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| Shade's Children | |
| Author | Garth Nix |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Elliot Earls (paperback edition) |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Science fiction, Fantasy |
| Publisher | HarperCollins |
| Publication date | September 1997 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 320 p. (hardback edition) |
| ISBN | ISBN September 1997 (hardback edition) & ISBN 0064471969 (paperback edition) |
Shade's Children is a young adult science fiction/fantasy novel written by Garth Nix. It was published in 1997 by HarperCollins. The cover art for the paperback edition was designed and made by Elliot Earls.
Contents |
Background
Shade's Children takes place in a future where evil Overlords have ruled for fifteen years; since the catastrophic "Change" which caused all people over the age of fourteen to simply disappear. Since that date, the children have been rounded up and placed in prison-like dorms. No child may live past their fourteenth birthday (known as a "Sad Birthday), when they taken to the Meat Factory and his or her muscles, brain, and other organs are harvested to create bizzare creatures. These creatures are servants of the Overlords, and as such both fight in the Overlords' ceremonial territorial battles and hunt for rare escapees who have managed to remove the tracer implanted in their wrist. There is only one exception to this rule: some young women are kept for "breeding" to maintain the supply of children, until a suggested maximum age of eighteen.
Escape is rare, based both on courage and ability. These teens are gifted, however, with "Change Talents" - side effects of the "Change" that are unique to each individual and generally fall into the category of psychic powers (telekinesis, telepathy, visions, etc.) These talents are also dependent on Change Radiation, a mysterious field distributed by Change Projectors. This radiation allows the Overlords to control the weather and warp certain physical laws, which is critical for some creatures such as the Wingers (the Wingers would otherwise be too heavy to fly), but the strength of the field is weakened by water.
These escapees have one chance to survive. Several teams of escapees recruited by Shade live in a beached submarine, near a sewer pipe that allows access to an extensive sewer system. Shade is the only "adult" to have survived the Change. This, however, is mitigated by the fact that he is merely the uploaded consciousness of a real human scientist - Dr. Robert Ingman. Shade knows that he is an uploaded consciousness and thus continually questions his humanity.
Plot summary
Template:Spoiler Gold-Eye, a fourteen-year old teen, was born near the time of the Change. He was physically affected by the Change radiation and his eyes, including his pupils, are a bright golden color. He is also unusual in that he managed to escape and elude the Trackers and Myrmidons for a time. Yet as the story begins, he is finally trapped by the Myrmidons, and prepares to kill himself to prevent his organs from being harvested. This turns out to be unnecessary as he is miraculously saved by a team of strangers who stun the Myrmidons with a flashbang grenade and lift him to safety. These strangers are a team of Shade's Children, and after the group eludes some Ferrets by hiding in a tall building , he accompanies them back to the Sub.
Gold-Eye joins Shade's Children, and is soon sent off on his first mission with the team that saved him: Ella, Ninde, and Drum. Each team member is unique, and has Change abilities that correspond somewhat to their personality.
This mission is a critical one: to retrieve the equipment and data from Shade's abandoned laboratory on the University campus in the Department of Abstract Computing, including a device that measures Change radiation. It is also one of the most dangerous missions: All of the teams who have attempted this retrieval have been killed or captured in the process. Ella's team is successful, even when the overlord Black Banner surrounds and invades the building, alerted by Leamington, a pre-Change artificial intelligence who calls the police on detection of the intruders. Leamington is notably different from Shade in that he is an artificial intelligence as opposed to an uploaded consciousness.
After resting at the Sub, Shade unveils the reward created with the recovered data: metal crowns called Deceptors which scramble the sensory input of the Overlords' creatures, effectively making a human wearer invisible and non-olfactive to them as long as the power supply is maintained. It also is later revealed that scent trails are equally scrambled, although footprints are not. With this sudden new advantage and information, Shade is more curious about the method of distribution of Change radiation and sends Ella's team on a newer, even more dangerous mission: to steal a Change Projector from Fort Drum, the stronghold of Red Diamond. This mission is not successful: on entry, the team discovers that the stronghold stretches underground, allowing for the presence of creatures. The team's Deceptors run out prematurely as they discover a Myrmidon barracks, and they escape with a conch-shaped Overlord device called a Thinker, but without Drum, who, having been winded, stays behind to fight. It is presumed by the rest of the team that he is killed.
On return to the Sub, however, Gold-Eye has a vision in which he sees Drum being stored temporarily in the Meat Factory, indicating that Drum is still alive. The group presents the device to Shade, who appreciates the Overlord device Ninde took from Fort Drum but refuses a request to rescue Drum, as the Meat Factory is one of the most heavily guarded Overlord facilities.
The team, led by Ella, defies Shade's orders and infiltrates the Meat Factory, successfully rescuing Drum. They then leave cautiously, using the Deceptors to mask their trail. While resting among the branches of a large tree, Ninde telepathically detects an Overlord. The detection proves not only to be hard mentally on her since the Overlord is of human or greater intelligence, but also emotionally hard: Ninde discovers that the Overlords are essentially human. Despite the difficulty, she discovers that the Overlord may know something about "a mind in a machine" -a dangerous thing for them, since Shade - a machine intelligence- is their leader and benefactor. They continue, to discover on reaching the Submarine that it has been invaded by an Overlord, Red Diamond, and that most of the people inside have been killed or captured. Fortunately, Shade had realized long before that the Sub was not a permanent base, and established multiple supply caches throughout the city in case a team was stranded in the field or the Sub was taken. True to their training, the team heads immediately to the nearest cache -to discover Shade, who escaped, apparently by chance, while testing a mobile robot body based around the Thinker for himself. Shade's escape is doubly fortuitous in that the Overlord used an electromagnetic pulse weapon to disable the Submarine; had he been within range of the weapon, he would have been incapacitated.
Despite the loss of all of Shade's children except for Ella's team, the meeting is a good one: Shade has discovered how to defeat the Overlords. Examining and measuring Change radiation, he had discovered that all known Change projectors were actually redistributors of Change radiation from a single source, a so-called Grand Projector. Were this projector destroyed, all creatures would cease to function, and the Overlords would likely be removed whence they came. Having discovered the source of the Change Radiation - a Mount Silverstone - they set out with Deceptors to find and destroy the source, hopefully bringing reality back to normal.
Characters in "Shade's Children"
Main Characters
- Shade
Ella's Team
- Ella, the leader of the group, is resourceful and strong but cold and withdrawn emotionally. Her Change Talent is the ability to summon ("conjure") inanimate objects of limited mass at will, usually weapons.
- Ninde is somewhat childish and watches many pre-Change movies to escape from her reality to that older world, into which she would probably be integrated well —she is emotional, dramatic, and attractive. Her Change Talent is telepathy: she can read minds within a limited level of complexity and distance by chewing on her knuckles.
- Drum is an embodiment of strength and is described as having to use special clothing on account of his size, but has been emasculated by steroids given to him by the Overlords since he was to become a Myrmidon. His Change Talent is telekinesis, limited by mass.
- Gold-Eye is constantly nervous and moving, still paranoid from his life spent constantly eluding the Trackers and Myrmidons that hunted him. His Change Talent is (unusually) not under his control, but comes to him in the form of visions of the future he calls (with his low fluency in English) the "soon-to-be-now".
Minor Characters
- Stelo
- Lisa
- Mac
- Brat
List of Overlords
- Black Banner
- Red Diamond
- Blue Star
- Gold Claw
- Silver Sun
- Gray Crescent
- Emerald Crown
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Please help improve this section by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion. |
List of Creatures
- Tracker
Trackers are the scouts of Overlord forces - their noses, ears, and eyes are larger than normal and further enhanced with Overlord cyborg technology. They travel in "trios" of three, using whistling noises to indicate their status.
- Ferret
Ferrets are similar to their real-life counterparts in appearance, but are notedly larger, more intelligent, and have hollow fangs with which to partially exsanguinate their victims. They are nocturnal, and seem to act merely as hunters of escapees rather than also fighting for the Overlords. Ferrets also have an affinity for underground locales and dislike heights, including tall buildings. They operate in "fangs" of five, and make hissing noises to communicate.
- Myrmidon
Myrmidons, unlike some of the other creatures, are humanoid: Larger than most, (the teens of which they are made are given steroids) these creatures are always seen wearing full armour and carrying a mêlée weapon or a net gun, used to capture escapees. They are the shock troops of the Overlords and the primary fighting units. They appear in "maniples" of seven.
- Myrmidon Master
A Myrmidon Master is a larger, more intelligent Myrmidon who commands other Myrmidons. In the field, they are second in command only to a visiting Overlord. Myrmidon Masters are not generally seen in groups with other Myrmidon Masters, but rather among groups of the lesser Myrmidons.
- Winger
- Drone
Drones are the Overlord's workers: although they do not have enhanced senses or any defense, these workers who maintain and run the Meat Factory are super-strong: they lift Drum without strain. They are only found in Overlord installations, where there are invariably others nearby to defend them. A standard size of Drone groups is not mentioned in the book.
- Screamer
Although no Screamers are ever seen in the book, they are heard - their scream is so loud as to be able to deafen people far away from it. They are also the primary method of alarm for sleeping Myrmidons - only a Screamer can wake a Myrmidon quickly. They do not travel in groups.
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Please help improve this section by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion. |
Main themes
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Please help improve this section by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion. |
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