polymorphikos said:
You, good sir, are a literary snob
I admited as such a long time ago.
I've read Shade's Children now - much better than I thought it would be.
The starter is very good - I was pretty amazed to think this was Young Adult for a while - some very gruesome concepts involved.
Overall, the story is very effective - the computer commons and stats every other chapter of so are very well used.
It did lack a lot outside of the story-telling, though - the characters were very thin constructions, and there was absolutely no justification for why any of the events of the story occured.
However, that aside, the storytelling was mostly effective - it reminded me a lot of Ender's Game by it's use and sheer exploitation of children, to create disturbed feelings.
The lack of character made me somewhat bored and restless towards the end of the story, though - there wasn't enough to really care about them too deeply, though the emotive ending was decently wound up.
The big frustration for me, though, was the fact that the author created this worldscape to write in, but never justified any of the mechanics of it. For example, what caused "the Change" in the first place? Where were the children used in that way? To me, a writer that does not justify the reasons for their story is committing one big cop-out. It's literary short-cutting.
And whenever the author seemed on the brink of being able to say something meaningful, it was passed over.
Perhaps it's a case of the author working on subtlety rather than overt statement.
Mostly enjoyable read, though.
