Shade's Children

On your 14th birthday, you're dead meat! Chilling SF adventure from international bestselling author Garth Nix. 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!

from borders.com

Nathan says 4.99 stars...
Garth Nix=genius. That's really all there is to say, but I've never really known when to stop, so I guess I should tell you why. Shade's Children is set in a dystopian future. Everyone's life stops at their fourteenth birthday and the only chance for a free society is a basically a human computer. That's just the first few chapters. Plot twists abound and nothing is exactly as it seems. In short, the plot is excellent. The characters are well developed, but their general outlines seem a bit stock. Gold-Eye and the rest of the crew are pretty fascinating. Nix's skill at character interaction subtlety is almost unmatched in YA lit today. The only reason I haven't given Nix that last .01 point is because I know he can do better. This doesn't quite reach the heights that inspired fanboy moments in me during the Sabriel trilogy. It's still a fantastic read, but not Mr. Nix's best.

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