Lady Friday (The Keys to the Kingdom, #5) in Aussie Readers

Jun 01, 2014 Anne Hamilton rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: ya, spec-fic, fantasy, australia-nz

I would have given it five stars but it killed off my favourite character. Rrrrr...

Arthur is changing and he knows it. He's losing his humanity in more ways than one and his struggle to retain it is one of the more interesting aspects of this book. Ever since defeating Sir Thursday and taking the fourth Key, he finds himself subject to moments of arrogance fused with incandescent rage. Trying to control it is bad enough but he's now got a ring that lets him know how close he is to becoming (irre I would have given it five stars but it killed off my favourite character. Rrrrr...

Arthur is changing and he knows it. He's losing his humanity in more ways than one and his struggle to retain it is one of the more interesting aspects of this book. Ever since defeating Sir Thursday and taking the fourth Key, he finds himself subject to moments of arrogance fused with incandescent rage. Trying to control it is bad enough but he's now got a ring that lets him know how close he is to becoming (irreversibly) an no-longer-human Denizen.

He's getting suspicious about Dame Primus and the Will of the Architect, too. He only likes some parts of the Will. Some seem intolerant, judgmental and a little too gungho-let's-shoot-everyone-who-might-one-day-just-possibly-turn-against-us.

Lady Friday has set a trap: she's pretended to abdicate and sent messages to Arthur, Superior Saturday and the Piper to say that the Fifth Key is in the Scriptorium and whoever gets it first is welcome to it. Arthur - silly Arthur - touches a silver disk in the message which happens to be a transport plate. He finds himself in a vast snowfield and wonders if it's possible for a near-Denizen to freeze to death. He's so cold he realises he cannot possibly be inside the House but must have been transported to a Secondary Realm.

Here he meets up again with Suzy and Fred who, at the Piper's orders, are being escorted and protected by a New Nithling soldier, Banneret Ugham.

Uggie is by far my favourite character in the series so far. He might, as Suzy says, be a turnip farmer at heart but his sense of honour (and his delightfully old-fashioned speech) is a refreshing juxtaposition to the Trustees and their seven deadly sins.

Lady Friday's besetting vice is lust - a concupiscence for experiencing the emotions of life. She's set up her own hospital on Earth so she can have a regular supply of humans, always of a mature vintage, whose richly-nuanced and complex-shaded memories she can imbibe. But, of course, lust has a way of getting out of control...

...more

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