Shade's Children

I had never heard of this book before but as I looked through our libraries stack of discarded book I saw this one and was curious. I have heard of Garth Nix's books before and even considered reading some of them and this one was science fiction and I have been looking for a good sci-fi book to read. (I was really excited to hear that Shannon Hale's next project is a Sci-Fi trilogy.) And for only 50 cents I thought it might be worth a try.

This is a post-apocalyptic story set 15 years after "the Change." Everyone over 15 disappeared and the Overlords showed up. These Overlords kept the children for Parts and on their 14th birthday the are taken to the Meat Factory to be harvested. As gory as that sounds I am very glad that nothing very explicit was ever described even though it could have been. The Overlords use these part to create monsters that they use in their own war games amongst each other.

Some of these children escape and meet up with a mysterious computerized individual that goes by the name of Shade. While Shade motives appear to be genuine his methods show an appalling disregard for life. This story tales of four of these children who fight against the Overlords, apparently with the help of Shade.

Overall the writing was decent but I was less than thrilled with the Sci-fi aspects of the story. Many of the plot devices seemed more fit for a horror novel than a typical sci-fi (yes I know that horror falls under the science fiction category as well).

There was also included several aspects that were completely unnecessary. A sub plot involved teen sex in this post apocalyptic society. Though there was nothing really graphic about the scene it did not do anything to further the central story. There was also a lot of vulgar language in some of the excerpts that are included between chapters. This excessive language did nothing more than pull me out of the story at it's completely illogical addition.

Overall a decent story that was worth the 50 cents I paid for it but not worth the sleep I missed trying to finish it before I went to bed.