I waited until well past my 14th birthday to read Shade’s Children because my older brother used to scare me with stories from it. “It’s about evil overlords who harvest human children on their 14th birthday to build war machines!” While he wasn’t wrong about that, Shade’s Children is much more than horror. When I finally read it, I found it was packed full of complex characters who struggled to find themselves in a hostile world. It was emotional, raw, and cautiously optimistic.
