Blurb from Amazon:
The clock is ticking for the children of the world, and the key to survival rests in the hands of Shade's Children. In a futuristic urban wasteland, evil Overlords have decreed that no child shall live a day past his fourteenth birthday. On that Sad Birthday, the child is the object of an obscene harvest resulting in the construction of a machinelike creature whose sole purpose is to kill. The mysterious Shade - once a man, but now more like the machines he fights - recruits the few children fortunate enough to escape. With luck, cunning, and skill, four of Shade's children come closer than any to discovering the source of the Overlords' power - and the key to their downfall. But the closer the children get, the more ruthless Shade seems to become!
Review:
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 of the characters limited the depth the story could have reached. The lack of emotional development meant that I was not able to form emotional attachments to the characters and thus, I did not sympathise with them very deeply.
There were some unanswered questions in the novel such as whether the adults who disappeared at the time of the ‘Change’ ever reappeared when the Grand Projector was destroyed. It was very unrealistic how Shade’s children were still obtaining supplies from supermarkets and stores all over the city, fifteen years after ‘The Change’. Surely all of the food would have perished or been taken by everyone else?
Also, the Overlords (the foe) were 2D. They did not explain their reasons for taking over the world and endlessly fighting pointless ceremonial battles. Like in most dystopian novels, the question of what had happened to the rest of the world remained unanswered. Shade’s Children was limited to the city and the immediate area around it. This meant that the book was unclear in some major areas.
The Overlords felt like secondary characters and I wanted them to be more three dimensional. I believe Shade’s Children would have ranked more highly with me if a deeper emotional layer was added to the novel. There were seven Overlords and they were all easily forgettable.
Whilst reading Shade’s Children, I felt like I was reading about a computer game. The action was playing out in front of me, one thing constantly after another, but I was adamantly not allowed into the characters’ minds; their thoughts and feelings. This left me feeling like an outsider and also wondering when these characters slept.
The extracts from the computer archives that were liberally interspersed throughout the book became wearisome after the first ten or so. These ranged from easily understandable character interviews to complex tables of figures and statistics (which I could have done without).
Shade, as a character, felt as if he could have been developed more. I actually liked the fact that I wasn’t sure whose side he was on throughout the book as it kept me guessing. Shade’s internal conflict was aptly demonstrated.
There were moments in Shade’s Children where I did empathise with the characters, but they were few and far between. For example, I felt emotional at the end of the book due to Ella and Drum’s heroism and I felt sorry for Shade’s victims.
Overall, I feel that Shade’s Children was an average story and I persevered to the end, even though I felt like giving up much earlier. I know that this book would appeal to people looking for loads of action without much of the emotional drama but Shade’s Children was not one of my favourites.
I would give Shade's Children a 3/5 stars.
Find more books by Garth Nix here.
Have you read Shade's Children? What did you think?
I am writing this review as part of Dystopian August over at Presenting Lenore. Go and check it out!
