Customer Reviews

The Keys to the Kingdom #6: Superior Saturday

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

"Now that it's raining more than ever
Know that we'll still have each other
You can stand under my umbrella
You can stand under my umbrella
(Ella ella eh eh eh)"
- Rihanna


Book Six of the series "The Keys to the Kingdom" has the young hero Arthur Penhaligon taking on the oldest Trustee and first Denizen who just happens to be the third oldest entity in the Universe. Superior Saturday is a powerful sorceress who rules the Upper House with the help of thousands upon thousands of lesser sorcerers who do her bidding while stacked in iron framed cubicles with wire meshed floors and no ceilings.

Working conditions suck big time, what with the perpetual rainfall and all, and the job is even tougher for the "grease monkeys" who have to keep the chains and gears in working order. Promotions and demotions are physical moves, sometimes accompanied by projectiles and heckling, and job perks usually mean not much more than a different colored umbrella (ella, ella, eh eh eh)

Superior Saturday is afflicted with the sin of envy, and her sole ambition is to infiltrate the domain of Lord Sunday, through the "Incomparable Gardens". It's up to Arthur, with a little help from his friends, to rise to the top of her Babel-like Tower and secure the Sixth Key.

With this series, you need to read the books in order so as to understand what's going on. This one is very short, but is one of the least complicated as far as the convoluted links that exist between the House and its parts, namely The Lower House, The Far Reaches, The Border Sea, The Great Maze, The Middle House, The Upper House and the Incomparable Gardens. Many sub-plots are left hanging, but the major bummer is the cliff-hanger ending that leaves the reader suspended in mid-air awaiting the final book of the series.

A must-buy for fans of the series in preparation for the final showdown, but a bit lacking in substance on its own.



Amanda Richards, July 19, 2008

Arthur Penhaligan's week is almost over, but unfortunately it's not getting any better. Not for him, and not for the House.

In fact, just about everything is tumbling down in the penultimate book of Garth Nix's Keys to the Kingdom series, "Superior Saturday," in which Arthur finally encounters the malevolent sorceress who's been messing things up throughout the series. It's a suitably chaotic and haunting story, and Arthur's internal struggles and new discoveries are a pretty fascinating read -- but don't expect it to really end on anything but a massive cliffhanger.

Arthur receives an emergency call from his brother, who warns him that the Army is about to nuke their entire town. Desperate, Arthur tries to shield the town, but instead ends up slowing time. Unfortunately that is only one of his worries: the magic of the Keys is transforming Arthur's body and mind into something inhuman, and Nothing is eroding away the very foundations of the House. To stop it, he must somehow steal away Superior Saturday's power, and he has to rely on one of the less reliable forces in the House to smuggle himself and Suzy into Saturday's domain.

While Leaf and her pal struggle to save Friday's sleeping victims, Arthur explores Saturday's realm. Turns out Saturday is building a vast tower built by Piper's Children and overseen by sorcerers, so she can reach the Incomparable Gardens that Lord Sunday rules -- and what's more, Arthur is having a lot of trouble locating the Will. His only hope is to climb the tower with Saturday's sorcerous army -- but what awaits them at the top?

"Superior Saturday" is not just saturated in rain, but in desperation. A lot of bad things are happening all at once, since the House is about to collapse, the town is about to be bombed by the Army, all the Piper's rats and children are suspect, and Arthur has found that he can't even trust Dame Primus anymore. There are a lot of bad things going on in "Superior Saturday," but Nix also unfolds some intriguing new revelations about the House and its purpose, during another visit to the imprisoned Old One.

And Nix somehow loads all of this into the plot without making it feel clunky or infodumpy. He spins a suitably dark and gloomy atmosphere over Saturday's domain, full of steampunk-style machinary and lots of ever-drizzling rain. It moves pretty gradually for awhile, but speeds up after Arthur locates the Will, and bumps into another old enemy. And Nix isn't afraid to throw in some horror moments, such as an unfortunate Denizen whose body was dissolved by Nothing, or the chaotic attacks on Saturday's army during the climax.

The biggest problem is that "Superior Saturday" doesn't really end -- the action and tension slowly build for a long time, only to snap like a recoiling spring... on a cliffhanger. Rather than being story unto itself, it's the first half of a story that "Lord Sunday" will finish.

While Arthur seems to accept his transformation a bit too easily, his struggles with his inhuman thoughts ("For a moment he even felt like striking Scamandros, or forcing the Denizen to prostrate himself and beg forgiveness") and rapidly changing body are well-drawn. And Nix raises some intriguing questions about just what it is that Arthur is turning into, since it's made quite clear that he's not transforming into a run-of-the-mill Denizen.

While it has no real ending, "Superior Saturday" is a dark, mildly horrific ride through what is left of the House, and promises a spellbinding finale in the final Keys to the Kingdom novel. An enthralling little book, so long as you don't mind waiting for what comes next.

Every book in this series takes a while to get into. However, I was extremely disappointed with the dud of an ending this book had. Either Nix was pressured to finish this book before he was ready, or the publisher got too used to the one book for every denizen Monday-Sunday in the series.

This book seemed rushed, half-hearted and not at all as satisfying as the others in the series. If you don't want to be disappointed, buy Superior Saturday and Lord Sunday together (when it comes out) and read them together as they should have been one book from the start. I really like this author and feel that there must be too much pressure to meet deadlines and follow formulas, a combination of which has stifled Nix's creativity in his latest installment of The Keys to the Kingdom series.

Garth Nix makes a good, but exciting story with Superior Saturday. Garth Nix does one cruel thing to the reader, which is the end. I will list some of the bad guys and good guys of this book. 1. The Piper, an evil person that has brought back children from the secondary realms (earth). 2. The Will of the Architect, a sly, but serious, incomplete document that's become human, and only cares about itself and the house. 3. Arthur Penhaligan, a boy who's not supposed to be a hero, but soon will become the ruler of the universe, and just wants to get the keys and get over with this. 4. Susie Turquoise Blue (a Piper's child) has been friends with Arthur since the beginning of his journeys, and always wants to be in the thick of the journeys, and has always been loyal to Arthur. 5. Fred (Piper's child)who we know little about, but you will just have to read books #5 and #4 to know more.

Cyrus Ogle, age 9

There's certainly one thing to be said about everything Nix writes, and that is that it's rife with original creativity and completely new fantasy stories. However, sometimes the books themselves, although phenomenally imaginative, are hit or miss depending on how much Nix is able to flesh out the story. The Seventh Tower series, for instance, is deftly imagined, a two worlds drawn together through light and shadow, and the ability to use colored gemstones to create light beams that can do all sorts of interesting things. Unfortunately for whatever reason, Nix doesn't explore the world and the story enough. It's much more like eating watery soup than it is like consuming a good meal.

The Abhorsen Trilogy, on the other hand, is a great work, and although it's not a classic literature sort of story, the world itself is fleshed out well, so that the reader can really imagine the world and lose themselves in it. I feel like the Keys to the Kingdom series is a mixture of both, and I'd love to see the world more fully explored. The first book, especially, seems to move toward that path, but as the books progress, they seem to become more and more formulaic and lacking in substance. Ultimately, Nix's imagination seems to know no bounds, but if he would slow down and put more life into these books, I think they would be much better. Not to say that the books aren't fun to read, but I believe they could be fun to read and rich. Hopefully his next fantasy series will be more like The Abhorsen Trilogy.

-Lindsey Miller, [...]

Why am I only getting half a book? This is what I thought when I first finished this. I mean I knew there was a cliff-hanger but this was just wrong. Other then that the book was great and I would like to see how the changes the characters are experiencing(especially Arthur and Dame Primus) effect the Sunday book. I highly recommend this and the rest of the books before this one.

The book was good. But it wasn't what I expected. When it got to the point where the main character would normally finish what he started it just ends.

I was very excited when Superior Saturday first came in and I got it. I will say right now that this book had all the imagination, action, and suspense that Garth Nix's previous Keys to the Kingdom books possessed. Yet, the over all story of the book seemed a litte 'rushed'. Like Garth Nix wanted nothing more than to just get this book over with already. I also thought that this book would give out more answers, but instead presented more mysteries (if you read the previous books you'll agree that the last thing we need is mysteries). And like the previous books Superior Saturday ends with a clincher. I will recommend reading Superior Saturday only to those that read the earlier novels, and I can hardly wait until Lord Sunday comes out.

This is the shortest book in the series, both in pages and in content. In all of the other books, at the end, Arthur has fought the title character and taken his or her key. In this one, Arthur begins to do both of those things, but is suddenly cut off by the book ending. There really isn't much warning; the book simply ends. It is as if Garth Nix ran out of time and published a partially finished book. What's more, the first two thirds of the book feel like introduction--and they are about the length of the sections of the previous books that had the same feeling. It's all very strange.

On the other hand, the ideas introduced in this installment are fascinating. They literally kept me up at night for several days after finishing it. It should also be mentioned that this one has all of the intensity of the previous five books--I finished it in a day, or arguably two days considering how late I stayed up reading it. It feels like this book is all buildup to the next one, as if Garth Nix cut this one off short because he wanted to put some of what would be covered into the next book, perhaps in some sort of final fight. I am reminded of the sixth Harry Potter book; it was the only one that didn't have a clean ending.

All in all, the book was far too short, but it was really good stuff (as always), and the shortness may or may not be for a good reason.

Like the previous books in this series, it's an okay "stand alone" story, but doesn't really move the main plot along. Since this is book 6 of 7, the lack of plot development is devastating. The cliff hanger of an ending feels like Nix was forced into the "one book a day" formula, when perhaps a weekend release would have been a better fit.