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juushikaTitle: The Familiar (Animorphs Book 41)
Author: K.A. Applegate
Published: Scholastic, 2000
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 145
Total Page Count: 303,065
Text Number: 1012
Read Because: reading the series
Review: This reminds me too much of the utopian novels whose disjointed plots serve as tours to explore worldbuilding. It's high concept, but in a flailing, disjointed way, offering glimpses into things equally interesting and ridiculous, equally erratic in tone, littered with hollow action sequences (except the battle aftermath which opens the book—that's fantastic). I have a hard time investing interest in narratives which are too separate from the core cast and real plotline, which was the final nail in this coffin. As the middle book of what turns out to be three dream/alternate reality books, and it's more ambitious than the choose your own adventure, less successful than Back to Before (Megamorphs 4 / Animorphs 41.5), and took me longer to get through than both.
Title: Back to Before (Megamorphs Book 4 / Animorphs Book 41.5)
Author: K.A. Applegate
Published: Scholastic, 2000
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 180
Total Page Count: 303,245
Text Number: 1013
Read Because: reading the series
Review: The last in what turns out to be a trio of dream/alternate reality books (in retrospect, grouping them wasn't a wise decision), and by far the most successful. A future without the Animorphs isn't new to the series (The Stranger, book 7), but a timeline entirely absent them is. And I buy it, particularly the limited-but-significant impact that the Animorphs have on their reality, like maintaining the balance between vissers One and Three. Also convincing: What happens to Tobias without the Animorphs; distinctive traits peeking through, like Rachel's violence; the deaths—character deaths are so often unwritten that they've come to lack weight, but seeing the cast as powerless in their human bodies is brutal. Less convincing is the timescale—it's awful to consider the events occurring over 40-some days but, given their scope and that we know many take place over weekends, also unrealistic. But I enjoyed this, right down to the end—it's a quick resolution, but to have the narrative acknowledged how many coincidences of fate exists within the core cast is gratifying.
Title: The Journey (Animorphs Book 42)
Author: K.A. Applegate
Published: Scholastic, 2000
Rating: 1 of 5
Page Count: 160
Total Page Count: 303,850
Text Number: 1016
Read Because: reading the series
Review: When I said I was frustrated with the one-off books where the Animorphs encounter yet another race of asshole aliens, I sure didn't mean "please, bring back the most annoying alien race!" No one asked for this: it's twice-removed from the central conflict, the premise manages to be both ridiculous and too familiar (thus the many references to The Magic School Bus, and the narrative acknowledges that the Helmacrons are annoying without doing anything to compensate. (And—now this I'll admit is petty—rabies has a <1 day incubation period.) A forgettable, bad book.
It occurs to me, somewhat belatedly as the blue box/Escafil device has shown up a number of times & we know from The Hidden (Book 39) that it can be used on basically anything including ants, but they have a hugely underutilized resource sitting in Cassie's barn. They had bad luck with David, but why not give morphing power to known and trusted allies? the free Hork-Bajir? at least Toby? (Arguably they now use Hork-Bajir as battle morphs, but there's other uses for morphing than bigger/stronger, see: the entire series.)
And how do nothlit work? Once you become trapped in morph, can you not use the Escafil device again? ...Why? This could too-easily resolve Tobias's identity angst, and I do prefer that he's claimed the identity of hawk; but it would be in line with their general power creep for the Animorphs to worry a little less about being trapped in morph now that they have unlimited access to the morphing device.
Title: The Test (Animorphs Book 43)
Author: K.A. Applegate
Published: Scholastic, 2000
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 145
Total Page Count: 304,125
Text Number: 1018
Read Because: reading the series
Review: Some books which repeat premises/content, like The Journey (Book 42) feel redundant; some show how far the series has come. This has a concept similar to The Underground (Book 17), but its pacing and tone veer in another direction. It's the second significant look at the Taxxons, and it's so much—frenzied, morbid, dehumanizing. The Animorphs are privy to none of the more humanizing aspects of Taxxon worldbuilding explored in The Andalite Chronicles, which works well alongside the non-PoV, largely offscreen drama of Cassie's ethical dilemma and subsequent violence: the horror here is centralized in Tobias's PTSD, Taylor's unreliability, and the violence of inhabiting a Taxxon, but also decentralized, the fridge horror of imagining the struggle of the Taxxon resistance (against Yeerks, against their own appetite), of imagining Cassie's experience at the pumping station.
It's not flawlessly written (this is petty, but the dialog tags and thoughtspeak grunting/panting is weirdly conspicuous) and numerous low-consequence adventures can grate despite that I love the ending—but I this another "distinctly darker than I'd expect for MG" success.
(Ellen Geroux ghostwrote three of my favorites, 33, 43, and 45! She does grim so well.)
Answering many questions re: Yeerks and Taxxon hosts. There's conflict within the worldbuilding, given that the some of the Council of Thirteen, super high raking Yeerks, have Taxxon hosts—but those may be hosts-by-choice (picked because they have experience with Taxxons?) and their hunger is actively accommodated on account of their privilege. I would still love an answer to the question avoided here: how do Taxxons-controllers manage to focus on tasks like piloting? I'm also fascinated by the distinction between body-as-host and body-as-morph. Visser explores "more [host] than Yeerk" in detail—the experience for Yeerks is almost the inverse of morphing, where the host body infiltrates the Yeerk identity, unlike the morphed body, where instinct as an initial hurdle which is gradually overcome. But here that differs: Taxxon instinct can't be overcome; resistance only strengths it.
Geroux's Tobias is so good.
Title: The Unexpected (Animorphs Book 44)
Author: K.A. Applegate
Published: Scholastic, 2000
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 160
Total Page Count: 304,285
Text Number: 1019
Read Because: reading the series
Review: This isn't as racist as it could be! which isn't the same thing as good, by any measure. The Test, the previous book, has Cassie as stealth protagonist—not the PoV character, absent for the bulk of the plot, but her offscreen emotional journey is significant and harrowing. This is a Cassie-PoV book that separates her from the cast into the Australian outback, but it doesn't manage to achieve much at all, failing to progress her character or even feel like a continuation of the previous book. (Given how these where ghostwritten, probably not the writer's fault; still unfortunate.) I like survival situations, and Cassie's competence is always a delight, but this doesn't amount to much.
Title: The Revelation (Animorphs Book 45)
Author: K.A. Applegate
Published: Scholastic, 2000
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 145
Total Page Count: 304,490
Text Number: 1021
Read Because: reading the series
Review: Most Animorphs books preserve the status quo of the premise, despite continuity and character arcs, but this changes everything. It feels like the beginning of the end, and it's exciting and so well written. Ellen Geroux is the ghost writer, and continues to excel; she writes great angst and tension and consequence, which finally resolves Marco's uneven character arc—he's gone from uninteresting comic relief to the ongoing debate over "ruthlessness" to a character whose ruthlessness and coping mechanisms are directly challenged, and I never thought I'd love him and argue (and sympathize) so actively with his choices, yet here we are! Disclosing to a parent also throws into relief how fundamentally strange are these power dynamics—Jake's leadership and the burden of responsibility placed on the Animorphs is harder to dismiss here than when contrasted against adult aliens. It feels redundant at this point to call the series grim, but this is where it start to feel real.
(I just ... really like Rachel/Tobias scenes where Tobias is a hawk. I love it contrasted explicitly against Jake and Cassie's relationship.)
Author: K.A. Applegate
Published: Scholastic, 2000
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 145
Total Page Count: 303,065
Text Number: 1012
Read Because: reading the series
Review: This reminds me too much of the utopian novels whose disjointed plots serve as tours to explore worldbuilding. It's high concept, but in a flailing, disjointed way, offering glimpses into things equally interesting and ridiculous, equally erratic in tone, littered with hollow action sequences (except the battle aftermath which opens the book—that's fantastic). I have a hard time investing interest in narratives which are too separate from the core cast and real plotline, which was the final nail in this coffin. As the middle book of what turns out to be three dream/alternate reality books, and it's more ambitious than the choose your own adventure, less successful than Back to Before (Megamorphs 4 / Animorphs 41.5), and took me longer to get through than both.
Title: Back to Before (Megamorphs Book 4 / Animorphs Book 41.5)
Author: K.A. Applegate
Published: Scholastic, 2000
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 180
Total Page Count: 303,245
Text Number: 1013
Read Because: reading the series
Review: The last in what turns out to be a trio of dream/alternate reality books (in retrospect, grouping them wasn't a wise decision), and by far the most successful. A future without the Animorphs isn't new to the series (The Stranger, book 7), but a timeline entirely absent them is. And I buy it, particularly the limited-but-significant impact that the Animorphs have on their reality, like maintaining the balance between vissers One and Three. Also convincing: What happens to Tobias without the Animorphs; distinctive traits peeking through, like Rachel's violence; the deaths—character deaths are so often unwritten that they've come to lack weight, but seeing the cast as powerless in their human bodies is brutal. Less convincing is the timescale—it's awful to consider the events occurring over 40-some days but, given their scope and that we know many take place over weekends, also unrealistic. But I enjoyed this, right down to the end—it's a quick resolution, but to have the narrative acknowledged how many coincidences of fate exists within the core cast is gratifying.
Title: The Journey (Animorphs Book 42)
Author: K.A. Applegate
Published: Scholastic, 2000
Rating: 1 of 5
Page Count: 160
Total Page Count: 303,850
Text Number: 1016
Read Because: reading the series
Review: When I said I was frustrated with the one-off books where the Animorphs encounter yet another race of asshole aliens, I sure didn't mean "please, bring back the most annoying alien race!" No one asked for this: it's twice-removed from the central conflict, the premise manages to be both ridiculous and too familiar (thus the many references to The Magic School Bus, and the narrative acknowledges that the Helmacrons are annoying without doing anything to compensate. (And—now this I'll admit is petty—rabies has a <1 day incubation period.) A forgettable, bad book.
It occurs to me, somewhat belatedly as the blue box/Escafil device has shown up a number of times & we know from The Hidden (Book 39) that it can be used on basically anything including ants, but they have a hugely underutilized resource sitting in Cassie's barn. They had bad luck with David, but why not give morphing power to known and trusted allies? the free Hork-Bajir? at least Toby? (Arguably they now use Hork-Bajir as battle morphs, but there's other uses for morphing than bigger/stronger, see: the entire series.)
And how do nothlit work? Once you become trapped in morph, can you not use the Escafil device again? ...Why? This could too-easily resolve Tobias's identity angst, and I do prefer that he's claimed the identity of hawk; but it would be in line with their general power creep for the Animorphs to worry a little less about being trapped in morph now that they have unlimited access to the morphing device.
Title: The Test (Animorphs Book 43)
Author: K.A. Applegate
Published: Scholastic, 2000
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 145
Total Page Count: 304,125
Text Number: 1018
Read Because: reading the series
Review: Some books which repeat premises/content, like The Journey (Book 42) feel redundant; some show how far the series has come. This has a concept similar to The Underground (Book 17), but its pacing and tone veer in another direction. It's the second significant look at the Taxxons, and it's so much—frenzied, morbid, dehumanizing. The Animorphs are privy to none of the more humanizing aspects of Taxxon worldbuilding explored in The Andalite Chronicles, which works well alongside the non-PoV, largely offscreen drama of Cassie's ethical dilemma and subsequent violence: the horror here is centralized in Tobias's PTSD, Taylor's unreliability, and the violence of inhabiting a Taxxon, but also decentralized, the fridge horror of imagining the struggle of the Taxxon resistance (against Yeerks, against their own appetite), of imagining Cassie's experience at the pumping station.
It's not flawlessly written (this is petty, but the dialog tags and thoughtspeak grunting/panting is weirdly conspicuous) and numerous low-consequence adventures can grate despite that I love the ending—but I this another "distinctly darker than I'd expect for MG" success.
(Ellen Geroux ghostwrote three of my favorites, 33, 43, and 45! She does grim so well.)
"She says Yeerks are only ever partly in control of their Taxxon hosts. It's impossible to master the Taxxon hunger, the murderous tendencies, the cannibalistic urges. Taxxon hosts are given only to low-ranking Yeerks and, big surprise, soon they're more Taxxon than Yeerk."
"But I've seen them take orders. I've watched Taxxons move on command," Marco persisted. "They fly Bug fighters for..."
"Right. But no one would ever trust a Taxxon to be part of a conspiracy. You can't count on a guy who'll sell out for a chunk of rotting meat. Most of her allies are human-Controllers, anyway," I added.
Ax broke in. "I was once told that controlling a Taxxon morph is like facing the ultimate temptation. Tay-shun. The more you resist the temptation, the stronger it becomes, until it ends by carrying you so far beyond the realm of conscious, controllable thought you become lost in the Taxxon's most basic instincts."
Answering many questions re: Yeerks and Taxxon hosts. There's conflict within the worldbuilding, given that the some of the Council of Thirteen, super high raking Yeerks, have Taxxon hosts—but those may be hosts-by-choice (picked because they have experience with Taxxons?) and their hunger is actively accommodated on account of their privilege. I would still love an answer to the question avoided here: how do Taxxons-controllers manage to focus on tasks like piloting? I'm also fascinated by the distinction between body-as-host and body-as-morph. Visser explores "more [host] than Yeerk" in detail—the experience for Yeerks is almost the inverse of morphing, where the host body infiltrates the Yeerk identity, unlike the morphed body, where instinct as an initial hurdle which is gradually overcome. But here that differs: Taxxon instinct can't be overcome; resistance only strengths it.
I was more aware this time. I felt what was going on around me. What was going on inside the Taxxon mind. It wasn't simple hunger. It wasn't pure rage.
No. What drove the Taxxon to eat and dig was more complicated. It was something I understood. A sort of insecurity or fear.
Yes, a fear ... grossly exaggerated ... beyond anything humans experience ... a desperate fear of not having enough ... a terror of starvation ... a horror that your essential needs will go unfulfilled ... a horror demented and contorted by the Taxxon mind until it became a sick, murderous evil.
I wouldn't have understood, or even noticed, if I hadn't been hawk for so long. I've experienced just enough of that feeling to recognize it.
Geroux's Tobias is so good.
Title: The Unexpected (Animorphs Book 44)
Author: K.A. Applegate
Published: Scholastic, 2000
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 160
Total Page Count: 304,285
Text Number: 1019
Read Because: reading the series
Review: This isn't as racist as it could be! which isn't the same thing as good, by any measure. The Test, the previous book, has Cassie as stealth protagonist—not the PoV character, absent for the bulk of the plot, but her offscreen emotional journey is significant and harrowing. This is a Cassie-PoV book that separates her from the cast into the Australian outback, but it doesn't manage to achieve much at all, failing to progress her character or even feel like a continuation of the previous book. (Given how these where ghostwritten, probably not the writer's fault; still unfortunate.) I like survival situations, and Cassie's competence is always a delight, but this doesn't amount to much.
Title: The Revelation (Animorphs Book 45)
Author: K.A. Applegate
Published: Scholastic, 2000
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 145
Total Page Count: 304,490
Text Number: 1021
Read Because: reading the series
Review: Most Animorphs books preserve the status quo of the premise, despite continuity and character arcs, but this changes everything. It feels like the beginning of the end, and it's exciting and so well written. Ellen Geroux is the ghost writer, and continues to excel; she writes great angst and tension and consequence, which finally resolves Marco's uneven character arc—he's gone from uninteresting comic relief to the ongoing debate over "ruthlessness" to a character whose ruthlessness and coping mechanisms are directly challenged, and I never thought I'd love him and argue (and sympathize) so actively with his choices, yet here we are! Disclosing to a parent also throws into relief how fundamentally strange are these power dynamics—Jake's leadership and the burden of responsibility placed on the Animorphs is harder to dismiss here than when contrasted against adult aliens. It feels redundant at this point to call the series grim, but this is where it start to feel real.
I looked at the others. Rachel held Tobias's hawk body loosely but protectively. Ax stood on wobbly legs. Jake and Cassie were clutching hands. No one said a word.
(I just ... really like Rachel/Tobias scenes where Tobias is a hawk. I love it contrasted explicitly against Jake and Cassie's relationship.)
