Shade's Children

Gold-eye, Ninde, Drum, and Ella are the lucky ones, among the few children to live past the age of fourteen: the age when most children are unceremoniously shipped away from the dormitories to the "Meat Factory", where their brains will be used to control one of a handful of grotesque monsters. Seven Overlords control their own separate armies of these monsters, using them to enact battles for their own amusement and sport. How did they get to Earth? Nobody is quite certain. Fifteen years ago everyone over the age of fourteen spontaneously disappeared, leaving behind only the children, who were summarily herded up by the recently arrived Overlords. It's up to our group of psychically endowed teenagers, and their mysterious A.I. leader known as Shade, to thwart the system that the Overlords have imposed upon the world and restore hope to humanity.

This was a nostalgia/comfort read for me in an attempt to break a small reading slump. I remember reading it a couple of times in middle school and really enjoying it. I had two major observations that went against my admittedly fuzzy memory of it: firstly, that Shade's Children is extremely dark for a work targeted at the middle grades. This is a world of violence, death, loss, and the promise of horrible disfiguration and dissection should you be caught by the monsters of the Overlords. Nix does not shy away from painting some really grizzly scenes. Might this be a nucleation point for my interest in such stories? Secondly, the scope of the novel is much smaller than I remember. Absent are any real conclusions or explanations about the broader world. Interesting to think that, had it been written today, this sparse and focused story would probably be a sixteen-plus book series: there's so much left hanging to explore. Instead, Nix is hyper focused on a breakneck series of tense action/espionage sequences; our group of teenage special forces only getting momentary breaks to reflect and catch their breath. I found it entertaining, but I'm not sure how much of that was because of the memories and familiarity it engendered in me.

An oddity of note: a curious and amusing endorsement of safe sex practices that I didn't quite know what to make of.

If you didn't read this as a kid, I'm not sure you would find much enjoyment in reading it as an adult. It's very much a work for younger people despite its content. I had a pleasant amount of nostalgia wash over me while reading, but I don't think that's enough for me to justify keeping it.