Shade's Children

Shade's Children by Garth Nix
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Unless you escape, by age fourteen the Overlords will come to harvest you for parts. If you manage to survive the well-organized hunters, you just may find refuge with Shade and help him destroy the Overlords. And if Shade doesn't send you on a suicide mission, you may make it to adulthood. Maybe.

Fifteen years ago every adult over the age of fourteen vanished in the Change. Soon the world was crawling with creatures who locked up the remaining children to be farmed for parts. On their Sad Birthday, children are taken away and suffer a fate worse than death: they are transformed into creatures who fight in the Overlord's incomprehensible war games and hunt stray children.

In this hostile world, escapees Gold-Eye, Ella, Ninde, and Drum have to rely on each other to survive. They become guerrilla soldiers in fight they don't fully understand, pawns in the hands of the sole remaining adult: Shade, who has a plan for taking down the Overlords. But Shade isn't exactly human anymore.

Garth Nix wrote a completely chilling post-apocalyptic world with unstoppable foes and untrustworthy allies that completely blows The Maze Runner out of the water on every level. I read it with a knot in my stomach, which is a sign of good sci-fi horror. Fans of Nix's Abhorsen trilogy will be satisfied by this pitch-black story of survival in the face of inhuman enemies.