Althea M. (althea) reviewed on 9/15/2008 + 774 more book reviews

Although not as good as his 'Abhorsen' trilogy, "Shade's Children" reminded me a lot of many post-apocalyptic books I read as a kid - so I rather liked it.
The premise is that beings from (possibly) a parallel world have taken over Earth, eliminating everyone over fourteen, and imprisoning and raising the human children in order to use their physical parts to create Creatures with which to play wargames. However, a few children manage to escape, and some of those come under the wing of Shade - a human-created AI which has been oddly enhanced by the fields that the alien (?) Overlords generate (and which also gives some human children precognitive or other powers). Shade's stated goal is to find a way to overthrow the Overlords and restore normality to Earth - but his methods are cold and ruthless - and will his own self-interest outweigh altruism?
It's an interesting premise, but I felt like there were quite a few logical plot holes, I didn't find that the social attitudes of the characters matched up realistically with their given backgrounds, and there were several aspects to the whole story that I wished had been more deeply explored.

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