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Post by noons on Aug 13, 2012 0:45:10 GMT
Hi, now that I've gotten your attention, have any of you read the Tomorrow series by John Marsden? And if you have, is it any good? I've heard its like an Australian version of Red Dawn, which has a remake coming out in November.
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Post by sankari on Aug 13, 2012 6:03:56 GMT
Hi, now that I've gotten your attention, have any of you read the Tomorrow series by John Marsden? No. The Wikipedia summary does not inspire confidence. Apparently it's about a small group of civilian children wreaking havoc on a professional invading army, which sounds laughable to me. I wouldn't know.
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Post by wraggy on Aug 13, 2012 7:06:40 GMT
If it is anything like the movie "Red Dawn" I would give it a miss.
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Post by timoneill on Aug 13, 2012 9:39:36 GMT
Hi, now that I've gotten your attention, have any of you read the Tomorrow series by John Marsden? And if you have, is it any good? I've heard its like an Australian version of Red Dawn, which has a remake coming out in November. It's a "young adult" series, aimed at teens. I've never read any of them, but apparently they are well-written, have realistic believable characters and are, despite superficial similarities, nothing like that vile Reaganite gun porn Red Dawn. The first book in the series has been a set text for study in high schools and it was voted one of the best loved kids books in several surveys. They made a movie of it a couple of years ago which did okay in Australia, mainly on the strength of fans of the books.
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Post by noons on Aug 13, 2012 11:04:21 GMT
If it is anything like the movie "Red Dawn" I would give it a miss. It's one of the best documentaries I've ever seen.
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Post by fortigurn on Aug 13, 2012 12:25:37 GMT
High school kids loved the soft porn scenes Marsden sprinkled through the narrative. I never heard any of the kids at the senior high where I worked, comment on the books' literary merits, but the hot teen sex in the first book was mentioned frequently.
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Post by unkleE on Aug 13, 2012 13:14:05 GMT
I have read every one of them, and enjoyed the early ones (the first three) immensely. The last four seemed a little less fresh.
The kids are all late high school farming kids, used to taking responsibility, driving cars and tractors, using guns, etc, so their guerilla exploits are not beyond reason. They only "wreak havoc" on the invading army because they live out in the country where there are small and non-elite army units, they know the land and the invaders don't, and they are resourceful Aussie kids. So the plot is of course somewhat more adventurous than normal life (who wants to read a novel about normal life?), but not entirely unbelievable.
I have read many books by Marsden. He is or was an English teacher at a reasonably well-off private school in Victoria, and most of his books are interesting, readable and show a reasonable understanding of teens (as you'd expect if he's a good teacher). He is a good writer in my opinion.
He deals with sex realistically (you don't put seven teens of both sexes together for long without that being an important matter!), but I never thought it was anything more than realistic, and I wouldn't describe it as "soft porn" (though maybe I'm not a good judge).
I think the main attraction of the books is the adventure, the Aussie setting and our human propensity for imagining ourselves being heroes.
Interestingly, Marsden is no christian, but one of the characters is a conventional christian who has to grapple with the idea of killing, and is quite fairly and sympathetically portrayed.
Try "Tomorrow When the War Began", and if you like it, try the next two, but think twice before you commit to the whole seven. I haven't seen the film (have always wanted to but never got around to it), but I read a lot about it and by all reports it was pretty good and a fair adaptation, despite all the girls looking like they were models before they became guerillas.
Hope that helps.
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Post by wraggy on Aug 15, 2012 7:59:42 GMT
If it is anything like the movie "Red Dawn" I would give it a miss. It's one of the best documentaries I've ever seen. I'm not sure if you are trying to extract some urine out of me Noons, but if my memory serves me correctly the movie that I have in mind was crap.
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