One character is Matthias. Matthias is 13. Matthias is smart but acts before he thinks. Matthias is a shadow child, which is an illegal third born child. They are illegal because there is a famine and each family is allowed two children. He is good at solving problems, but sometimes he does something and it causes a lot of other things to happen. He lives at a Population Police base. The Population Police are people who make sure people only have two children. He feels responsible for his friends' Percy and Alia's deaths. They are also shadow children. Another character is Nina. Nina is also a shadow child. She is good at figuring out where to meet with Matthias about what they are going to do about the Population Police from the inside. Nina lives in the same Population Police base as Matthias. She cleans and serves food at the base. She passes Matthias notes about where he should meet her.
The problem is that Matthias is at a Population Police base and he is an illegal shadow child. Matthias, Nina, and other shadow children are trying to sabotage the Population Police from the inside. Matthias was at a school, but then the Population Police come to the school to take all the school children away to a camp. When they put Matthias in a truck to take him to the camp, his friends named Percy and Alia, sit next to him. When they start going, Matthias pulls on his seatbelt and finds that it comes free. He finds a nail and starts trying to cut Percy and Alia's seatbelt off. He gets frustrated when they get close to the camp and shoves the nail into the wheel of the truck through a hole in the floor.
The wheel bursts and the truck falls into a ditch in a forest and a tree falls on the truck. Alia gets hurt but all the seatbelts come undone and Matthias grabs Alia and runs away from the truck with Percy. After a few days of hiking through the forest, they come to a cabin. Sadly Percy gets caught in the crossfire between the rebels and the Population Police. Percy gets shot in the leg, so then Matthias has to drag both of them to the cabin and finds a hidden room and puts them in it. He then sets off to find help for them. He finds Mr. Hendricks' home and gets help for Percy and Alia. Mr. Hendricks helps shadow children. When they get back to the cabin Percy and Alia are gone and Matthias believes they are dead. Then they hear gunfire and look out the window as a rebel is shooting at a group of Population Police officers from a tree. Matthias unwittingly saves an officers life and the officer takes him to a Population Police base.
The solution is Matthias finds a storehouse full of food and Mike helps him give the food away. Mike is another shadow child. Mike tricked the Population Police into handing had forms that said to go to the storehouse for food. There is also a room full of I.D.'s and fake I.D.'s. The Population Police have figured out a way to tell which I.D.'s are fake. To get into the storehouse of food they had to knock out the guard and put him in the attic. Mike and Matthias are planning to blow up the building so the Population Police can't figure out which I.D.'s are fake. But Matthias remembers the guard and rushes in to save him. Matthias has a hard time moving the guard and throws the guard down the stairs and out the door and then Matthias runs after him to get out. He gets out, but after the explosion people start, returning the food. People started to return the food because they were scared that the Population Police would hurt their families if they kept it.
If I was the author, I would change that the people start to return the
food. Instead, after the storehouse explodes, the people take the food back to their houses and share it with their families. I recommend this book for people who like fast paced stories. This was a great book.
