The Keys to the Kingdom

Garth Nix

Allen and Unwin (2003-2010)

Retrospective by Alexandra Pierce, March 2010

I loathe reading a series while it is still being written. Some find the sense of expectation a delightfully tingly one, I just find it brings out the worst of my impatience. I cannot express my unendurable smugness at all those Harry Potter fans agonising over the release date of the last book (I finally read them in 2009, ok? And yes, I’m converted).

For the last few years, the only series I have been waiting on impatiently has been Garth Nix’s Keys to the Kingdom. And by that I mean trying to find out when each successive book came out; for the latest, and last, it meant asking in every bookstore I walked into whether it was on their system yet and whether they had a release date (and this while I was on holidays overseas). It has been something of an obsession. A curious one, too: they are short books, aimed at the younger end of the Young Adult spectrum. It seems, objectively, a bit ridiculous to so breathlessly anticipate a book that I read in about three hours (yes, I’ve timed it). And yet.