[.ca] Shade's Children (ISBN 0064471969)

From Amazon.com:
In the brutal world of Shade's Children, your 14th birthday is your last. Malevolent Overlords rule the earth, directing hideous, humanoid creatures to harvest the brains and muscles of teens for use in engineering foul beasts to fight senseless wars. Young Gold-Eye escapes this horrific fate, fleeing the dormitories before his Sad Birthday. He is rescued from certain doom by other refugees who live in an abandoned submarine and work for Shade, a strange, computer-generated adult. Shade provides food and shelter in exchange for information that the children gather on dangerous forays into Overlord territory. But what does Shade really want? He is a sworn enemy of the Overlords, but his use of the children to gain knowledge and power seems uncaring and ruthless. Finally, Gold-Eye and his new friends set out to destroy the Overlords--with or without the enigmatic, dangerous Shade. Garth Nix, author of Sabriel, blends suspense, action, and high emotion in this excellent, fast-moving science-fiction story.

book from my childhood:
I have to say that this is one of the best books that I have ever read. Honestly, I read this book once, about six or seven years ago and yet it has remained one of my favorites! I remember the story like it was yesterday and have always recommended it to others. I read it when it was listed as a young reader's choice award nominee in junior high school, which seems to convey that the book is meant for young adults, however, I think that anyone who is a fan of science fiction or fiction in general will like this book!

Sci-fi for Sci-fi Haters:
This book kept me positively glued until the very last page, at which time tears trickled down my face. Shade's Children has distinctive elements of an un-cliched science fiction with suble undertones of fantasy in the "talents" that the heros and heroines posess. The concept of a world so horrific will make you sit and stare off into space, merely lost in thought for several minutes, pondering the future. You'll laugh, cry, and be incapable of motion when reading Shade's Children.

Awesome, Unbelievable and Breathtaking!!!:
The summary on the back of the book about sums up what it's about. But honestly, this book is skillfully written and made me cry alot at the end, Nix has done a WONDERFUL job on this, a definite must--read. To parents: there is a sex scene in this, I personally just skipped it, you might want to know if you bought it for younger kids.

A fun read, but it has it's flaws:
Nix's boundless imagination shines in this novel. I enjoy reading post-apocolyptic SF, and this book fits the bill. The setting in which Shade's Children takes place feels real enough and believable, not to mention creepy. The main characters are well developed, and for the most part they stick to their motives. There's lots of fun action with gadgets and gizmos, as well as swords (a not-so-common element for futuristic sf.) The character known as "Shade" kept me guesing as to what his intentions were almost throughout the entire novel. The book was good, bu not great. I like a plot to flow effortlessly without hinging on elements that are obviously there simply for the purpose of developing the plot,ie- the characters infiltrate the enemy's stronghold with the sole purpose of stealing a "projector" located on the stronghold's roof. They find the elevator that would take them to the roof, but because it's an unusual elevator, the team leader, a usually rational and inteligent character, decideds the whole team should take the elevator to a lower level because she thinks the unusual elevator won't allow them to come back down from the roof, even though it obviously allows them to descend, since they use it to go to a lower level. Once they reach the lower level they're ambushed by hundreds of the enemy and the rest of the story relies on this one event to create a suitable reason to turn the way it does. Nix never really explains why the earth was overtaken by evil "overlords" intent on using humans as stock for their war-games. But when one of the characters has a chance to ask this question of one of the overlords I got the impression that Nix was placing a plug for animal rights/ animal liberation. The overlord says to the girl, "You animals are so stupid. That's what you're there for." Finally, the ending seemed to me to have a major glitch. The characters find out that they can overcome the overlords by destroying the machine they used to take over the earth. It seems the overlords used a device to project a strange form of radiation across the surface of the earth which caused the necesarry changes for them to take over. That's fine and dandy, but this projector was mounted on a mountaintop. I'm no scientist, but it doesn't take a genius to figure out that anything projected from a mountaintop can only extend maybe a hundred miles or so before the curve of the earth's surface wouldn't allow it to reach any more of the earth. To reach the whole earth it would have had to be in orbit or there would have had to have been more than one projector. But if it had been in orbit or if there had been more than one, the characters never would have been able to destroy it/them and the book wouldn't have had a happy ending. So that's why the book doesn't get five stars. Too many goofy glitches in the plot. Nevertheless, it was fun to read. If you like creative sf with action and kids as the main characters then you likely won't feel like you wasted your time reading this book. But don't rave about it afterwords.

A book to WOW you:
This is the fourth Garth Nix's books i have read, and quite frankly i think it is the best. Only Garth Nix could write anything with this much thought and this many twists. Although i cried at the ending, (hey im a chick what do you expect?) i still highly reccomend reading this, not just for science fiction fans, but for any avid reader. Warning: Make sure when you start this book you have no disturbances and enough time to finish the whole book in one sitting.