The setting of this futuristic novel is particularly convincing. The novel opens fifteen years after the sudden disappearance of the adults during the commuter rush hour one morning. This event is called The Change. None of the characters except Shade, the leader of the rebel children, and Ella, a guerilla team leader, remember life before the overlords. Children are raised in dormitories and each child is controlled by a computer chip implanted in the wrist. On their fourteenth birthday, the day the children call their Sad Birthday, the children are removed from the dorms. Some girls are taken to another location for breeding purposes. However, most children are taken to the Meat Factory where they are sedated until their body parts, particularly their brains, can be harvested and put into the bodies of the overlords' creatures. The central characters of Shade's Children have escaped the dorms by using...