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 ...

ANNOTATION

In a savage postnuclear world, four young fugitives attempt to overthrow the bloodthirsty rule of the Overlords with the help of Shade, their mysterious mentor.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

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 ...

About the Author

Garth Nix was born in 1963 in Melbourne, Australia, to the sound of the Salvation Army band outside playing ‘Hail the Conquering Hero Comes’ or possibly ‘Roll Out the Barrel’. Garth left Melbourne at an early age for Canberra (the federal capital) and stayed there till he was nineteen, when he left to drive around the UK in a beat-up Austin with a trunk full of books and a Silver-Reed typewriter.

Despite a wheel literally falling off the Austin, Garth survived to return to Australia and study at the University of Canberra. After finishing his degree in 1986 he worked in a bookshop, then as a book publicist, a publisher’s sales representative, and editor. Along the way he was also a part-time soldier in the Australian Army Reserve, serving in an Assault Pioneer platoon for four years. Garth left publishing to work as a public relations and marketing consultant from 1994-1997, till hebecame a full-time writer in 1998. He did that for a year before becoming a part-time literary agent in 1999. In January 2002 Garth went back to writing full time again, despite his belief that full-time writing explains the strange behaviour of many authors.

Garth currently lives in a beach suburb of Sydney, with his wife Anna, a publisher.

SYNOPSIS

In this suspenseful futuristic story, Shade's Children form a resistance movement to stave off savage mutant creatures.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Earth has been taken over by the terrible Overlords in this "amply imagined" science fiction/quest story, said PW. "The twists and turns of the action-filled plot are compelling." Ages 12-up. (Oct.) r

Children's Literature - Marilyn Courtot

All the essential ingredients are here-the setting is a future world where anyone over the age of 14 has been eliminated and the world is controlled by a group of Overlords who do nothing but fight battles. The grist for these battles are children who when they reach the age of 14 are turned into fighting machines with human components. Of course, a group has escaped and with the help of Shade, a holographic adult, they attempt to free the world from the grip of the Overlords. The story is tense and compelling, but it strangely falls apart at the very end. It is never clear why destroying the Thinker eliminates the Overlords, there is no retribution for their evil deeds, and no fear on the part of the children that they will return. Still it will appeal to Young Adult Sci-fi fans.

VOYA - Donna L. Scanlon

Through a fast-paced combination of narrative, transcripts, chilling statistical reports, and shifting points of view, Nix depicts a chilling future. Conquering Overlords from another dimension play an endless and ghastly game of war using creatures called Wingers, Myrmidons, Screamers, and Ferrets; each creature contains the transplanted brain of a human child culled when the child is fourteen. The novel follows a team of four young people who have escaped the Dormitories intended to warehouse them and who have come under the protection of Shade, a holographic image supported by artificial intelligence. Like others under Shade's protection, the four-Ella, Drum, Ninde, and Golden-Eye-are loyal to Shade, the only benign adult presence in their lives, and they willingly become soldiers in his struggle against the Overlords. But when Drum is captured while they are on a crucial mission, the team resolves to rescue him, regardless of whether the mission fits into Shade's plans. As events escalate, they even begin to question Shade's motives and means. Nix's taut narrative never lets go of the reader, and the characters are compelling, their frailties emphasizing their humanity in sharp contrast to the Overlords'. His grim vision of the future is laced with hope, an element noticeably missing from much of today's young adult literature, and it is this hope that sustains the reader through the nail-biting plot to the satisfying conclusion. VOYA Codes: 4Q 4P J S (Better than most, marred only by occasional lapses, Broad general YA appeal, Junior High-defined as grades 7 to 9 and Senior High-defined as grades 10 to 12).

School Library Journal

Gr 9 UpOne day, in the not-too-distant future, everyone over the age of 14 simply disappears. The remaining children are rounded up to live in dormitories. Once they reach their "Sad Birthday" they are sent to the "Meat Factory," where they are dismantled and used to make up the horrible half-human, half-mechanical creatures that fight the violent, ritualistic battles of the seven warlords who have taken over Earth. Some of the young people, however, develop psychic abilities that make escape from the dorms possible; they live underground, doing their best to avoid the creatures and certain death. An almost-sentient computer, Shade, uses teams of escapees to help him discover the secrets of the warlords so that he can return things to normal. When his best team completes a nearly impossible mission during which one of their own is captured, Shade refuses to authorize a rescue. It then becomes clear to the teens that he has no intention of letting things return to normal and that they are the last chance to save humanity from robotic servitude. Although this is a fast-paced, exciting, and often graphic story, it is pretty serious science fiction and its appeal will be limited to fans of the genre. Straight narrative chapters alternate with files from Shade's increasingly unbalanced memory, a device that works well in this context. A well-written and engaging book.Carrie Schadle, New York Public Library

Kirkus Reviews

This novel from Nix (Sabriel, 1995, not reviewed) combines plenty of comic-book action in a sci-fi setting to produce an exciting read.

Through a projector that can bend dimensions, the alien Overlords freeze time and make anyone over 14 vanish off the face of the Earth. What is left is a world of terrified children who are herded into dormitories, where their brains are eventually harvested and wired into the circuitry of the Overlord's willing beasts. Over the years, a handful of teens have found a home in the secret submarine base of Shade, a computer-generated holographic program and the only nurturing adult sensibility on the planet. The narrative follows the escape of Gold-Eye, a boy with precognizance, and his subsequent recruitment and training with Ella, Drum, and Ninde, who comprise one of Shade's crackerjack squads. Predictably, the group is involved in a mission to take out the Overlord's projector; Nix deftly weaves in a few surprising plot twists, and the teens must grapple not only with betrayal, but the loss of half their team in battle. The author pulls off a happy ending without straining credibility largely through the characters' sacrifice—a satisfying end to an action-adventure with uncommon appeal outside the genre.