Darkness, Be My Friend is the fourth book in John Marsden’s seriesconsisting of Tomorrow, When the War Began, In the Dead of theNight and The Third Day, The Frost, in which seven young peopleare thrown into the middle of a violent war zone. Ellie, Fi,Kevin, Lee, Homer, Robyn and Corrie set out on a camping trip to aremote part of their district. They find their way into a remotebasin surrounded by dangerous cliffs and difficult terrain, wherethey are completely safe and cut off from the rest of the world.
When the teenagers return to their homes, they find that all thefamilies in the district were abducted and locked into the showgrounds by armed soldiers who are taking over Australia. Afterfinding this, they go on to perform numerous terrorist activitiesaround the district to hamper the enemy’s progress. Theseincluding blowing up a bridge on a major convoy route, attackingan important bay used for supplies and in Darkness, Be My Friend,the teenagers set out from New Zealand to assist a small group ofelite New Zealand soldiers attack the new airbase that has beenbuilt in their town. In this book, the New Zealand soldiersdisappear without a trace and the teenagers have to attack theairbase themsleves_I think that this book is as much about adventure and survival asit is about emotions, friendships and relationships. The book iswritten as the diary of the unofficial leader of the group and shespeaks a lot about her thoughts, her relationships with the othermembers of the group and of her emotions about what she was forcedto do during the course of 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 whatwas going on in my own mind_ but I found that difficult at thebest of times.””It was nothing to do with Lee. I still liked him a lot. I’d gotover those feelings I’d had ages ago, the negative feelingstowards him. So it wasn’t that. I thought maybe it had somethingto do with the boy in New Zealand, whose name I realised with ashock I’d forgotten. It would come back to me, no doubt aboutthat, but for the moment I couldn’t think of it at all. And Ithought it was probably a lot to do with the dead man whose housewe had sneaked into – not that it was his house anyway – but thefact that we were living in a dead man’s house.
And, of course the fact that I’d killed him. I didn’t know hisname either. Weird: two guys who figured prominently in my life,and they were both nameless to me.””A slow awareness came over me, a kind of burning, as I realised.
Yes, it was because of the boy in New Zealand and the man wholived in this house. And because I’d screamed at the soldier inthe street. And because I’d left the door open at Tozer’s. Andbecause the fuel tank had been padlocked. And because I’dsneezed.”Throughout the book, Marsden keeps an excellent mix of adventure,excitement and of personal ‘experience’. He looks deeper anddeeper into the mind of Ellie and exactly how she feels. He writesthis well and in a style that I would imagine Ellie would use.
Marsden’s excellent writing ability makes the story even morebelievable and more moving. He is able to portray the feelings andemotions that I would imagine a person in that situation to haveand does so so well and so convincingly, that you can fullyunderstand and comprehend what the group went through.
