Grim Tuesday

[sawyl]

It's the second day in my blogging of Garth Nix' Keys of the Kingdom, which means it must be time for Grim Tuesday.

Having arrived home in last part of Monday night, Arthur Penhaligon is put out to find his phone ringing mere minutes into Tuesday morning. From Dame Primus, his steward who is also the embodiment of the first part of the Will of the Great Architect, he learns that Grim Tuesday has started a legal action to recover the monies he claims he is owed by the Lower House. Arthur is initially reluctant to act, even though Grim Tuesday's Nothing mining operation in the Far Reaches of the House threaten its foundations. It isn't until Grim Tuesday's Grotesques, his principal minions, arrange for the Penhaligon family home to be bought out and replaced with a shopping mall that Arthur finally agrees to return to the House and obtain the second key.

Entering the House through a chimney in an old mill, Arthur is guided by the Lieutenant Keeper of the Front Door to the Far Reaches and the top of the great Nothing mine. Disguising himself as an indentured worker, Arther slowly descends to the bottom of the Pit, meeting a very agreeable if prolix denizen by the name of Japeth, who used to be a thesaurus before his day sold him into slavery. When the decent is at its darkest, a light on the railway line to the bottom appear and, presto, Arthur finds his old friend Suzy Turquoise Blue has smuggled herself into Grim Tuesday's domain disguised as a messenger.

With Suzy's help — which mainly comes in the form of a pair of clapped out wings and gloves with the ability to stick to solid surfaces — Arthur escapes the bottom of the Far Reaches and heads for Tuesday's treasury where he hopes to find the second part of the will. Assisted by a Nithling, a creature of pure Nothing, that claims to have once been on of Tuesday's eyebrows, Arthur and Suzy enter the tower, although Arthur breaks his leg badly in the process. With the help of an Ancient Mariner they find guarding a collection of ships in bottles, the pair travel to a distant star and recover the second part o the Will of the Architect, this time disguised as a disputatious sun bear. After the inevitable showdown with Grim Tuesday, Arthur returns home and to hospital, the better to repair his badly broken leg.

Grim Tuesday expands the world of the House to embrace the mines that make up its lower part and expose Tuesday's avarice through his willingness to undermine the foundations of the House itself in order to obtain more Nothing and so to produce more bric-a-brac to sell to the Morrow Days in order to maximise his own profits. From Arthur's tour of Tuesday's treasury we learn that the Day is only too willing to steal works of art and items of interest from every secondary realm he can find, partly out of sheer greed and partly to compensate for his own lack of creativity.

The book also expands the world of the Morrow Days, showing some of the Days are combining forces to work against Arthur. It also suggests that things aren't always as they are now and that the various Days have degenerated as the result of outside influences. Thus the Pit was once a pleasant spring before Tuesday's greed got the better of him, just as Monday's Lower House was once efficient before its master's sloth spread through the entire demesne.

Which makes me suspect — in hindsight, having read the whole series — that the Day in each of the books embodies one of the Seven Deadly Sins. Most of these are obvious. The deeply lazy Monday is clearly sloth. Tuesday, who is busy undermining the foundations of the House in order to enrich himself, is greed. Wednesday, when she appears, can be nothing but gluttony. Thursday, leader of the Armies of the Architect and possessed of furious temper, is anger. Friday, a little tenuously, is lust in so far as a lust can be any sufficiently intense desire — in Friday's case is for the experiences of others. Superior Saturday is envy and not pride, despite her title, because what she wants more than anything is that which Sunday has. While Sunday's sin, through the process of elimination, must be pride — certainly his aloofness and pride in his garden and its inhabitants is responsible for brining the House to the brink of ruin.

Grim Tuesday also introduces the important character of the Mariner, who drops various hints that he is Coleridge's original model. He is one of the three sons of the Great Architect and the Old One, the other two being the Piper and Lord Sunday, who possesses a formidable harpoon made from the light for a narwhal's wake under the aurora borealis in an arctic sea. Like his two brothers, the Mariner goes on to play a key part in much of the rest of the series.

The book concludes with Arthur, back in hospital on Earth, having his broken leg attended to — the various medical techniques employed implying, once again, that Arthur's world is as science-fictional as the world of the House is fantastic. Reaching under his pillow, Arthur finds a carved bit of whalebone left for him by the Mariner and a expensive card inviting him to lunch with Lady Wednesday, Duchess of the Border Sea...