A Sad Birthday.

Shades Children by Garth Nix.


"most (children) don't have the guts to slice open their own wrist, to reach in and pull the capsule out from where it nestles between veins and bone. "


One day, now long in the past, all humans over the age of 14 disappear, never to return......


In their place, arrive the tyrant overlords and several freakish hoards of creatures from an alternate dimension. All the children are rounded up and placed in dormitories, there to be trained and raised.


At the dawn of their fourteenth year, upon their sad birthday they are sent to the meat factory where their muscles, brains and bones are transformed into yet more creatures for the overlords to use in their senseless bloody battles.


Gold-eyes a boy nearing his sad birthday manages to obtain a razor. After a grisly and painful removal of his tracking capsule he escapes in a desperate ploy to extend his life. He finds ruined buildings, constant danger from the creature and finally he finds Shade.


Shade, a cold cruel and calculating computer program, once a university professor now the last hope of the escapees. However the food he provides is not for free, he requires information on the overlords and such information is costing lives at an inhuman rate.

Shade's children is dark. Dark in the story it tells, dark in its ruined streets and dark in its disfigured characters. It is refreshing to me to read such a story, one without cute little bunnies and fairytale characters, Shades Children is real in its darkness and original in its ideas.

A decent book I give it three out of five.

Outlaw.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach.

"Terminal velocity! A seagull at two hundred fourteen miles per hour! It was a breakthrough."


More than anything else Jonathan Livingston the seagull loves to fly. He doesn't fly to eat, or to impress the flock or anything else. He flies for flights sake itself (he does like speed quite a lot as well).


His dedication shows, he can fly faster and longer than any seagull alive. He is also a bag of bones and rather unpopular with the flock and his parents for his unseagullish ways. Nevertheless he is happy. He discovers a rich bounty of fish under the surface by diving from far above and is thereafter better fed.


One morning he crashes though his flock at terminal velocity shocking them dreadfully and almost killing himself in the process. That night the flock elder outlaws Jonathan Livingston Seagull from the flock.


Jonathan flies away.


This is a book about a seagull's quest for perfect flight among other things. It is very old (1972) and I am assured very famous. It contains some very good black and white pictures of seagulls and a totally new way of looking at the world. I am not going to say good or bad but I will say "worth reading", it's a new lens to see the world through.

Bruno and Shmuel.

The boy in the striped pyjamas by John Boyne.

This is a very short and easy read, but also a powerful one. It is set in Nazi Germany where Bruno, a young boy, faces many challenges when his family move to live in the country, due to his fathers senior military position working at a concentration camp.

Bruno is oblivious to the horrors going on inside the camp and believes that the camp is just a game. He makes friends with a boy called Shmuel through the fence - the only person he now has as a friend.

This may be a short book but it certainly goes a long way and will leave you thinking even after you finish it. It will give you an idea of what a certain perspective of life was like in Nazi Germany. At least see the movie, which is exceptionally well done (despite the characters English accents). This story has a layered plot and will show you many things.