Garth Nix is wonderful. He is one of the true great sci-fi and fantasy authors. Shade's Children was heartbreakingly sad and clever. This book is not a pick-me-up but I do think that it is original and interesting. However, fans of the Old Kingdom beware, this is very different from his other books.

When I picked this up, I picked it up for the fact I was a fan of Garth Nix's Old Kingdom Trilogy, and was hoping to find more that he had written. And this really did ace it.

Shade's Children is set in a dystopia setting, perhaps more modern than not, as the technology of present day is still there in that setting, but no one knows how to use it. Fifteen years ago everyone over fourteen vanished, and eventually children were rounded up and taken to the Dorms. When you turn fourteen, you die. If More...

Shade's Children
By Garth Nix
345pp. New York, New York
Harper Collins Publishers
ISBN 0 06 447196 9

The Overlords have taken over the world and the only people that can do anything about it are an organization of children lead by a part robot called Shade. Apparently, these robot overlords want to take kids on their fourteenth birthday and use them for spare parts on their robot cronies. The plot isn't all that exciting to be honest. I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone, not in this lifetime. I More...

This was a fantastic book!! Kind of made me think of a junior version of 'Battlestar Galactica', which is one of my favorite television shows.

The book takes place in a futuristic setting. One day all of the people over the age of 14 just disappear leaving behind nothing but children. Shortly after the adults disappear the children are rounded up and taken to dormitories where they are raised until their 14th birthday at which time they are taken away by creatures, to the Meat Factory. The Meat More...

Unless you escape, by age fourteen the Overlords will come to harvest you for parts. If you manage to survive the well-organized hunters, you just may find refuge with Shade and help him destroy the Overlords. And if Shade doesn't send you on a suicide mission, you may make it to adulthood. Maybe.

Fifteen years ago every adult over the age of fourteen vanished in the Change. Soon the world was crawling with creatures who locked up the remaining children to be farmed for parts. On their Sad Birthd More...

One day, a child woke up in his bed to discover that his parents were gone, Not only his parents, though – everyone’s. In fact, every person over the age of fourteen had disappeared. All the children left behind were soon rounded up into the Dorms where they lived until their Sad Birthday, the day when their brains and various other body parts would be ripped out and used to make one of the Overlord’s creatures. Another monster to die as part of the Overlords’ armies as each Overlord strives to More...

Very mixed feelings about this one. It gets four stars because I thought the writing was excellent, and the scene-setting brilliant. I was instantly drawn into this dystopian world, in which everyone over the age of 14 has disappeared and children are basically farmed for their body parts, which go to provide soldiers for the "overlords" that have taken over the earth. Garth Nix's imagination seems so fertile, it makes me despair of ever being able to write anything decent in comparison.

The rest More...

This book is set in a time after the change. The change occurred on an ordinary day. All of a sudden everyone over the age of 14 disappeared. They were just gone. Pretty soon the overlords came and started rounding kids up into the dormitories. As soon as these kids turned 14, they are sent to the Meat Factory and their brains and muscles are harvested. They overlords put these into their creatures. They closely resemble regular creatures, but they are used in the overlords' battles. This is the More...

I liked this a lot when I was a YA myself, but while I still think some parts are well done, in general I don't find Shade's Children nearly as good as the Abhorsen trilogy.

One problem is the backstory -- there are some small holes and some very big ones. I mostly liked that Nix doesn't try to explain the situation very much, because it should only be a little less mysterious to the reader than it is to the protagonists; but then again, in science fiction there should at least be a pretense that More...

If 3.7 was an option that is what I would choose. It was a good book, a very creative idea and format. I liked how the chapters were divided with other things that were still related to the story. I also very much so enjoyed the 'hit-the-ground-running' kind of start the book had. Then, the story didn't halt or reach a standstill at any point. It was just a grand, flowing and continuous masterpiece that didn't stop until the end of the book. When the comments on the back said you'd be up all nig More...

Sigh, just wrote a long summary and then lost it.

15 years ago all the adults on the planet (over 14) disappeared and in their absence a group of monsters arrived lead by 7 Overlords. The children were picked up and placed into dorms, where they live until they turn 14 (their sad birthday). At 14 they are taken to the Meat Factory, where parts of them will be used to build new monsters to serve an Overlord and battle for parts of the city.

Gold-eye managed to escape with the help of his brother, w More...

[Possible spoilers]
Sometime in the near future a phenomenon has occurred instantaneously removing all adults from the world leaving the children at the mercy of a mysterious group they refer to as Overlords. Some children escape their fate as mere body parts bred to become soldiers in the battles these Overlords have against each other. Their "protector" is Shade, whose personality resides in a computer and sends these children out on missions to learn more about the Overlords and possibly how More...

I'm a big fan of Garth Nix and have read practically all of his books. Which is why I was so surprised to find this one since I've never heard of it before. And after reading it, I realized there's a good reason for that: this book kind of stinks. As a book, it's all right, but as a Garth Nix book, it's terrible. It's his worst book by far. It's almost like he decided he wanted to do what all the other young adult authors were doing by putting in a bunch of swearing and sexual references, but it More...

Shade’s Children had an interesting storyline and had great potential. I was gripped by the fact that the main character at the beginning of the book, Goldeye, was in a life-threatening position and about to be caught by mutants. I was interested in the children’s Change talents and wondered how they had developed these abilities. Also, I wanted to know why they only lived until the age of fourteen- which I found out the answer to later on in the book.

However, the lack of emotional development More...

*Spoilers for him or her who cares whether this book has a happy ending or a sad one. (In retrospect, that's probably loads of people, but I'm always unwilling to mark the "contains spoilers" box. I usually try not to spoil things.)*

We open the first few pages and here we are, cheerily dropped by Garth Nix into a world in which seven psychopaths of a higher life form, apparently hailing from another dimension, have taken over this world and taken World of Warcraft to the next level. So far so go More...

An odd dystopian novel with a pnderous ending--even the tragedy of the end can''t fully redeem the over-lying premise. Okay: the future where children are herded into fascist-like dormitories and when they reach a certain age, their brains are harvested for placement into cyborg warriors. Children manage to escape, though, and some have banded together in an old submarine under the control of Shade, a hologram imprint of a dead professor. The rules are just as strict here, and the children are More...

An absolutely relentless dystopia. If you liked The Hunger Games and the Monsters of Men series, you may well like this; but be warned, there's very little in the way of redemption, human connection or joy-in-the-little-things here. It is seriously bleak and it never lets up for a moment. This is hard, unlovely, unpatronising sci-fi in a kill or be killed world where *everything* is out to get you. It is aimed at a YA audience and honestly, the reviews here make me laugh when they give warnings More...

Reads very smoothly and the action scenes are depicted very nicely. It reads like a well-constructed movie. (If a screenplay was made for the book, it would be a pretty straightforward job.) The book is driven by actions rather than descriptions. The book's characters could have been one-dimensional and undeveloped, but like a good action movie, they are actually well characterized and likeable.

However as much as I liked Garth Nix's decision to write a movie-if-it-was-written book, I do wish he More...

There were three reasons why Shade's Children only got 3 stars, for it was a entertaining storyline and you bonded with Ella, Ninde, Drum and Gold-Eye. First, after having read a series of dystopian novels such as the Gone series, Matched, The Maze Runner series etc.. I found the novel to have way too much sci-fi for my taste. Picking up the book, I excepted it to be similar to other dystopian novels. However, I found out later on that the author specializes in sci-fi.

Second, I found it hard to More...

It took some time for me to determine whether to give Shade's Children two or three stars... but decided on two in the end. The premise is compelling: four children (who appear to range in age from 15 to 19) escape from evil overlords who rule a dystopian future where humans don't live past age fourteen, and all adults have disappeared. On their "Sad Birthday," the children are taken to the "Meat Factory," where they are dissected and used for parts to create the Overlords' nightmarish creatures More...

i think i read this book like when i was in grade 6 and i was scared imagining a world were i would have died in 3 years. (i was 11 at the time)

Garth Nix is a FANTASTIC writer and i was hooked, i tell u HOOKED!!!! to this book till the end. It was one of the very few stand alone books that blew my mind....

fantastic writing and veryyyy original considering its a dystopian and i dont usually like dystopian (after suffering from PTSD from readin fail dystopians such as Matched and Delirium)

so yeh More...

The first 200+ pages of this dystopian sci fi thriller are excellent. Some strange force has triggered a radioactive Change and vaporized all humans 14 or older. Children are raised and harvested to bio-engineer the hideous creatures that patrol the battered landscape.

Shade is the creepy holograph mastermind of a band of child guerrillas. Or at least he’s creepy enough, until he goes all Dr. Evil. His sinister side becomes obvious and camp, complete with diabolical tics of suppressed diabolisho More...

A good book with no slow spots. Every chapter begins or ends with a data file from Shade and I think it really is a nice format for this story. It adds depth to some of the characters quite nicely.

There is a lot to recommend this book to people of a sci-fi interest. And few slightly annoying things. As I said, pace, plot, and character development and plot were great. There were a few glimpses of teens being the target audience but overall I would not say it was driven straight to that demograp More...

This was an enjoyable book! I wish I knew more about the Overlords and how they got there and everything about that, but it was still a good book to read.



Also, I got bothered that Gold-Eye's character seemed to fade as the story went on. He seemed less of a "character" and more of a vessel for plot. Shade, on the contrary, grew stronger as a character as the book progressed, which was really nice to read.



The concepts and everything were very fascinating, and I loved the little bits where the Ov More...

Set in a future dystopia, where the Overlords have decreed that no human can live past their 14th birthday, four fugitive teens set out to set society back on track. Under the watchful eyes of their once-human mentor, Shade, they come face to face with all manner of evils.

I really enjoy good dystopian fiction, but lately they all seem the same. Shade's Children was remarkably fresh and appropriately dark. The world of this book is the near-future, making the story terrifyingly believable.

The sto More...

I did not expect to like this book as much as I did, but when it was finished in my hands there was that beautifully bitter sense of loss for a brilliant story completed and gone. Set in what one can only assume is the future, we follow four children who have been spared from the Meat Factory by a semi-human computer named Shade. In a world where Overlords have taken the planet for use in their war games, human children are only allowed to live until 14 before their organs are harvested to make More...

Again the cover art of a book caught my attention long enough for me to purchase it and walk out of the store...I was expecting something a bit more like dystopian fiction but ended up with a sci-fi action/horror book? The book has pieces of journal entry, the characters are videotaping themselves, and provides insight into certain things. The writing style is not bad at all and the plot has some great characteristics but I just had a hard time getting into it. A brief summary would be it is set More...

I have been wanting and meaning to read this book for years, ever since I first started reading Nix's the Abhorsen trilogy in middle/high school. This book did not disappoint me, even after all these years.

The organisation of this book is interesting, and adds to the story by giving background and small side notes between every chapter. These "inbetween chapters" also made it far more difficult to put the book down. "But I got to read this section, it's short!" (Not a good thing when you are re More...

Picture this: A group of humans from another dimension come to Earth in the late 20th century and found a church and a religious movement. They direct their ignorant followers to build "churches" for them on mountaintops, on which the other-dimension humans install projectors that radiate energy. They cause these projectors to be installed on the rooftops of the tallest buildings in this unnamed metropolitan area in which this novel takes place. Once all their preparations have been done, they t More...