Mister Monday
core novel 2003 The Keys to the Kingdom
Record
| First published | 2003 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 3.81 (40,757 ratings, collected 2026-09-13) |
| Page count | 384 |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780439551236 |
| Internal chronology | 1 |
Synopsis
Mister Monday is the first book in Garth Nix's fantasy series The Keys to the Kingdom, in which twelve-year-old Arthur Penhaligon, recovering from a severe asthma attack, is unexpectedly given a mysterious Key and a strange book called the Will by a servant fleeing his own master, the sinister Mister Monday. The gift draws Arthur into the House, an otherworldly bureaucratic realm at the center of the universe on which the fate of Arthur's own world, and countless others, ultimately depends. Pursued by Mister Monday's agents and increasingly unable to separate his ordinary life from the House's affairs, Arthur is drawn into a struggle over the Will's missing fragments, a conflict that will determine who holds real power over the House and, through it, over reality itself.
Where it sits
- Universe: The Keys to the Kingdom
- Series: The Keys to the Kingdom core; position 1 of 7 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Garth Nix
Awards (verified)
- Aurealis Award (Children's Long Fiction), 2004: won; Wikipedia dates this award to Mister Monday's 2003 publication/eligibility year; sfadb.com (this canon's Locus-lineage-preferred aggregator, also used generally for award verification) dates it to the 2004 ceremony year -- both refer to the same award, no discrepancy.
- Ditmar Award (Novel), 2004: nominated; Ditmar 'novel' nomination for Abhorsen appears alongside Mister Monday on this author's 2004 award listing per sfadb; retained here for Mister Monday specifically as sfadb attributes it to that title's eligibility year.
Notes
- From the series record (The Keys to the Kingdom): Core Canon = all 7 novels of the completed series (Scholastic US / HarperCollins UK / Allen & Unwin Australia, 2003-2010). Confirmed a separate, unrelated universe from Nix's The Old Kingdom, already in this canon -- different world, different magic system, no shared characters; both records are cross-referenced as being by the same author.
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings, but they resolve to the exact same sequence for this book, so one combined line is shown instead of two identical ones.
- Reading order, within the series The Keys to the Kingdom: position 1 of 7: next Grim Tuesday (2004)
Sources
← The Keys to the Kingdom dossier · All universes
Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.