Our teen heroes are forced to evacuate Stratton with a bunch of feral orphan children when the soldiers get too close. Upon returning to Hell, the children decide to abandon the teens, who now feel responsible for them. After being rescued, they then celebrate Christmas.The plot doesn’t sound that interesting, but it really is. See, Ellie and Lee rescue the kids at gunpoint and fly out of Stratton with the other teens in a stolen truck. Upon abandoning the truck, it’s found one of the children has broken her arm. The teens force the kids to walk to tailor’s Stitch where they promptly lose them. During the hunt, which lasts several day, the teens lose one of the children to exposure but manage to save the other four.Since it’s summer, Ellie and Fi decide to celebrate Christmas, so Ellie, Homer and Fi go out for a lamb and supplies at a nearby farmhouse, which just happens to be occupied by enemy soldiers. One of the children is captured as well, and after a daring escape the group manage to make it back to Hell to celebrate Christmas.You really feel the tension in this novel. I don’t really understand why Ellie and others felt so responsible for the children, especially since after they saved their lives and fed them they just abandoned them. I would have gone, “Fuck it, let them wander off into the bush and die!” But then again, I haven’t lived in a war zone, so I have no idea what kind of empathy and other emotions the teens felt towards the kids. The book is basically about babysitting the ragamuffins and showing the horror of war on children even younger than our guerrilla group.But you really feel like they’re on edge because the enemy is desperate to find them after the airfield attack, and traipsing around the farmlands around Hell looking for food to feed five hungry teens and four orphan feral children is getting really dangerous. There’s a group of camping soldiers out looking for them which ends in a spectacularly awesome gun battle.It ends on a cliffhanger, which is probably a really good idea because the next book is the final in the series.
This installment of the Tomorrow When The War Began series is a little more low key than the others, but still a really good read. The five have settled into West Stratton in Ellie's grandmother's house. Tensions are high in the group, and Ellie is having a difficult time getting on with anyone, especially Lee, who she caught with an enemy girl in the previous book. The group has constant concerns about patrols and being spotted by the enemy, but they also have to worry about a group of feral kids living in the city. They were mugged by the kids earlier. The children are armed and dangerous because they are desperate and young. They are resourceful- they have survived a year without adults in a war zone without being caught by the enemy. Ellie decides that something needs to be done about the kids. Her maternal/ older sibling instincts kick in when she thinks about them surviving on their own and she wants to help them. Eventually, five of the children end up with the main group in a desperate escape from Stratton. But if Ellie and her friends were expecting the kids to be grateful for having someone else to care for them, they were wrong. These feral children have issues, to say the least, and trying to help them turns out to be more than what Ellie had originally thought. There are some good action scenes in this book, although some of it seemed a little implausible (I don't know why it was easier for me to imagine the attacks on Cobblers Bay or the Airport easier than the mad dash from Stratton or a food raid gone bad). But overall, its a good story, and there is good character development throughout. The characters have to deal with a lot of emotional baggage and relationship issues, because if they can't coexist in peace with one another, there is no way that they can survive the war.
What do You think about The Night Is For Hunting (2007)?
The one where they look after the little kids. I enjoyed the development of the main characters but didn't like the introduction of new ones. Everyone seems to love Gavin except me. (view spoiler)[I found the Christmas celebrations mawkish and the death of one of the children too upsetting, so overall this was not one of my favourites in the series. And the characters never question if they are doing the right thing by taking the kids to Hell - given that one of them dies on the way, surely they would wonder if they would have been better off taken by the soldiers to a prison camp? (hide spoiler)]
—Sarah
I really like this series so far, but I think The Night is for Hunting is my least favorite at this point. If I could give it a half star, it'd definitely get a 3.5 but because the series is so good, I'm giving it a 4. Nothing extraordinary happens, which is fine, but I wonder how much it develops the overarching story.In The Night is for Hunting, we see our heroes and heroines take on a group of orphaned children. The kids are independent-minded and have their own opinion about how they will survive. Part of this book felt like it was Frodo and Sam going through Mordor in Lord of the Rings. What I mean by that is that it was just trudging through the bush without much happening. It could've been cut out completely.Despite not much happening, we get insight into how the war is taking its toll on Ellie. She kills enemy soldiers without giving them a second thought, she has lost her sense of humor, and in essence, she has lost who she was before the war. Interestingly, I think the kids are a great way to have the main characters reflect upon themselves how the war has affected them. The kids aren't really kids. They know the realities and hardships of war, death is not something to stop and think about, they are losing their identities because their lives have been consumed by the war and they cannot remember what life was like before it. Similarly, Ellie, Homer, Fi, Kevin, and Lee have lost their sense of being teenagers and are stepping in as the adults to the kids. They have been forced to grow up because they have no one to whom they can turn.The Night is for Hunting ends on a cliffhanger more so than any of the other novels. When will the last book be released on the Kindle here in Germany?! All in all, I still think that the Tomorrow series is better than either the Hunger Games. Marsden writes for a smart audience where teenagers are not just the target. The characters are more realistic and people can relate to them better. Plus the heroine isn't whiny and useless and each book actually does add something the story.
—P.Sannie
This is the 6th book in the 'Tomorrow' series.While there are quite a few adrenalin-rush, scary, action scenes in this book where Ellie and her friends again risk all to fight and escape from the enemy, much of the plot of this one centres around Ellie and her friends rescuing five of the bunch of feral kids they first encountered in 'Burning for Revenge' and getting the kids out of dangerous Stratton city to the safety of the bush and Hell. The scene where they literally snatch said kids from t
—Georgie
