Book Reviews: Animorphs by K.A. Applegate, books 20-25

( The Discovery (Animorphs Book 20) )

( The Threat (Animorphs Book 21) )

( The Solution (Animorphs Book 22) )

( The Hork-Bajir Chronicles (Animorphs Chronicles Book 2 / Animorphs Book 22.5) )

( The Pretender (Animorphs Book 23) )

( The Suspicion (Animorphs Book 24) )

( The Extreme (Animorphs Book 25) )

Some notes:

• Yeah, I did it, I gave another Animorphs book (The Pretender, Book 23) 5 stars, making this both two 5-star Animorphs books and three 5-star books in February. All of them have been id-books, like: objectively there may be flaws, and normally an objective flaw will color a book even if I really enjoy it, but there's a horizon where enjoyment outstrips objectivity and I just love the thing. Tobias angst always has the potential to sail over that horizon; I can see why he was so memorable & formative to adolescent readers—like, you know, me.



• The Extreme is the first ghostwritten book, and from now on almost everything is ghostwritten, excepting only The Attack (Book 26), The Separation (Book 32), and The Answer and The Beginning (Books 53 and 54, the last in the series). I'm sure there will be some issues with this, and I've already noticed some weird editing problems I'll discuss in the next batch, but The Extreme (Book 25) read fine to me. If anything, The Pretender (Book 23) felt out of place for being more frank re: marginalization, and it's not ghostwritten!



• The takeaway of the above being: 1) episodic format forgives a lot, 2) even single author(s) [given that Katherine Applegate and Michael Grant co-authored the Animorphs books] can vary over a long series with an episodic format, and 3) the Applegate oversight must provide some quality control, even if it's still a compromise.



• I have so many shipping feels in this goddamn series, and I normally don't get fannish about books. Is this because of the nostalgia? because the episodic style reads almost like a more shippable medium like television? because the MG/YA cusp lends well to both of the above? because of all the Weird Alien Sex things and star-crossed romances and "my boyfriend, the hawk" and "Prince Jake" and "that time I let a Yeerk into my brain"?



• My favorite dynamics are Rachel/Tobias, Aximili/Jake, Jake/Cassie, Cassie/Aftran 942, Tobias/Ax, and all the various interspecies monsterfuckers of my formative adolescence. There's so much weirdness and tension in all the relationships in this series, especially complicated by the fact ( NSFW-adjacent rambling )



• I say "the various interspecies monsterfuckers of my formative adolescence" in jest but uhhhh this is another "revisiting a thing from my childhood only to discover, oh, That Explains A Lot."



• I didn't take a break between batches 15-19 and 20-25 because 20-22 ended up being one cohesive arc. And then I didn't take a break after 25 because I was having a rough day & wanted to read Animorphs. I set these arbitrary break points primarily to prevent burnout, so I don't care about ignoring them if I'm not burned out. And I'm not. All I want to do read these books. It's such a successful reread project & I really needed something this absorbing right now.



• (That said, when I do manage to read something else, especially if it has wildly different worldbuilding, there's this sense of freshness, almost a shock. Animorphs is never routine—it has so many wild setpieces; it refuses to be routine—but it has in a way become a default for my expectations.

BPAL Reviews: Abolish Ice, Constipated Elephant Alchemy Lab, Mopey Boar Alchemy Lab, Midnight Mass

ABOLISH ICE (LE, Activism)
Smoked toffee and patchouli with coffee bean, caramelized oudh, clove, and bourbon vanilla.
In vial: Sweet, smokey coffee.
On me: Toffee + patchouli, which reads as burned patchouli; I'd almost say there's vetiver in here to provide that smokey feel. Coffee and clove come out to play during drydown. Sometimes this feels like an older cousin to Miskatonic University (the scent of Irish coffee, dusty tomes and polished oakwood halls), a warm, spiced coffee, smooth and sweet and a little more complex. But the primary impression I get from this is the overwhelming caramelized note I got from a few 2018 Halloweenies and Yules (Zoe and the Goat; Twelfth Lash). Here's it's probably the toffee: cloying, not quite foodie, almost burnt, very brown, overpowering, homogeneous, borderline nauseating.
Verdict: This absolutely fits its "warm" inspirations; I like the creamed coffee and touch of clove. But I've learned my lesson to steer clear of toffee/caramel, especially in conjunction with patchouli. I don't know if I amp it, but I do know it's strong and unpleasant.

CONSTIPATED ELEPHANT ALCHEMY LAB (LE, 16th Anniversary)
Ambergris accord, Mysore sandalwood, ambrette seed, cypress, nagarmotha, and grey agarwood.
In vial: Cypress, thin and clean and airy.
On me: Warm, salty ambergris with a touch of woody, terpenic cypress, drying down to a warm, slightly salted ambergris over an amber-like base. This functions a lot like Haunted (soft golden amber darkened with a touch of murky black musk) on my skin: a warm, velvety base, touched with a bright note (in Haunted it's lemony; here, it's woody/pine), deepened with an indistinct but pleasant incense/perfumyness; very slightly sweet; multifaceted in gentle, unconfrontational ways. Constipated Elephant's salty ambergris makes it unique, and it's a khaki to Haunted's gold tones—a warm gray. Low throw, ~5 hour wear length.
Verdict: Interesting! This really suits the accompanying image, particularly in colorway. This is pleasant, although the salt doesn't always vibe with the skin-level amber-resin vibe. But it feels too much like Haunted, despite the differing notes. I don't need a bottle.

MOPEY BOAR ALCHEMY LAB (LE, 16th Anniversary)
Truffles and clove bud with smoky incense, cardamom pod, and ginger.
In vial: An earthy, broad, dirty spice.
On me: A deep, broad, prickly brown scent: strong clove (the other spices are here too, but secondary) atop distinctive truffle and grounded in incense. Not at all sweet. It can go medicinal, especially it overapplied. The truffle is earthy but with a perfumey quality, especially as the scent wears or if overapplied. A light touch benefits this; throw and wear length are otherwise moderate to strong.
Verdict: It can be easy to project name or description onto a blend, but "boar" really fits this deep, prickly, brown scent—it's large and unique, but from a shadowy, earthy direction. Three tests in, I'm still not sure how I like it. Not worth a bottle, but I've also not smelled anything quite like it and I imagine sometimes I'll reach for it on account.

MIDNIGHT MASS (LE, Yule 2018)
This perfume is a traditional Roman Catholic sacramental incense, most often used during a Solemn Mass.
In vial: I got cedar and incense on one test, cedar and resin on the next.
On me: Upon application: cedar! As it dries down, incense and resin come forward, a smokey/airy/smooth contemplative blend against a warm, woody cedar base. It's hugely reminiscent of Cathedral (Venerable and solemn: the scent of incense smoke wafting through an ancient church. A true ecclesiatical blend of pure resins.)—I could probably differentiate if I tested side by side, but they're functionally dupes. Lasts ages and ages.
Verdict: I feel about this like I feel about Cathedral: it's fine, but I like the intent more than the execution. I think it's the cedar, and I don't even dislike cedar—it keeps the register a little higher, a little more dry woods than deep, solemn incense and resin.

General update: Devon job, good! Anxiety bad :(. And Pokemon Go.

Devon go the first job he applied to! It was a relatively-intensive interview process, which is a good thing, because it pretty thoroughly checked for a) skillset overlap—we were less worried about his qualifications and more worried about the job being fulfilling/interesting, and signs point to yes; b) good interpersonal fit—this has been a problem area for people we know in the field, so it was honestly as important as anything else. It was a mildly stressful but ultimately rewarding and validating experience.

Said job is in the area, which means I'll still be able to easily visit local family. We will still move, obviously, given that we live in an absolute shithole and not living in the shithole was the prime and what feels like at this point the almost singular reason for Better Career, ASAP.

I'm an absolute mess of anxiety re: literally everything. One thing going right has open the floodgates such that my brain is simultaneously "I'm safe now! time to process that backlog of suffering!" and "wait, no, there's still so much [moving/settling/will job work???/cancer still exists/actually life in general is horrible] still to process—why isn't everything magically done yet? will it ever be done? best to give up all hope now!" I've been working hard at being congratulatory and, I think, managing it! while also going about my day-to-day as one corporeal humanoid panic attack. I'm worried that we won't be able to find a place to live that is either private enough for me to just be alone all the time or central enough that low-effort activities are available to me. I'm worried about living in new places in the current political climate—Oregon is pretty blue, but not so blue that I feel comfortable just moving wherever. I'm worried about commutes, and that for the rest of our lives I'll see Devon only from 7p-midnight + exhausted weekends. I'm worried about losing even that time to him taking work home, because my best friend is in the startup industry and it's skewed my expectations.

Devon has a very reasonable solution to this: to try the thing, and try a different thing if it doesn't work. We aren't tied to the first place we live or the first job he gets, and while I'm also worried about inertia locking us to both, I do trust him and the persistent, sincere effort he's made to help us build a life together and to make sure I'm as happy as I can possibly be as a crazy person.


* * *


After a long and lauded service, Devon's Window's phone fell (sad) and then stopped holding a charge (deal-breaking), so he got a cheap Andriod replacement. I don't have a phone b/c phone calls are an anxiety trigger. So this is the first time I've been able to play Pokemon Go, by borrowing his phone when we go on dates/errands, huddling over it whispering "my precious, my precious," and getting on a bandwagon two years too late.

It's such a frustrating experience to play this game a) on borrowed time and b) while crazy. I feel like I'm rushed to maximize my play while I can, and also feel guilty about begging for it, and also end up exhausted by leaving the house to Do Things. This is made both better and worse by other circumstances. Having a distraction that also allows Devon to dote on me and console some of my profound anxiety is welcome, but I forget that I'm so crazy that even enjoyable distractions can become anxiety triggers and rediscovering that makes me so mad, every time. So frustrated, and hopeless; and these are stupid feelings to have about a mobile game.

(FWIW they've made the game more accessible to the internet-limited, via adventure sync, and the crazy, by refining stops & gyms & events over the last two years. I mock myself for getting on the bandwagon late, but honestly it's a better experience now than it was then. That said, they've done nothing to make it disability-accessible, although you can grab a surprising number of stops as a passenger, especially in stop and go traffic.)

Anyway if you want to be Pokemon Go friends pls give me your contact info.

The solution here is to get me a phone (which allows whitelisting), which is on the list of things to do now that we'll have money; and to live somewhere where I can PokeGo on my own, aka not the ass-end of nowhere with zero stops in walking distance. Thus these are all issues that will resolve in time, and not because PokeGo is a particularly high priority but because our lives are slowly changing for the better.

But the overarching trend here is that nothing at all has resolved yet, changed yet.


* * *


Anxiety about The Future is 100% of my time. PokeGo is 10% of my time. Rewatching Star Trek: TOS & nightly gaming with Devon is 20% of my time. Sleep or valiant efforts at sleep are 45% of my time. The remaining 25% of my time is Animorphs, and sometimes I think only Animorphs is having any positive effect. This is provably untrue, but for sure indicates something about how successful the reread project is and how well-timed it's been. I can disappear into those books when I can't concentrate on anything else but my crazy. I made a good impromptu decision back in January! I did something right! Good job, Juu.