I find it difficult to judge this book on its own. I just finished reading the tomorrow series for the third time and by now im so completely familiar with and committed to Ellie that i'd probably read a book about her taking a crap.I do think its not as well written as the first series.For example, without spoiling anything, it takes the book about 3 pages to go from zero to full on total intense action/drama. That is fine by me since i put down the Tomorrow series a few hours earlier, but i can imagine it being kind of sudden for someone who picks it up after a year. Another thing that kind of annoyed me was the seemingly less realistic reactions of the non-main characters to events. Im going to use an example now that could be considered a SPOILER so be warned. Ellie ends up killing again to save someone from her village. The only thing we read about it after the actual event is her lawyer saying "i heard about your heroic actions, well done". At that point i thought to myself 'wait, a 16-17 year old girl who lost so much just killed 4 people drowning a house in blood and that is the reaction she gets?'. (END OF SPOILER) It is definitely different from the first series. It has significantly less action which could be considered boring by some. I tend to disagree. The original Tomorrow series in my opinion wasnt so much about the action as it was about its effects on the mind of Ellie. This is shown quite well in the movie adaptation which didnt have that inner monologue and as such came of ass a badly acted cliche action movie instead of a deep drama.As such i wasnt bored while reading it. I just spend well over a thousand pages reading about the action they went through and when the first series finally ended i wasnt hungering for more action. Instead i was burning with curiosity on how her life after the war would be. In fact, if it was up to me, i'd been fine with no 'war-action' at all. This leads me back to something i complained about earlier about the unrealistic reactions of the people around her. I wanted to know so badly how she would react to a world without war, and how the people around her (classmates and such) would react to a 16 year old girl who they all knew had killed countless of people. And this is somehow just not addressed. Sure, a few times its said that people were less sensitive to tragedies because of the terrors of the war and it could be argued that that is why they arent really bothered by it. But i would have loved to read about her interacting with classmates with whom she had been on the same wavelength before the war. I wanted to see the social dynamics of a thoroughly traumatized bitter girl with so much blood on her hands interacting with kids of the same age who had gone through relatively peaceful times because they were caught and worked as servants for example. Its not all bad things though. Even with Marsdens long winded descriptions of events (remember the 5 pages it took him to describe Ellie climbing up the roof of a truck when they were escaping the airport?) i was thoroughly gripped by the story and Marsden managed to make things like courts and guardianship of minors thrilling. I study law at the University and Marsden even managed to loosen me up when it came to adherence to procedural laws, which i can tell you is quite the accomplishment.I can keep writing forever if i let myself so im going to sum it up now.It was absolutely great reading about Ellie and her friends again. Im totally caught up in the story again and i cant wait to read the other two parts. However, im not blind to the flaws that do exist in this novel and im well aware my judgement is clouded because im so fully in love with the world so masterfully created by John Marsden.
Ellie and her family are trying to recover from a Marsden-invented war that ravaged Australia and New Zealand, resulting in an uneasy peace and half of Australia in the hands of foreign invaders. Ellie's family lives on a ranch near the recently constructed border. She was an active member of the Australian resistance force during the war and is looking forward to life returning to some semblance of normalcy. That lasts all of maybe 2 pages. The book opens with a renegade band of invaders attacking Ellie's ranch while she and Gavin are out hiking. They return to find her parents and a neighbor friend shot to pieces. The rest of the book finds Ellie fighting to keep the ranch running, evade the attempts of a slick lawyer to take control of the land, provide support for Gavin, try to pass her final year of high school, and decide whether she should be part of the Liberation, a group of Australians who venture across the border to rescue prisoners of war from the enemy.It took me a really long time to get into this book (like halfway through). I very nearly gave up. It did not help that I have not read the Tomorrow series, and even though this is presented as a separate series, it really isn't. Marsden frequently refers to characters and events from the Tomorrow series. He makes absolutely no attempt to recap anything or introduce you to any characters. (It took me several chapters to figure out how old Ellie & Gavin were, what time period we were in--I at first thought it was post WWII but soon figured out that couldn't be right--and figure out their relationships to the dozen or so minor characters thrown at the reader.) I have mixed feelings about this book and had trouble deciding how many stars to give it. I think the premise and basic plot line would have gotten a 3 or 4 from me. Girl, recovering from war, fighting for what she believes is right, dealing with emotional scars but also trying to support those around her I can go for. The specifics in the execution of the ideas in While I Live, though, left me feeling like Marsden went places he didn't need to go (in gore, language, and sexual discussions) and therefore lost a whole group of potential readers. While the deaths, language and sexual discussions may be realistic for the setting and characters, I think Marsden took it farther than he needed to. For example, he could have just mentioned that a guy was shot rather than describe intestines and such coming out of the wound. Also, for some reason when Ellie finally breaks down to grieve for her parents, she vividly describes their sexual body parts and kind of implied that she'd seen them naked regularly. That was disturbing. Given that Ellie has been hanging out with soldiers for a couple years, her rough language isn't surprising and would be realistic, but I still don't feel like the amount used or the strength of some words used were necessary. (There was one f bomb, and a couple uses of the equivalent British/Aussie word.)I think only those who absolutely loved the Tomorrow series would be into this book. Or possibly those who liked the Hunger Games but wished Katniss was a bit more heartless, had more spine, and was grittier (describes Ellie pretty well).
What do You think about While I Live (2007)?
It is four months since the war ended, and for Ellie Linton, life is slowly returning to some form of normalcy. She is living on her family farm with her parents and helping to pick up the pieces of their life. She is back in school, and is slowly reclaiming who she was before the war. And then, in the blink of an eye, devestating tragedy strikes. Now, Ellie must pick up the pieces all over again and struggle to hold on to everything that she's managed to build. And this time, some of her enemies are closer to home.If you haven't read Tommorow, When the War Began and its sequals, then go out and read them, and then read this book. They are about a group of teenagers who, upon returning from a camping trip, discover that their country has been invaded, their houses ransacked, and their families taken captive. Those books blew me out of the water. They are so well-written, so intense that I literally could not breathe at times when I was reading them. You know how when something traumatizing happens, something that shocks you, that image is indelibly burnt on your brain - a snapshot of the moment? One of the scenes in those books is like that for me. Indelibely burned. I still gasp for breathe when I think about how it felt when I read it - like a punch in the gut. That's how good these books are.I was a little afraid to start reading While I Live. I knew that Ellie's narrative would grab me, and I knew that if something bad happened to her, it would hurt me. It would hurt me a lot, the way the life of a character you have spent seven books with matters to you. And I was right. Ellie's tragedy made me gasp with pain. And that's when I knew that John Marsden hadn't lost it, that even after a war, even during an uneasy truce, these books were still carried by Ellie's strong voice. These books are good. They are as good as their predecessors, if quieter (at least in part.) I am hungrily looking forward to more books in the Ellie Chronicles.
—Lucy
Kroniki Ellie to kontynuacja wojennych perypetii. Zawarto pokój, większość ludzi mogła powrócić do swoich domów. Pojawiły się nowe problemy: osobiste (śmierć rodziców), społeczne (nowa rzeczywistość z powojenną traumą), obyczajowe (przesiedlenia mieszkańców wrogiego państwa - nowe sąsiedztwo nie dla każdego było oczywiste), prawne (opieka nad nieletnią Ellie, prawnicza nieuczciwość), najgorsze jednak nie minęło. Wciąż trzeba być czujnym, bo nie wszyscy pogodzili się z nowym stanem rzeczy, zarówno po jednej, jak i po drugiej stronie. Ukryta wojna trwa.
—Margolcia
'While I Live' is the first book in the Ellie Chronicles, which follow on from the 'Tomorrow' series. As explained towards the end of 'The Other Side of Dawn', the country has been divided between Australia and the enemy settlers, and the Lintons have kept some of their land. However, just because the war is officially 'over' doesn't mean the horror is at an end, as we find out in the first few pages of 'While I Live' when Ellie, out with Homer and Gavin near her home, hears shots, and rushes ho
—Georgie
