You mentioned you wanted to read some Animorphs fic ... I was reading some Magicians fic by this author, and some Leverage fic, and noticed they'd written a tonne of Animorphs fic: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poetry/pseuds/Poetry/works?fandom_id=131276 Their work in the fandoms I mentioned is really good, so maybe their Animorphs stuff would be a good place to start?

I never got to the end of the Animorphs series as a kid. In fact, I don't remember being that interested in the overall story-arc: I was more into the individual characters and the morphs. It's funny that you've found the Ax books to be generally not so good on your reread of them, because I remember them most fondly.

It's really amazing that it manages to be such good storytelling, despite everything. Shows how solid Applegate's premise was, I think.