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"Which Animorphs review to keep outside a cut?" is a question usually answered by "which was my favorite" but there are so many great books at the end of the series! 49 is just so good tho.
( The Deception (Animorphs Book 46) )
Small side-note: Ax has been using thought-speak while in human morph since The Proposal (Book 35), and here even human Animorphs can use thought-speak even when in human morph (just not when unmorphed). This is absolutely a contradiction of previous worldbuilding that I'm too lazy to look up, but it does align with the gradual power creep occurring in in these final books.
Further thoughts on thought-speak: The Other (Book 40) establishes that Andalites with a sufficiently close bond (subtextually: lovers; textually: shorm, "best friends") can thought-speak over larger distances. "Unless we are on different planets, we can hear each other's thought-speak." This is absolutely a plot convenience, but when do Cassie/Jake or Rachel/Tobias get it? Or is it endemic to Andalites, rather than though-speak? Thusfar the rules governing thought-speak-via-morph seem to be the same as govern Andalite communicative abilities.
( The Resistance (Animorphs Book 47) )
( The Ellimist Chronicles (Animorphs Chronicles Book 4 / Animorphs Book 47.5) )
( The Return (Animorphs Book 48) )
Title: The Diversion (Animorphs Book 49)
Author: K.A. Applegate
Published: Scholastic, 2001
Rating: 4 of 5 (my notes read: 4.9999 of 5)
Page Count: 165
Total Page Count: 306,055
Text Number: 1029
Read Because: reading the series
Review: This is inches from perfect, so it pains me that it mishandles the disability issue. Let disabled characters remain disabled! Cognitive impairments are still disabilities, but the general thrust here of the pious cripple who, when given the opportunity, would rather die in morph than return to a disabled body, is ... well, it's awful. Not the first or last look at disability in the series; it has good intentions, does some things right, but also feels in desperate need of a sensitivity reader.
The beginning is also a slow burn of boy-bird angst, despite some great Rachel/Tobias scenes.
But from the 25% mark onwards, this is captivating. (I read the bulk of this in the awkward position I assumed to read "just a few pages"—which morphed into the entire book.) It continues from The Revelation (Book 45), with further concrete, significant changes. Parents who have had minor bit parts before become significantly more real as they become part of the plot, again throwing into relief the bizarre, imbalanced, unfair position of the Animorph kids. Jake made me tear up, but his predicament is more frustrating than sentimental—it's a sympathetic rage, not a shallow tear-jerker. And I consistently love Tobias books despite that his angst, for all its complicated origins, is heavy-handed and familiar; this is somewhat more of the same, but rendered in precise, human detail (as he grows jealous while watching Loren pet her guide dog) that it feels fresh, and events here lead to significant character growth—Tobias is motivated and personally invested in a way we haven't seen before.
The emotional core is solid, an incredible amount happens, and even the huge action sequences are tempered by competence porn and justified by the ongoing escalation of scale as the war breaks out into the open. I love this—I just wish I could love it unreservedly.
( The Ultimate (Animorphs Book 50) )
Nonlethal heroes is a perpetually flawed trope for numerous & overlapping reasons, namely "that's not how head trauma works" and "the dividing line between good/bad as no kill/yes kill is unproductively simplistic" & this series has been playing against that inconsistently. The trope exists partially to make narratives audience-friendly, and this is MG/YA. So on the one hand, we're supposed to float along on the premise that that is how head trauma works; and on the other hand (the one the Animorphs cut off every third human-Controller), Visser One/Edriss 562 picks up on the fact that the Animorphs weren't killing humans, ergo these are real events with real consequences. It's fantasy violence when it needs to be and a Cassie ethical meltdown when it needs to be, and it doesn't stand up to close analysis, but the fridge horror realization that all the disabled Controllers are probably now dead Controllers is still huge. It aligns with the shifting scale and morality of the ending, but its retroactive impact is just ... massive.
And, to some degree, unpardonable, or at least on par with looking the other way re: Rachel. To what degree are the Animorphs responsible for the other people's bad behavior when its prompted by their actions? When they let an injured enemy get eaten by Taxxons? When they let the Yeerks or Andalites or Rachel do the dirty work in a fight? The evolving issue of disability is gradual but treated with a sense of the inevitable; that they think to recruit disabled Animorphs indicates that they've been increasingly aware that the Yeerks abhor disability—indicates that they've become aware of the fate of the Controllers they leave disabled. But they've still taken a moral superiority in their "non-lethal" methods.
( The Deception (Animorphs Book 46) )
Small side-note: Ax has been using thought-speak while in human morph since The Proposal (Book 35), and here even human Animorphs can use thought-speak even when in human morph (just not when unmorphed). This is absolutely a contradiction of previous worldbuilding that I'm too lazy to look up, but it does align with the gradual power creep occurring in in these final books.
Further thoughts on thought-speak: The Other (Book 40) establishes that Andalites with a sufficiently close bond (subtextually: lovers; textually: shorm, "best friends") can thought-speak over larger distances. "Unless we are on different planets, we can hear each other's thought-speak." This is absolutely a plot convenience, but when do Cassie/Jake or Rachel/Tobias get it? Or is it endemic to Andalites, rather than though-speak? Thusfar the rules governing thought-speak-via-morph seem to be the same as govern Andalite communicative abilities.
( The Resistance (Animorphs Book 47) )
( The Ellimist Chronicles (Animorphs Chronicles Book 4 / Animorphs Book 47.5) )
( The Return (Animorphs Book 48) )
Title: The Diversion (Animorphs Book 49)
Author: K.A. Applegate
Published: Scholastic, 2001
Rating: 4 of 5 (my notes read: 4.9999 of 5)
Page Count: 165
Total Page Count: 306,055
Text Number: 1029
Read Because: reading the series
Review: This is inches from perfect, so it pains me that it mishandles the disability issue. Let disabled characters remain disabled! Cognitive impairments are still disabilities, but the general thrust here of the pious cripple who, when given the opportunity, would rather die in morph than return to a disabled body, is ... well, it's awful. Not the first or last look at disability in the series; it has good intentions, does some things right, but also feels in desperate need of a sensitivity reader.
The beginning is also a slow burn of boy-bird angst, despite some great Rachel/Tobias scenes.
But from the 25% mark onwards, this is captivating. (I read the bulk of this in the awkward position I assumed to read "just a few pages"—which morphed into the entire book.) It continues from The Revelation (Book 45), with further concrete, significant changes. Parents who have had minor bit parts before become significantly more real as they become part of the plot, again throwing into relief the bizarre, imbalanced, unfair position of the Animorph kids. Jake made me tear up, but his predicament is more frustrating than sentimental—it's a sympathetic rage, not a shallow tear-jerker. And I consistently love Tobias books despite that his angst, for all its complicated origins, is heavy-handed and familiar; this is somewhat more of the same, but rendered in precise, human detail (as he grows jealous while watching Loren pet her guide dog) that it feels fresh, and events here lead to significant character growth—Tobias is motivated and personally invested in a way we haven't seen before.
The emotional core is solid, an incredible amount happens, and even the huge action sequences are tempered by competence porn and justified by the ongoing escalation of scale as the war breaks out into the open. I love this—I just wish I could love it unreservedly.
( The Ultimate (Animorphs Book 50) )
"The Yeerks don't infest people like your mom was before she could morph," I said honestly. "The Yeerks don't want a blind Controller. They don't want a disabled Controller. Deaf people, people in wheelchairs, people with serious illnesses."
"She's right," Rachel said slowly. "I've never seen a Controller in a wheelchair. And I bet any human-Controller who gets cancer or loses a limb is killed. No joke."
Nonlethal heroes is a perpetually flawed trope for numerous & overlapping reasons, namely "that's not how head trauma works" and "the dividing line between good/bad as no kill/yes kill is unproductively simplistic" & this series has been playing against that inconsistently. The trope exists partially to make narratives audience-friendly, and this is MG/YA. So on the one hand, we're supposed to float along on the premise that that is how head trauma works; and on the other hand (the one the Animorphs cut off every third human-Controller), Visser One/Edriss 562 picks up on the fact that the Animorphs weren't killing humans, ergo these are real events with real consequences. It's fantasy violence when it needs to be and a Cassie ethical meltdown when it needs to be, and it doesn't stand up to close analysis, but the fridge horror realization that all the disabled Controllers are probably now dead Controllers is still huge. It aligns with the shifting scale and morality of the ending, but its retroactive impact is just ... massive.
And, to some degree, unpardonable, or at least on par with looking the other way re: Rachel. To what degree are the Animorphs responsible for the other people's bad behavior when its prompted by their actions? When they let an injured enemy get eaten by Taxxons? When they let the Yeerks or Andalites or Rachel do the dirty work in a fight? The evolving issue of disability is gradual but treated with a sense of the inevitable; that they think to recruit disabled Animorphs indicates that they've been increasingly aware that the Yeerks abhor disability—indicates that they've become aware of the fate of the Controllers they leave disabled. But they've still taken a moral superiority in their "non-lethal" methods.
