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Title: Shade's Children
Author: Garth Nix
Genre: YA SF dystopia
Thingummies: 2.5
Synopsis: After all the adults in the world mysteriously disappear, the children find themselves rounded up and, on their fourteenth birthday, converted into obscene cyborgs used in baffling battles. Only a rogue AI can save them, but he may not have their best interests at heart.
Thoughts: I really enjoyed Nix's Abhorsen trilogy, so I found this book deeply disappointing. His world is suitably imaginative in its gruesomeness. But his characters are incredibly flat. Ninde, in particular, is incredibly annoying, and she never seems to grow up or learn. In fact, all of the characters have no arc to speak of, with the possible exception of Shade. And Shade's arc is handled so clumsily as to be confusing and not particularly satisfying.
In the Abhorsen series, there is clearly a lot of backstory that Nix has in his head that never made it to paper. It's frustrating, but it makes the world feel deep and rich. Here, it feels more like the backstory never got fleshed out. Did the adults invite the Overlords on purpose? Is there some way to prevent them from coming back? Is this a world-wide effect? Everything seems to happen only in one city--what happened to the rest of the world? Surely it would be more fun to stage battles in many different environments. Unless there's some sort of bubble over the city, and everything outside is normal? Where's the food and power coming from? Things don't seem nearly as broken down as they should be after 15 years of neglect. Are they really managing to keep up a steady production of children if they're killing them off, even if they let their breeding population survive until 16? And if they manage to overthrow the Overlords, are a bunch of 14-year-olds saddled with caring for younger children really going to survive a single winter?
Also, I seem to be on a kick of horrific body modification books (completely by accident), and this is the least interesting of the lot.
Disappointing.
Author: Garth Nix
Genre: YA SF dystopia
Thingummies: 2.5
Synopsis: After all the adults in the world mysteriously disappear, the children find themselves rounded up and, on their fourteenth birthday, converted into obscene cyborgs used in baffling battles. Only a rogue AI can save them, but he may not have their best interests at heart.
Thoughts: I really enjoyed Nix's Abhorsen trilogy, so I found this book deeply disappointing. His world is suitably imaginative in its gruesomeness. But his characters are incredibly flat. Ninde, in particular, is incredibly annoying, and she never seems to grow up or learn. In fact, all of the characters have no arc to speak of, with the possible exception of Shade. And Shade's arc is handled so clumsily as to be confusing and not particularly satisfying.
In the Abhorsen series, there is clearly a lot of backstory that Nix has in his head that never made it to paper. It's frustrating, but it makes the world feel deep and rich. Here, it feels more like the backstory never got fleshed out. Did the adults invite the Overlords on purpose? Is there some way to prevent them from coming back? Is this a world-wide effect? Everything seems to happen only in one city--what happened to the rest of the world? Surely it would be more fun to stage battles in many different environments. Unless there's some sort of bubble over the city, and everything outside is normal? Where's the food and power coming from? Things don't seem nearly as broken down as they should be after 15 years of neglect. Are they really managing to keep up a steady production of children if they're killing them off, even if they let their breeding population survive until 16? And if they manage to overthrow the Overlords, are a bunch of 14-year-olds saddled with caring for younger children really going to survive a single winter?
Also, I seem to be on a kick of horrific body modification books (completely by accident), and this is the least interesting of the lot.
Disappointing.
