Rating:  

Ellie and the other survivors face an impossible decision: They can flee for the mountains or surrender. Or they can fight.

When Ellie and six of her friends return home from a camping trip deep in the bush, they find things hideously wrong – their families gone, houses empty and abandoned, pets and stock dead.

Gradually they begin to comprehend that their country has been invaded and everyone in the town has been taken prisoner. (And my only very minor nit-pic with the story is, that they possibly reach this conclusion a little too quickly , with the few clues they are given, but then the pace of the story is just beginning to pick up at this point and too much WTF? wouldn’t be ideal either.)

As the horrible reality of the situation becomes evident they have to make a life-and-death decision: to run back into the bush and hide, to give themselves up to be with their families, or to stay and try to fight.

Well Katie can come out of hiding, I mooched this book purely on her own review at Kate’s Bookshelf and threatened her with much cyber-grumpyness if I didn’t enjoy it, well I did. And them some.

Marketed as a young adult title, this wonderful book deserves a much bigger audience than that, this is a great story and the fact that if has teenage protagonists shouldn’t limit it’s market.

Ellie, is a wonderful narrator (and I am assured both by other reviews I have read and Katie, that Marsden has a scary ability to get into the head of a teenage girl!) and, had I read the book last week, then she would almost certainly have joined Thursday Next and Maximum Ride on my list of favourite heroines.

I devoured the the book in book in a couple of sittings, and thankfully the second in the series is already on its way to me (thanks again to Katie! who suggested it would be a good idea) While John Marsden, doesn’t really leave the book on a cliffhanger as such, you will want to read the next one straght away to find out what happens next.