This certainly has the same absurd, surreal, magical dream-logic of The Midnight Folk, an acceptance of the strange and the impossible and the hugely unlikely at face value with little in the way of astonishment or disbelief. If anything this is a bit more grounded than Folk with an unfolding plot and an evil scheme, as the villainous Abner Brown chases the Box of Delights which allows people to move around in time. The old Punch And Judy Man gives the box to Kay and Kay must use it to rescue the Punch And Judy man as well as assorted cousins and a entire cathedral full of clergy being picked off and hidden in caves by Brown and his men in the mistaken belief that one of them has the Box, and all just before the Christmas service, too. Nonetheless, Kay moves coolly and with only rare signs of distress through various strange and wonderful and occasionally terrifying encounters with an aplomb that is downright hilarious. A deeply old-fashioned, arguably antiquated, children's story that takes its logic from deeper stories still until at the final line when even the author seems to give up trying to make sense of it. That ending should be more annoying than it is, and if I'd read it when younger I might have gotten pretty cross about it, but as it is it just left me shaking my head in amazement.