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 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 Marsden’s 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 show grounds 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 attack 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 airbase
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 air base by putting sugar in the petrol
supply which was planned to make the planes crash while the 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 annoying or stupid. Fi has been in this story from
the first novel “Tomorrow when the war began”. She is now Ellie’s 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 he
is out of peoples way because he likes to be alone. Kevin has a really wide
mouth, huge hands like spades and he thinks he is really good but he has a lot
going for him because he is intelligent. Lee: I think that all the other boys
respect Lee because he is strong and is good at everything he tries especially
music. He has dark skin, a crew cut and brown eyes. He is Ellie’s boy friend
and they are really close to each other. He is really kind and caring and he
would be a great friend to have. Homer: Homer is a loud mouth who is crazy and
likes destroying everything but when he is in the company of girls such as Fi he
is really quiet and always puts himself down. He doesn’t care about what
people think about him except Fi because he likes her. He likes hunting, music
and swimming. He is always in trouble. Ellie: Ellie is a very popular and
everyone enjoys her company. The only bad thing about her is that she expresses
her feelings about people very freely on paper and she can hold grudges on
people, which annoy everyone. She is loud and bigger than the rest of the girls
but everyone respects her. She is brave, courageous smart and the unofficial
leader of the group. Theme: I think that this book is as much about adventure
and survival as it is about emotions, friendships and relationships. The main
theme of this book is war. If it weren’t the whole book would be more like a
“days of our lives’ book with no action. It would just be full of
relationships, friendships and emotions which. Style: Throughout the book, John
Marsden keeps a mix of adventure, excitement and personal ‘experience’. He
looks deep into the mind of Ellie and how she feels. He writes this well and in
a style that I would imagine Ellie would use. The book is written as the diary
of Ellie the unofficial leader of the group. She speaks about her thoughts, her
relationships with the other members of the group and of her emotions about what
she did during the war. "I was determined I wasn’t going to get angry, so
I ignored that. I didn’t blame him in a way. If only I could have understood
what was going on in my own mind… but I found that difficult at the best of
times." Page 261 "It was nothing to do with Lee. I still liked him a
lot. I’d got over those feelings I’d had ages ago, the negative feelings
towards him. So it wasn’t that. I thought that maybe it had something to do
with the boy in New Zealand, whose name I realized with a shock I’d forgotten.
It would come back to me, no doubt about that, but for the moment I couldn’t
think of it at all. And I thought it was probably a lot to do with the dead man
whose house we had sneaked into - not that it was his house anyway - but the
fact that we were living in a dead man’s house. And, of course the fact that
I’d killed him. I didn’t know his name either. Weird: two guys whom figured
prominently in my life, and they were both nameless to Me." page 262 I
found this novel very easy to get involved in because of the basic words and
because of the exciting things happening to people my own age, which start from
the very beginning of the book. In this novel there is very little humor that
makes the novel serious and scary but it has lots of action to keep you on the
edge of your seat. Opinion: I really enjoyed this book because it was scary,
exciting, action packed and easy to read. This is the best series of books I
have read and this book in the series is probably the best one so far. I
definitely recommend this book to any reader and I hope they enjoy it as much as
I have.