We Do Not Welcome Our Ten-Year-Old Overlord

I enjoyed this book a lot. Garth Nix has mined his own Canberra childhood, his history as a teenage D&D Dungeonmaster and put a John Wyndham-esque sci-fi twist on it all to produce an action-packed middle grade novel.

Kim (Chimera) and his younger sister Elia (Elieithyia) live with their eccentrically hippie parents on the outskirts of 1970s Canberra, spending most of their time hanging out with their friends Bennie and Madir, but everything changes one day when they fish a mysterious golden globe out of the lake. This incident is based on a true story from Nix's childhood, when he thought he saw a severed head in the murky waters one day (I think it turned out to be a motorbike helmet). Before long, child prodigy Elia is in communication with the strange sphere, which becomes progressively more and more threatening and dangerous.

We Do Not Welcome Our Ten-Year-Old Overlord reminded me of John Wyndham's classic Chocky, which scared the suitcase out of me as a child, and also fascinated me. Things never get too terrifying here, though there is certainly plenty of danger and lots of action. I raced through it and I hope plenty of young readers do the same. My only quibble is that I was never quite sure how to pronounce Elia.