another realm. A stranger named Mister Monday, his avenging messengers with bloodstained wings, and an army of dog-faced Fetchers will stop at nothing to get the key back-even if it means destroying Arthur and everything around him.

    Desperate, Arthur ventures into a mysterious house- a house that only he can see. It is in this house that Arthur must unravel the secrets of the key-and discover his true fate.

    The first book of a spellbinding series by Garth Nix, the author of The Seventh Tower, Sabriel, Lirael, and Abhorsen.


    From the Compact Disc edition.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateJul 8, 2003
    ISBN9780807216583
    Unavailable
    Mister Monday
    Author

    Garth Nix

    Garth Nix is a New York Times bestselling novelist and has been a full-time writer since 2001 but has also worked as a literary agent, marketing consultant, book editor, book publicist, book sales representative, bookseller, and part-time soldier in the Australian Army Reserve. Garth’s many books include the Old Kingdom fantasy series, beginning with Sabriel and continuing to Goldenhand; the sci-fi novels Shade’s Children and A Confusion of Princes; the Regency romance with magic Newt’s Emerald; and novels for children including The Ragwitch, the Seventh Tower series, the Keys to the Kingdom series, and Frogkisser!, which is now in development as a feature film with Fox Animation/Blue Sky Studios. Garth has written numerous short stories, some of which are collected in Across the Wall and To Hold the Bridge. He has also cowritten several children’s book series with Sean Williams, including TroubleTwisters and Have Sword, Will Travel. More than six million copies of his books have been sold around the world and his work has been translated into forty-two languages.

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    Reviews for Mister Monday

    4/5

    952 ratings52 reviews

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    • 5/5
      The first in [The Keys to the Kingdom] series; in the children's / YA section.The Will of the Great Architect was sundered and scattered across the universes, and the Trustees have usurped its power.Seventh-grader (13 year old?) asthmatic Arthur Penhaligon was supposed to die, just after Mister Monday, a Trustee and the Master of the Lower House, gave him a strangely shaped Key. But Arthur didn't die, and now the Key belongs to him. Mister Monday (depicting the sin of sloth), however, wants his Key back, and sends his minions into our universe to try and get it back from Arthur. As people around him start to fall sick, the only way Arthur can save the ones he loves - and the rest of the world - is to go into a mysterious house that only he seems to be able to see, and try to stop the plague at its source.This book was a real page turner, well written, with strange events happening thick and fast. The inside of the House is fantastic, and it doesn't behave like a normal house; travel between floors is by lift, but there are no physical lift shafts, and a room can look like a garden or a city or the side of a volcano. I should think this story hits target audience fairly well. Although events are wrapped up quite neatly at the end of this book, there is obviously more to the overarching story - and I've already borrowed the next in the series, Grim Tuesday.
    • 5/5
      Arthur is a boy in a new town facing his first day in a new school, but his what-to-worry-about priorities sort themselves quickly after Mister Monday pops in out of thin air and hands Arthur a minute hand-shaped key. Adventure and danger follow, and Arthur finds himself in The House, an unthinkably huge and rambling place that stands outside of time and place and where all things are recorded and filed away.Think Harry Potter as an asthmatic muggle, plopped down into Spirited Away. So, yeah, pretty good.
    • 4/5
      This book is about a kid named Arthur who has just moved to a new town. When gets to school the P.E. teacher makes him run laps even though he has major asthma. When he almost dies people appear and give him a book and a minute hand looking key. He then is taken into a strange world called the house and announce the rightful heir of the throne. He go's on a journey to take the hour hand and set things right.This book was decent enough and followed the plot triangle. It ended knowing there was a second book and a good conclusion for that. The story also keeps it to were the beginning is not a boring long piece but got quickly to the point. I found it fun to read and would say it was decent. It had some parts that were very technechal like the names of a creature.
    • 4/5
      Thrilling and exciting. Cliff hanger leaves you wanting to read the rest of the series. Suitable for Year 8 onwards.
    • 3/5
      A really fun read. My favorite of the Keys to the Kingdom series.
    • 4/5
      Garth Nix introduces a new hero, Arthur Penhaligon, and a new and fascinating realm for readers to explore. Arthur is an unlikely hero, a scrawny asthmatic boy who is less than excited by the opportunity to be the one Chosen to quest and conquer a fantastic other-world. Mostly, he just wants to go home. But, he makes the most of it, and with the help of Suzy Turquoise Blue, a very brave and impressive companion, he faces the villain Mr. Monday.
    • 5/5
      I already knew I liked Garth Nix. Now I know I like Allan Corduner and the producers of this audio version. Gripping story, well told. Thanks, artists!
    • 5/5
      Loved it! Nix is such a good writer that I could see it all happening in my head. And the setting was really strange and original. I felt a little like Nix had to create an external event (the plague) to motivate the main character, but the rest was so good that I'm gonna let that one go. Already checked out the second one from the library.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 3/5
      The House was built from Nothing, and its foundations rest upon Nothing. Yet as Nothing is forever and the House is but eternal, these foundations slowly sink into the Nothing from which the House was wrought, and Nothing so impinges upon the House. In the very deepest cellars, sinks, and oubliettes of the House, it is possible to draw upon Nothing and shape it with one's thought, should such thought be strong enough. Forbidden in custom, if not in law, it is too often essayed by those who should know better, though it is not the high treason of treating with the Nithlings, those self-willed things that occasionally emerge from Nothing, with scant regard for Time or reason.When Arthur collapses with an asthma attack during a cross-country run on his first day at a new school, he is drawn into a supernatural conflict by bureaucrat Mister Monday. A friend at work has lent me this series and I found the first book quite complicated for the lower age range of YA. Still, I will carry on to Grim Tuesday and see how I feel after book two.
    • 5/5
      1st in the Keys to the Kingdom series. Interesting, complicated. Grim foes, touches of humor, an ordinary young boy who does extrodinary things because he must. A unique story.
    • 4/5
      A 1001 Children's book. Audio. Arthur sets out on a quest to unite the two hands of a clock in an attempt to stop a plague from destroying the people of Earth.
    • 4/5
      Arthur has such terrible asthma that his main ambition in life is just getting a next breath, so when a magical key is pressed into his hand and he becomes imbued with extraordinary powers, he's more than a bit nonplussed. There's little time to ponder, however, and Arthur quickly learns how to use the key while being chased through his school by dog-faced men in suits. All too soon Arthur is lost in a magical realm where no one and nothing is as it seems. Through it all, Arthur never loses sight of his consideration and empathy.

      This is a really fantastic fantasy book. There are some sincerely creepy and scary parts, and I was actively afraid for Arthur. The magic system is intricate and interesting, with a lovely Victorian flair to it. And Arthur himself is a wonderful, engaging main character, who immediately felt to me both realistic and likable.
    • 3/5
      After suffering an asthma attack that nearly kills him, Arthur Penhaligon is saved by a mysterious man in a wheelchair named Mr. Monday that hands him a key -a key that saves his life, a key that puts him in danger. When an army of dog-faced “Fetchers” show up, Arthur knows he must go to the house, the one that only he can see, and unravel the mystery. But, once inside the house, things become much more complicated, and Mr. Monday wants his key back.The novel starts off great. Fast-paced and captivating, the story gripped me and I wanted nothing more than to keep reading. Until Arthur got to the house. Then the story became incredibly confusing. Mr. Nix did a great job creating a completely different world inside the house, but it is more like a dark, Alice in Wonderland dream and difficult to follow. Several times, I had to go back and re-read something because I didn’t quite understand what Arthur was seeing. I found the story a little too dark and too confusing for my taste.Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 2/5
      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.
    • 5/5
      Actual rating: 4.5

      Thoroughly enjoyed -- full review to come.
    • 3/5
      I like Garth Nix so I picked this up even though I'm not the middle school audience it was written for. It was fun. As I say, it was written for middle school readers, so I blasted through it pretty fast, and its very clearly one installment of a longer series. To me it felt a little more like a chapter than a book. Its still very well written and doesn't insult my intelligence. The elements from folklore were used in a way that was fun, clever, and didn't bog down the story. I will probably pick up the sequels.
    • 4/5
      Arthur Penhaligon, being an asthmatic, and with both of his birth parents being dead, is struggling to live a normal life in the first place. He is adopted, and has many brothers and sisters of different ages (most of them are also adopted). His adopted mother works in a medical lab, and his father was (and kind of still is) a musician. He had just got out of the hospital from a severe asthma attack, and moved to a new school, when his first day there, his life changes.Arthur got to his new school, and just got his schedule, when he learned he had P.E. that Monday, which was the day he arrived. His teacher clearly told them that day there were no exceptions, every Monday, they ran a mile. He went to tell his teacher he was a severe asthmatic, and just came out of the hospital a few days before. He makes him run, unless he can come up with a doctors’ note, which he doesn’t have.He begins the run, and just as the field goes out of sight, his lungs begin to tighten up, and he can’t breathe. He pushes himself until he can barely draw in a breath, so he collapses. He reaches for his inhaler, but it isn’t in his pocket. He lays on the ground for a minute or two until some more people who had been walking catch up to him. They pick up his inhaler and give it to him. He uses it, and it saves his breathing momentarily.While they go and get the teacher, something mysterious happens. Two weird looking men appear, and hand to him, what appears to be the minute hand of an old clock, and a small book. They talk for a few seconds, and then, as fast as they came they were gone. This is what changes Arthur’s life forever.Then, these weird men in bowler hats with faces like dogs start appearing everywhere. Arthur’s newly met friends can see them. Arthur can see them fine, too, but no matter who else he asks, nobody can see anything. The men keep showing up and following Arthur, like they want something. He can’t help but think it’s because of the key. On his way home from the hospital for the second time, he notices something else weird. A weird house, that looks like it’s centuries old, and made of multiple different house styles put together. He asks his dad if he sees it, and he doesn’t. Arthur then knows, he must enter the house, but he has no clue how to do so. He also has no clue what things await him. The book, Mister Monday, which is the first book in the series of The Keys to the Kingdom books by Garth Nix is a good book. I enjoyed reading it! It kept me interested and served its purpose as a book.The plot of this book is very interesting. It starts off very mysterious, and ends with some small action and events that make you think. It was good, but around the early middle of the book, it got a little boring. Some of the parts just didn’t move along fast enough. They were stretched out into boring pieces where nothing happened, and it made it seem like it took forever.This book also had a lot of variety and some good description. Some parts were foreboding, while in other, you couldn’t tell what was going to happen, and how it was going to happen was a complete mystery, too. The description wasn’t amazing, but it was fairly good. You could get a good picture in your head of what was happening, but it didn’t tell you too much, and there wasn’t so little that it was just dialogue either.Overall, this is a good choice for any young reader. It has all of the components that make a book a good one, and it can keep you interested when you’re bored. It has some mystery, a little action, and an interesting plotline. I’d give this book three and a half stars to anyone who wants an interesting book that will keep them interested.
    • 4/5
      The whole series is good, though the ending wasn't completely satisfying for me. Imaginative and interesting.
    • 2/5
      It was difficult to get through this book, I would say that it deals in part not being a fan of many fantasy/science fiction books and that it was difficult for me to follow. The novel does have many of the fantasy elements that are common across many fantasy novels; the teen hero (not the character you would think is the hero), the parallel universe, many evil enemies, and the figure of time and sense of being. I had problems with the story in that the author had to explain every event (the main character had no idea what was going on and the reader being me had no idea what was going on, a bit too far out for me). I would have to say that the plot is original and ingenious but with some fault not knowing much of this genre I truly can not say if the story is original but from my reading experience i have yet to come across a story such as this one. But the notion of using magic to rid evil is a bit old, it has been done before. Not sure how there can be more books to this series, I see how it can go to Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday etc... but I believe a students must really like the fantasy, unforseen hero to really finish this series. Not a horrible book but it did not do it for me, I do not see my self continue on with the series.Ages 11 - 15
    • 4/5
      Arthur Penhaligon nearly dies from an asthma attack on a run at his new school, but while he is gasping out his last breaths, he is given a key, the minute hand of a very special clock, and suddenly everything changes. His asthma retreats, he starts being followed around by strange, dangerous creatures wearing bowler hats, and a deadly sleeping plague starts sweeping across his town. Arthur soon finds himself in a different world where a man named Mister Monday will stop at nothing to get the key back. This was a compelling and, well, bizarre story. Arthur enters this mansion of a house that he can only see after he has the key, and he soon discovers that his quest is to gain the hour hand key to go with his minute hand one and defeat Mister Monday who has allowed the House to become corrupt. He goes along with the quest in order to find a cure for the plague that is sweeping his world. He meets many unusual characters and has some mind-twisting adventures, but it all comes together in a fascinating plot. One of the elements of the story that I really liked was the way that Arthur never knew who to really trust. I'll be moving on to the next in the series, Grim Tuesday ,soon.
    • 3/5
      Arthur Penhaligon starts an unusual adventure when after an asthma attack in the schoolyard he is confronted by Mister Monday and presented with a peculiar key which not only eases his health problems but leads him to an alternative world where he must defeat Mister Monday and his minions to find a cure for a plague attacking those in his home world. Arthur is assisted by Suzy Turquoise Blue and a portion of the Architect's will.I thought that the beginning was a bit confusing, but once clarification was achieved, the story was exciting, entertaining and well-worth the effort to hang in. It's no Harry Potter but definitely a keeper for the kids.
    • 3/5
      The novel, The Keys to the Kingdom: Mister Monday by Garth Nix encompassses the main theme of responsibility. In the beginning, Arthur Penahligon struggles with what his role had become after being entrusted with the Monday Key and also what the will has to do with him. Through out the middle, Arthur perseveres through the various rooms of Mister Monday's lower portion of the house by figuring out the uses of the Monday Key and how the key is able to be devided into two pieces. By the end, Arthur will learn that his responsibility turns out to be gaining full control of all the seven houses.
    • 5/5
      Arthur Penhaligon is the new kid who suddenly finds himself in over his head, and stuck with the responsibility of many lives resting on his shoulders, along with a destiny he is not sure he is ready for. Arthur thinks it’s bad enough being the new kid, having to start a full two weeks late into the school year, and having to start it off with a mandatory cross country run, even though he’s a severe asthmatic (to get out of it his parents would have had to make special arrangements in advance). But when he goes into a major asthmatic attack, things get even worse and strange. Instead of dying, like he was apparently supposed to do, he is saved by a strange key, shaped like a minute hand and he soon starts to see things that no one else can see, like a strange, huge, impossible house sitting in the middle of town, and creepy, dog-faced Fetchers who are trying to kill him and take the key back to its previous owner, Mister Monday, though he is not the true heir to the keys. If this wasn’t bad enough a strange sleepy plague has broken out in his town, brought by the Fetchers, and everything is on quarantine lock down. Now instead of being just a regular kid, he has to become a hero, finding a way into the house so that he can not only find out what is going on, but to save his family, new friends Rob and Leaf, and the rest of the town. Once inside, he will find out that by accepting the minute hand key he not only saved his life, but took on a responsibility and destiny that he definitely did not want nor is ready for.
    • 4/5
      I loved the world Garth Nix creates.
    • 5/5
      Arthur Penhaligon is just a normal kid, until the day he has an asthma attack during a school run, and two mysterious men pop out to give him a key and a book. Then Arthur starts seeing a huge house that's never been there before, and dog-like men that want his key start chasing him. But he doesn't even know what the key is for, or what he's supposed to do.I wanted to reread the Keys to the Kingdom series so that I can remember the story before I read Superior Saturday and Lord Sunday now that the series is complete. Having listened to the audiobook read by Allan Corduner the first time, it was interesting comparing what stood out to me the first time versus my experience reading now. I remembered Arthur as a reluctant hero, and while that's still true, his character is much stronger than I remembered in doing what he has to do and making decisions about his life. The setting seems to be our world just a little in the future, after a pandemic of some sort, in which Arthur's birth parents died. Now twelve, he's asthmatic and should have died before the Will with a mind of its own chose him as the Rightful Heir. The House and the world created by the Architect out of Nothing make for an inventive fantasy world, and I found I'd forgotten a lot of the clever details like "washing between the ears," and that there was more symbolism than I noticed the first time through. I look forward to revisiting the rest of the series, but I remembered the audiobooks so fondly that I may go back to that format for the rest.
    • 4/5
      ‘Mister Monday’ is the first book in Garth Nix’s ‘Keys to the Kingdom’ series, which features seven books. All seven book are now available.I found that ‘Mister Monday’ was a simple, but interesting read. The whole concept wasn’t exactly new (main character finds out that they are connected with some otherworldly place and must battle the evil people within said place, facing several personal challenges on the way), but I found that with the use of interesting characters and a very innovative and original premise this was a fairly good book.I loved the way that the House (which is where most of the book is set) was sort of chaotic and you never knew where the characters were going to end up in it. There were some fantastic descriptions and this was one of my favourite parts of reading the novel. I just loved all the different ideas that had been thrown into the book. Nix made this chaos work perfectly, if that is at all possible. I felt that sometimes during the action scenes the writing was a little bit confusing and I had to read over some things several times to understand what the exact details of, for example, one of the fight scenes were. They weren’t necessary details, but I prefer books that clearly explain what is happening during action scenes, and they are the type of scene that a lot of people tend to skim through very quickly without reading the smaller details because they are caught up in the space. What I’m trying to say is that emphasis needs to be put into simplicity during fast paced actions scenes or things can get a little hairy in terms of following what is going on. ‘Mister Monday’ presented a few problems in this respect for me, though it wasn’t a major book-killer by any standards.The book contained a few historical events at one stage, and these were clearly explained for those who didn’t know what they were, but they also had a few deeper details that only those who knew about the historical detail would have picked up – for example, the Battle of Marathon (in the Persian war) is mentioned, and I had previously studied this in Ancient history, so it was interesting to have this written about especially since I knew what was going on.Another aspect of the book that I enjoyed was the use of symbols. There was quite a lot of symbolism in the book, such as the days of the week being used and the idea of the seven sins being used (Having been told about the books previously from a friend I know these things crop up a lot more later in the series, though they aren’t all entirely straightforward or evident from the first book). And perhaps my favourite part of the book was the use of times and days of the week to name characters such as Dusk, Mister Monday, Dawn, Noon etc.I liked the characters of the book, including Mister Monday though my favourite character would have to be dusk.Overall, ‘Mister Monday’ was an interesting book though it was fairly easy to read. There were sufficient unanswered questions and a few minor cliffhangers at the end that do make me want to read the other books in the series. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in a lighter read with supernatural elements.
    • 3/5
      The first in a series of seven books. I didn't bother to read the other six. Stock YA fantasy.
    • 2/5
      My first introduction to Garth Nix was his Abhorsen series. It was so engrossing that I couldn't wait to read more from him. I was really disappointed in this series. It just didn't engage me, and I found myself putting the book down and not picking it up again for days. I tried to give it a fair shot and picked up the second book, but this too fell flat and I abandoned the rest of the series.