Shade's Children

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Shade's Children is a young adult science fiction novel by Garth Nix, first published in Australia in 1997. The story is set in a near future where a disaster called the Change has wiped out everyone over fourteen years old. The remaining children are kept in dorms and few survive past their Sad Birthday, when their organs are harvested to create the Overlords’ monsters. A small group of teens escape and fight back, using special powers called Change Talents that come from Change Radiation.

Shade, the only adult who survived the Change, is actually an uploaded consciousness—the mind of a scientist named Robert Ingman stored in machines before the Change. He leads a gang called Shade’s Children and helps the teens on their missions.

Key characters
- Ella: the strong, capable leader who can conjure objects.
- Ninde: a telepath who can read minds a little and becomes close to Gold-Eye.
- Drum: a very strong boy who has telekinesis but was kept as a Myrmidon by the Overlords; he’s big and loyal.
- Gold-Eye: a fifteen-year-old with golden eyes who can glimpse the “soon-to-be-now,” a kind of future sense.

Plot in brief
- The kids live in a beached submarine and move around the city using hidden supply caches.
- They discover Deceptors, metal crowns that scramble what Overlords’ creatures sense, helping people hide.
- They attempt to steal a Change Projector from Fort Robertson, but the mission is dangerous and they must retreat.
- Afterward, they rescue Drum from the Meat Factory, a brutal place where they learn the Overlords are basically human minds using machines to rule.
- Shade tries to gain a human body for himself. He betrays the children, capturing Gold-Eye and Ninde, while Ella and Drum escape.
- Ella and Drum reach Mount Silverstone, where Shade appears as a hologram in the Overlords’ systems.
- Ella destroys the Thinker that controls the Grand Projector, causing a radiation overload that disables all Overlord creatures. The Overlords are defeated, but Ella and Drum die from the radiation.
- Ninde and Gold-Eye survive and receive a vision of a future in which they become the parents of two children named for Ella and Drum.

Shade’s true self, Robert Ingman, is revealed as the original mind behind Shade’s artificial persona. After the Thinker is destroyed, he tries to make amends and continue helping humanity in whatever way he can.

Themes
- Survival against a ruthless, powerful enemy.
- What it means to be human, especially when a mind can live inside machines.
- Hope and love in bleak times, including a budding romance between Ninde and Gold-Eye.

Awards
Shade's Children was shortlisted for the 1997 Aurealis Award for best young-adult novel and won the 1998 Golden Duck Award. It is also recognized as an ALA Notable Book.