The Other Side of Dawn

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I started this series when I was 13. I have all the books and remember waiting for this one to come out. I read a few chapters, and just stopped. It's sat there ever since. With this year's series challenge I thought it was time to put it to bed.

I was mostly worried that the writing would be awful. John Marsden has achieved a sort of mythic level in my early teenage years. He wrote books about things no one would really talk about to us early teenagers then. While this series was more about the adventure, it still dealt with these pretty big issues throughout. I was terrified that reading him again as an adult would diminish this.

Luckily though, his storytelling and writing is still fantastic. It's an easy YA read, but it was a great ride. I can see why I lapped up his books when I was young.

Was it a satisfying ending to this series that defined my teenage reading? It wasn't terrible. I wasn't sure how you would end the series without being anticlimactic, but he did a reasonable job. The real thing about it was never pretending these teenagers will ever be normal again. They may wish and do normal things, but there was no "and now everyone's back to being 16 as we know it". That was my big fear and he handles it well.

So glad I finished this series, even 15 years on.