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I'm putting this under my Animorphs tag just for convenience, although future readers may find it relabeled to Applegate in general.
I picked up this series in order to stave off an Animorphs reread, since it really has not been long enough to lose another couple months to that undertaking. And indeed this is a faster read! but, in the first half at least, not nearly so satisfying. Animorphs is so dark that the authors writing an edgier work for an older audience seems like a natural fit, but so much of Animorph's success comes from couching that darkness in an unexpected framework: it's about the slow realization of longterm implications, about the middle grade genre as a screen for characters and reader aging up and for the realities of war. Everworld meanwhile can have child abuse and threats of sexual violence, and when there's also less space for character development it reads mostly as shock value.
There's exceptions—like the absolute delight of Realm of the Reaper, which is everything I wanted from "Animorphs authors, but more explicitly violent"—and Senna is largely a better antagonist than a lot of Animorphs fare because she's a fellow human, frequently elided with the main cast, a peer and someone they need to rely on ... and also an evil mastermind with delightful antagonistic tension with/uncomfortable relationships with/social control over the protagonists.
Anyway, these so far are ... fine? Frequently readable trash with a few interesting elements going on but not holding a candle to Animorphs, and not just because I'm biased against the premise of the series (although there is that, too.)
Title: Search for Senna (Everworld Book 1)
Author: Katherine Applegate
Published: Scholastic, 1999
Rating: 2.5 of 5
Page Count: 205
Total Page Count: 367,855
Text Number: 1344
Read Because: fan of the author, borrowed from OpenLibrary
Review: Things I remember from reading I think just the first Everworld novel as a kid: grimdark/crapsack portal world (and, specifically, that hanging in chains scene). Things I did not remember: the portal world is home to the gods and their peoples from lost religions. (The aliens, meanwhile, feel totally on-brand.) "Ancient gods are present characters" tends to make for shoddy historical research and unconvincingly inhuman gods, so it's a trope I'm negatively predisposed to despite that this doesn't do anything too awful with it yet.
The grittiness here is almost affected: older protagonists, older audience, a lot of allusions to older subject matter that doesn't feel necessary given that Animorphs is so dark and robust without it. But I like how this strands the characters in the setting, rendering them viscerally exhausted and isolated; and I like Senna flitting through the background, fey and untrustworthy, as the promise of plot to come. I'm not enthusiastic about this but I'm willing to continue, mostly because I loved Animorphs so much as an adult reader that I'm down to try the Applegate I tried but never got into as a kid.
( Land of Loss (Everworld Book 2) )
( Enter the Enchanted (Everworld Book 3) )
Title: Realm of the Reaper (Everworld Book 4)
Author: Katherine Applegate
Published: Scholastic, 1999
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 175
Total Page Count: 369,265
Text Number: 1355
Read Because: reading the series, borrowed from OpenLibrary
Review: Another Norse book, as the cast lands in Hel's underworld. Discovering the reason for a city peopled by eunuchs and the blind, built around an ominous massive cavern, is an engaging mystery. The horrors of Hel's chambers are exuberantly excessive; while I still don't think the creators of Animorphs need to writing something more explicitly adult to make it memorably dark, given the opportunity to do so this is just the sort of thing I hope they'd indulge in. The book's second half is more plot-focused and therefore less memorable: for better and worse the cast have little agency, which makes the survival elements of their travels that much more demoralizing but it also creates repetition in the overarching plot as they stumble between locales, eking out bits of knowledge but unable to meaningfully act on it. But I like Jalil: the handling of his OCD isn't especially sophisticated, but I appreciate the attempt and it gives him one of the more complex characterizations and a particularly interesting, thematically-engaged relationship with Senna.
( Discover the Destroyer (Everworld Book 5) )
( Fear the Fantastic (Everworld Book 6) )
I picked up this series in order to stave off an Animorphs reread, since it really has not been long enough to lose another couple months to that undertaking. And indeed this is a faster read! but, in the first half at least, not nearly so satisfying. Animorphs is so dark that the authors writing an edgier work for an older audience seems like a natural fit, but so much of Animorph's success comes from couching that darkness in an unexpected framework: it's about the slow realization of longterm implications, about the middle grade genre as a screen for characters and reader aging up and for the realities of war. Everworld meanwhile can have child abuse and threats of sexual violence, and when there's also less space for character development it reads mostly as shock value.
There's exceptions—like the absolute delight of Realm of the Reaper, which is everything I wanted from "Animorphs authors, but more explicitly violent"—and Senna is largely a better antagonist than a lot of Animorphs fare because she's a fellow human, frequently elided with the main cast, a peer and someone they need to rely on ... and also an evil mastermind with delightful antagonistic tension with/uncomfortable relationships with/social control over the protagonists.
Anyway, these so far are ... fine? Frequently readable trash with a few interesting elements going on but not holding a candle to Animorphs, and not just because I'm biased against the premise of the series (although there is that, too.)
Title: Search for Senna (Everworld Book 1)
Author: Katherine Applegate
Published: Scholastic, 1999
Rating: 2.5 of 5
Page Count: 205
Total Page Count: 367,855
Text Number: 1344
Read Because: fan of the author, borrowed from OpenLibrary
Review: Things I remember from reading I think just the first Everworld novel as a kid: grimdark/crapsack portal world (and, specifically, that hanging in chains scene). Things I did not remember: the portal world is home to the gods and their peoples from lost religions. (The aliens, meanwhile, feel totally on-brand.) "Ancient gods are present characters" tends to make for shoddy historical research and unconvincingly inhuman gods, so it's a trope I'm negatively predisposed to despite that this doesn't do anything too awful with it yet.
The grittiness here is almost affected: older protagonists, older audience, a lot of allusions to older subject matter that doesn't feel necessary given that Animorphs is so dark and robust without it. But I like how this strands the characters in the setting, rendering them viscerally exhausted and isolated; and I like Senna flitting through the background, fey and untrustworthy, as the promise of plot to come. I'm not enthusiastic about this but I'm willing to continue, mostly because I loved Animorphs so much as an adult reader that I'm down to try the Applegate I tried but never got into as a kid.
( Land of Loss (Everworld Book 2) )
( Enter the Enchanted (Everworld Book 3) )
Title: Realm of the Reaper (Everworld Book 4)
Author: Katherine Applegate
Published: Scholastic, 1999
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 175
Total Page Count: 369,265
Text Number: 1355
Read Because: reading the series, borrowed from OpenLibrary
Review: Another Norse book, as the cast lands in Hel's underworld. Discovering the reason for a city peopled by eunuchs and the blind, built around an ominous massive cavern, is an engaging mystery. The horrors of Hel's chambers are exuberantly excessive; while I still don't think the creators of Animorphs need to writing something more explicitly adult to make it memorably dark, given the opportunity to do so this is just the sort of thing I hope they'd indulge in. The book's second half is more plot-focused and therefore less memorable: for better and worse the cast have little agency, which makes the survival elements of their travels that much more demoralizing but it also creates repetition in the overarching plot as they stumble between locales, eking out bits of knowledge but unable to meaningfully act on it. But I like Jalil: the handling of his OCD isn't especially sophisticated, but I appreciate the attempt and it gives him one of the more complex characterizations and a particularly interesting, thematically-engaged relationship with Senna.
( Discover the Destroyer (Everworld Book 5) )
( Fear the Fantastic (Everworld Book 6) )
