Garth Nix: A novel teaser

Best-selling author Garth Nix will unleash his latest novel, Shade's Children, in the UK this month and, to give you a taste of Nix's apocalyptic sci-fi vision, we've got an exclusive first look at the opening chapter of this shadowy and intriguing novel. Just click here to clap your eyes on the special extract.

Shade's Children is set in a futuristic, barren end-world where only children survive. Unexplained entities called the Overlords have taken control of the planet, eradicating all human life over the age of 14 and imprisoning the remaining children in mass dorms, only to abduct each child on their 14th birthday and transform their body into a prowling cyborg killer in a bloody and horrifying harvest of brain and muscle.

This dark novel tells the story of a band of children who have escaped from the Overlords, and their vicious harvest, to be led against their oppressors by a man called Shade. But Shade, the oldest human on planet Earth, is losing the last shreds of his humanity in his war against the Overlords. Can four of Shade's Children discover the source of the cruel and mechanical Overlords' power and destroy them? Pre-order at Amazon to find out!

Nix shot to fame with the success of his teen-thriller series, the Old Kingdom trilogy of Sabriel, Lirael and Abhorsen, which built up a legion of fans on either side of the teen divide. "I don't specifically write for children... or for adults," says Nix. "I aim to write a book that I would have liked at 12, and still like at 38, 58, 88 and beyond."