We Do Not Welcome Our Ten-Year-Old Overlord by Garth Nix

Reviewed by Antonella Townsend

Enid Blyton must be glowing green with envy in her grave. Children’s literature is imaginative light years away from days of yore, although brave twelve-year-old and ten-year-old characters are still saving the day.   Although in We Do Not Welcome Our Ten-Year-Old Overlord by Garth Nix, they are busy saving the world from a weird alien.

Nix introduces Kim, his super clever younger sister Eila, sisters Bennie and Madir, and Theo and Tamara.  The story is situated in Canberra in 1975, in the glory days of Dungeons and Dragons.  All the characters, apart from Eila and Madir, who are only ten years old, have just started playing D & D.

All is well, Kim can just about put up with his clever, often patronising, little sister until they are at the lake one evening and they find an odd globe that glows eerily.  It is clearly some kind of weird alien, the dangerous type, that tries to control Kim’s mind when he retrieves it from the water.  Breaking free, but only just, he is horrified to see his little sister is making friends with the globe.  He is informed by Eila, somewhat haughtily, that the entity is called Aster.  Eila is confident in her ability to teach Aster about humans and their world, and tells Kim he has nothing to worry about.  Older and wiser, he is not convinced and thinks his parents should be informed.  It turns out that Aster has the knack of turning herself into an innocent basket-ball and, as Eila points out, there is no point Kim reporting this find to their parents as he would just look silly worrying about a basket-ball.  Eila has a habit of making Kim appear clueless to their parents, so he retreats from the argument.

That is a far as this review should go regarding the plot.  It is easy to slip into spoiler alert territory, which is not popular with authors and publishers alike.  Suffice to say in this middle school sci-fi fantasy Garth Nix has produced a most intriguing story.  The action propels page-turning at speed.  Readers get to know the protagonists, although they are not finely drawn, action rules this novel above all other considerations.  Nix does provide details of two interesting parenting styles that the children endure obediently rather than rebel.  That said Eila and Aster make some adjustments!

Garth Nix’s books have appeared on worldwide bestseller lists, and his work has been translated into 42 languages.  He has won multiple Aurealis Awards, the ABIA Award, Ditmar Award, the Mythopoeic Award, CBCA Honour Book, and has been shortlisted for the Locus Awards, and others.  So clearly, his readers are in experienced hands.

We Do Not Welcome Our Ten-Year-Old Overlord

by Garth Nix

(2024)

Allen & Unwin

Paperback

ISBN: 978 176118 049 1

$17.99; 240pp

 

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