Burning for Revenge (The Tomorrow Series #5)

The journey to Stratton isn't an easy trip, especially when the enemy's headquarters lie somewhere along the way. And that's exactly where Ellie and her friends unwittingly find themselves. With only five of them against hundreds of armed soldiers, escape seems like a suicide mission. But Stratton is where Ellie's grandmother lives, so the journey must be made -- even though the odds aren't good.

Ellie must summon all of her courage and guerrilla instincts to survive the latest high-stakes installment of the action-packed Tomorrow series.

Ellie has started to believe she won't survive the war. Their band of eight teenage guerrillas is down to five now--Robyn and Corrie and Chris are dead, and only she and Homer and Kevin and Lee and Fi are still trying to sabotage the enemy who has taken over their country. They're growing numb and soul sick from the violence, because they've been fighting for a long time--through four previous novels, actually: John Marsden's Tomorrow: When the War Began, The Dead of Night, A Killing Frost, and Darkness Be My Friend. At the same time, they are normal teens who kid around, fall in and out of love, and think long thoughts about the meaning of life.

It is this poignant human dimension that lifts Marsden's series above the run-of-the-mill spy action novel--that and the fact that nobody is better at writing about things blowing up. And his scenes leading up to the explosion create tension so powerful it is almost unbearable to keep on reading--but impossible not to. In Burning for Revenge, the five have been abandoned in enemy territory when the New Zealand general decides that they are not valuable enough to send a rescue helicopter. Without any definite plans, they sneak into the back of a truck, only to find themselves at the end of the ride deep within the enemy's airfield. How they battle out of the situation and leave the enemy's air power in ruins makes a breathlessly exciting story that will not disappoint the many teen fans of this excellent series. (Ages 12 and older) --Patty Campbell