Title: Darkness Be My Friend
Author: John Marsden
Publisher: Pan Macmillan publishers
Publishing Date: 1996
Setting: This book is set in fairly modern times about 1990. I know this because the teenagers speak the same way my friends and I do and dress just like people do now. I also know this because of the way they describe the country town they live in.
It sounds just like the average country town in our time. I think it is set is in a country town in Australia away from the cities. I think this because of the way the place “Hell” is described and the way the teenagers talk like Aussies. It also says that it is Australia. When they are in New Zealand Iain asks if they will go back to Australia to help them.
I think it is very important where it is set because if it were set in America or another place it would be a lot harder to be invaded. For one reason America and other places have massive armies compared to Australia and could defend their country. Another reason is that there is a much bigger population in America and other places and they would need hundreds of more soldiers to patrol areas. Another reason I think it is very important where it is set is that if it was set in another country the place “Hell” would be described differently because Australia is the only place I know that has such amazing land features and such amazing landscapes. If it was described differently the whole book wouldn’t make you feel the way you do when you read it and you wouldn’t get the eerie feeling you get when they are in “Hell”.
Plot: Darkness, Be my friend is the fourth book in John Marsdens series consisting of Tomorrow,When the War Began, The Dead of the Night and The Third Day, The Frost, in which seven teenagers are in the middle of a violent war. Ellie, Fi, Kevin, Lee, Homer, Robyn, and Corrie go camping to a remote part of their district. They find their way into a remote valley surrounded by dangerous cliffs and difficult terrain, where they are completely safe and cut off from the rest of the world. When the teenagers return to their homes, they find that all the families in the district have been abducted and locked into the showgrounds by armed soldiers who are taking over Australia. After finding this, they perform many dangerous activities around the district to hold back the enemy’s progress. These including blowing up a bridge on a major convoy route and attacking an important bay used for shipping supplies.
In this book the teenagers set out from New Zealand to help a small group of New Zealand soldiers attacks the new airbase that has been built in the teenagers home town. The New Zealand soldiers disappear without a trace and the teenagers have to attack the airbags themselves. . .
The teenagers decide to look for the soldiers but end up getting trapped on an open paddock with a few trees. The only thing they could do is climb up the trees and wait till night. Once it was dark they got the horses in the paddock and rode them in pitch dark and at full gallop away from where they were. They ended up at the school and stayed there for a few days.
When they left the school the tried to attack the airbase by putting sugar in the petrol supply which was planned to make the planes crash while they were flying. Unfortunately, It was a huge disaster because they couldn’t get the lids of the petrol trucks to put the sugar in. Main Characters: Fi: Fi is beautiful, intelligent, kind to her friends and she is perfect in every way. She is light and graceful, has beautiful skin and looks like she hasn’t done any hard physical work in her whole life.
Fi is the kindest person but she is quick to tell Ellie when she is being annoyed or stupid. Fi has been in this story from the first novel “Tomorrow when the war began”. She is now Ellies best friend since Robyn died. Kevin: The impression I got about Kevin is that he can be a real pain because he is a chicken and he is always scared but generally heis out of people’s way because he likes to be alone. Kevin has a really wide mouth,
