Garth Nix, We Do Not Welcome Our Ten-Year-Old Overlord, A&U Children’s, October 2024, 256 pp., RRP $17.99 (pbk), ISBN 9781761180491
This stand-alone middle grade novel is a sci-fi mystery in which a group of upper primary/junior high school children use teamwork, intuition and courage to save the world from a mysterious alien force. Twelve-year-old protagonist Kim, his younger ‘smarter’ sister Eila and their mates Bennie and Madir, discover a shimmering globe one evening in a nearby lake. The globe has magical properties: it exerts powerful mind control over Kim and his pals, yet sister Eila somehow seems able to commune with it, even to understand what it wants.
Whilst Eila literally takes the globe, whom she names Aster, under her wing, trying to convince her brother and her friends it is on Earth to learn and not to harm, Kim’s scepticism and desire to get rid of it challenges Eila’s rosier ideals. A series of mysterious events in which Aster seems to be testing out the limits of her powers supports both siblings’ contentions that the globe is simultaneously out to cause damage and do good. But which impulse will ultimately win out?
We Do Not Welcome Our Ten-Year-Old Overlord is a quest story set in an alternate Canberra in 1975 in which Kim and his mates gradually unravel what Aster is up to. The characters are mostly well drawn, their bickering duels very much in keeping with their search and need for truth. However, the story itself is slow to get going – the prose tends to over explain things in the opening chapters with more telling than showing. The pace picks up from about mid-way, although readers will need their ‘suspension of disbelief’ antenna at full-on through the plot’s twisting, turning action events.
Garth Nix has built his reputation and fandom over many science fiction adventure books for young adults and middle grade-aged children. This novel gives readers a more personal intimation of Nix’s own back story: his love and appreciation for the Dungeons and Dragons game which makes occasional, relevant connection to the story here.
Like the ethos of D&D, We Do Not Welcome Our Ten-Year-Old Overlord amply highlights the importance of adventure to human development, working through problems in collaboration with others and testing the limits of endurance. Young D&D followers, in particular, should enjoy making those connections here.
Teaching resources are available at the publisher’s website.
Reviewed by Suzanne Ingelbrecht