The Aussie Zombie

Every time I pick up another book in the Tomorrow series to re-read, I'm immediately hit by nostalgia for the first times I read them - and the third installment, The Third Day, The Frost (also published as A Killing Frost), is the book where shit gets really serious.

Picking up shortly after the end of book two, the teens find themselves struggling to decide what to do next, and how to continue avoiding the army and colonists that have invaded Australia.  This is a far darker book than the first two in the series, although none of them are a real picnic, this is the one where everything that has happened since the invasion really hits home - they all struggle with different psychological issues, and all their problems feel very realistic.

The characters also continue to examine their personal relationships, and especially Ellie is very honest about how she actually feels about being in a relationship formed during wartime.  This honesty is one of my favourite things about Ellie, and all of the characters in the book - even though these books were written in the 1990s, they are still relevant today because they feel so realistic.

Once again, the Australianisms and slang words came flooding back to me, and although they could potentially be confusing for non-Australian readers, Marden's use of this terminology makes it easy to work out what is actually meant - or at very least would make me curious to look them up and see what they actually mean.

This series is so intensly readable - the plot lines move at a fast pace, the characters are so realistic and it always makes me just a little homesick.