Book Reviews: Animorphs by K.A. Applegate, books 51-54

[juushika]

I did finish the series back in May, defying my tendency to just ... not finish the things I love & don't want to see end (see: my first watch of Buffy the Vampire Slayer). I even wrote review notes! But I did not type them up, fulfilling my tendency to avoid talking about things I love A Lot. But I just filled up my Moleskine, so I'm forcing myself to finish these reviews before I fulfill my very worst tendency: caring about the thing so much that I never talk about it, and my feels end up buried in review notes in a filled Moleskine from three years ago (see: Fate/Zero LN, prior to my recent reread.) So enjoy 3k words about Animorphs!


Title: The Absolute (Animorphs Book 51)
Author: K.A. Applegate
Published: Scholastic, 2001
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 150
Total Page Count: 307,280
Text Number: 1035
Read Because: reading the series
Review: I don't want "eh" books in this series—not ever, despite that they're the natural consequence of a long, episodic MG series with moments of comic relief, but particularly not now that the end is approaching. This opens with more of Jake's ongoing struggles, but he goes offscreen. It closes well—the break into public knowledge and open war is a big deal. But the bloated, forgettable middle section is action-heavy but devoid of competence or planning, which is particularly jarring this late in the series, undermining the attempted humor. The governor is the only saving grace.


Title: The Sacrifice (Animorphs Book 52)
Author: K.A. Applegate
Published: Scholastic, 2001
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 150
Total Page Count: 336,790
Text Number: 1229
Review: I don't buy all of Ax's extreme emotional reactions here—his surprise at humans feels too new, as if he hasn't struggled with that before, as if human ethical compromise differs more from his own (as recently as The Deception (Book 46)) and what he's learned about his own people over the course of the series. At the same time, this is one of the better written Ax books, on par with The Arrival (Book 38), which has the same ghostwriter: he's not an awkward alien, not comic relief, not oddly distant, but still distinguished by a profound and innate otherness. And the plot, as this already surprisingly dark MG series makes a slide into YA, as the scale escalates, as the Animorphs heal their internal rifts in a feel-good sequence of events which contrasts profoundly against the violence of their actions, is phenomenal. The overlap between end of the series and the books that are still ghostwritten is occasionally uneasy, and here makes me wish that the character arcs were a smidge tighter. But there's a lot it still does well.

• "None of us are adults. The others are now of the age to be attending what humans call 'high school.'" The timescale is inconsistent as hell (probably, like the endless debate over Marco's "ruthlessness," the consequence of ghostwriters being given a cribsheet of character notes/status quo pointers), but the end of series retcons make way more sense.



• I like that Cassie's choice re: blue cube has repercussions. I still think there should have been a third option and/or better timing. I wonder if there was ever meant to be follow-through to the Ellimist/Iskoort thread, insofar as better models for the Yeerks to adopt? Further, how many of the morph-capable Yeerks are themselves morph-capable as opposed to occupying morph-capable hosts? How does this play into the ethics of ignoring the host body? Anyway, time to have a lot of feelings about a sad Yeerk:
  
  

  <Let me go!> he begged. <Please let me go. I am so close. Only minutes away.>
  
  <Minutes away from what?> I asked.
  
  <It only takes two hours. Right? I've been a falcon for one hour and fifty-five minutes. In five minutes I'll be free!>
  
  So. This creature wanted to be a nothlit. Wanted to be trapped in his morph.
  
  <You will not be free. You will still be a Yeerk inside,> I pointed out.
  
  <I will be free,> the falcon insisted. <I will fly. I will see. No more need for Kandrona. No more orders, no more of this horrible war. I'll just fly away.>




• These quotes I'm just preserving because I have Feelings.
  
  

  Marco stepped forward. "Jake, I'm sorry, man, but you can't be one of the three."
  
  "Why not?" Jake shrugged. "I'm the only one with no family."
  
  "Maybe. For now," Marco said firmly. "But my point is that the rest of us do have families, right now. Families we care about. You're the one we trust the most. You're the one who's kept us together, kept us alive, and kept us sane. You're the one we trust most to get every one of us out of here and back to camp."
  
  Cassie and Rachel nodded.
  
  <You're the one irreplaceable person in this operation,> Tobias said.
  
  Jake took a deep breath. "Okay. Okay. I'm not saying you guys are right. But we don't have time to argue. You win.>

  
  
  &
  
  

  In spite of the fact that we were all facing almost certain death, somehow it began to feel like old times. Before the war had gotten so terribly ugly.
  
  Somehow, the rifts were beginning to mend. The Animorphs were a team again.

Title: The Answer (Animorphs Book 53)
Author: K.A. Applegate
Published: Scholastic, 2001
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 155
Total Page Count: 308,250
Text Number: 1043
Read Because: reading the series
Review: It's only right that Jake gets the final single-narrator book, and it's a good one. Reveals like his full name, age, height, and the series's timescale are devastating in that they ground everything that's come before, making it feel more real—despite, of course, various narrative inconsistencies. The reveal of the cast's ages also prompts a formal aging up, moving the series from MG to YA. The more nuanced characterizations of—and interactions between—the Taxxons, Visser, and Chee further this—and the realer things get, the more harrowing they become, which suits the end of the series. It's hard to judge relative quality through my anticipation/dread of that ending, but I love the balance of small to large, of intimate, broken personal moments and big-picture plot developments, of character breakdowns and Animorphs hypercompetence; it's fitting for a penultimate book and a strong parallel to Jake's late-game character development.

Accompanying the hard-facts infodump re: the Animorphs, this also answers some long-lingered worldbuilding/alien questions:

1) "That Visser One was dead and his human host now worked with us"—Edriss 562's gender has been assumed-female throughout the series, but this implies otherwise, hugely complicating (and queering) previous conversations about Yeerk gender identity/reproductive role, for Edriss 562 in particular but also generally speaking. The assumed-heteronormativity is safe but, between triad-reproduction and the way that hosts are simultaneously reviled and necessary re: fulfilling social/romantic/sexual urges, Yeerk sex & gender has actually always been weird as hell and this doubles down on that. ...I acknowledge that it could be a typo/inconsistency on account of ghost authors—and I don't care!

2) It also answers "how often do Yeerks actually take Taxxon hosts?" and "are Taxxons themselves as disgusted by their cannibalism as morphed Taxxons or Yeerks with Taxxon hosts?

The Yeerks had bought them off and made them allies by the simple expedient of promising to feed them. Some Taxxons carried the Yeerk slug in their feverish brains, but many did not. The Yeerks hated them as host bodies, hated living with the hunger that not even a Yeerk could control.

&

<You're telling me the Taxxons want to . . . to stop being Taxxons?>

<Yes. Yes. My people have seen a better way . . . a way out of this life of eternal, excruciating pain and hunger, a hunger that has made us slaves of the Yeerks.>

I didn't know what to say. Too much to absorb. An entire species wanting to morph? And surely Arbron knew that we no longer had the morphing cube, that Visser One had it. And in any event, Arbron must know that it wouldn't work on him. Not on a nothlit.

As if he was reading my mind, Arbron said, <Listen to me, Jake the Animorph. I have been a leader of these, my new people, for many years. We have fought the hunger, resisted as well as we could the murderous cannibalistic urges. I've tried to show them a better way. But the need is too powerful. Resistance always breaks down, and we fall again under Yeerk sway. They feed us, you see. It's as simple as that.

<I know that . . . I understand the morphing technology. I know it cannot save me, that I am forever trapped. But it can save my people. And if they are saved I can lay down my burden of leadership.>

(Also let us take a moment to appreciate Arbron and some A+ tying back in the spin-off books.) The above information conflicts somewhat with the Taxxon-controller on the Council of Thirteen, but I'm content with reality conflicting and complicating hierarchy/taboos we've seen elsewhere, because that's how societies function.

I'll save my big Cassie/Jake endgame thoughts until the last volume, but have two good quotes:

I said, "Cassie, you guessed that letting Tom take the morphing cube might weaken rather than strengthen the Yeerks. You guessed that Ax was..." I stifled the most bitter word that came to mind. " ...conflicted. I'll back your guess any day of the week."

"I think he means he's sorry he doubted you and treated you like crap," Rachel said archly.

"Yeah. That's exactly what I mean. Come on, Cassie, show me where to go next."

I love both for its resolution/apology and for the spot-on literal but still affecting thesis statement: Cassie is the one who sees, the one who shows Jake where to go.

"Look, Cassie, when this is over I'll be done with it forever. I'll go back to school, get an education, go to basketball games, get a driver's license, go to college, figure out what it is I really want to do. And be with you. You and me."

She forced a smile. "A year after it ends, if it ends, if we win, a year afterward if you want to be with me, we'll talk about that again, okay?"

Title: The Beginning (Animorphs Book 54)
Author: K.A. Applegate
Published: Scholastic, 2001
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 160
Total Page Count: 308,410
Text Number: 1044
Read Because: reading the series
Review: It's amazing how little of this resolves events in the previous book and main storyline; much of it is an epilogue, and while combining that into one volume is a good call (stand-alone epilogues are disjointed and easy to dismiss) it still makes for a weird final book: it's a betrayal of expectation, and it's hard to acclimate to the the aging up and the broader, more summarized narrative. But this series is persistently imperfect—imperfect in tone and quality, sure, but further it insists on its characters's flaws and on the profound brokenness of its world, and it's only right to make those the defining aspects of the epilogue.

Insofar as a review of a finale is a review of the series entire: Animorphs has been a hell of a ride. It buys in on the wish-fulfillment of morphing and it uses body horror to subvert its tone into something darker, but what ultimately makes the series successful is the implications of the worldbuilding and the effect this has the characters. They grow, they change, but mostly they suffer, in thematically-relevant and meaningful ways; they're indelibly marked by the awfulness of war. And so the epilogue refuses the lingering temptation of wish-fulfillment and holds true to its character arcs and themes. It's a disappointing book, in part because of inherent structural flaws, in part because it's sad to see the series end, but mostly on purpose—and to great effect.


Some notes:

• I am of conflicted feelings about how things shake out for the Taxxons et al.
  
  

  Arbron's Taxxons - those that had survived the battle - had fulfilled another of Cassie's far-seeing dreams: They had, as agreed, permanently morphed to anaconda and various other way-too-big snakes. They'd been relocated to the Brazilian rain forest, which was now protected by Brazilian law and hefty U.N. payments. If you were a guinea pig walking around the rain forest now you were toast, but the former Taxxons left people alone.
  
  Arbron himself went down there with them. He could not morph again, of course. He was an Andalite nothlit. Many years ago, far away, he had stayed too long in Taxxon morph and had been unable to demorph. And now he was Taxxon for good.
  
  Arbron was shot and killed by poachers. It was a big incident for a while. They caught the poachers and put them away. Everyone said how terrible it was. But you know, Arbron was probably grateful. He had saved his adopted people, but he had been a prisoner of that awful Taxxon hunger, and that's no way to live.
  
  The Andalite ambassador to the United Nations took charge of the body - what was left of it. Arbron was flown back to the Andalite home world and given a quiet funeral.

  
  
  
  1) All the concrete Taxxon worldbuilding developments re: how they feel about their compulsion towards cannibalism are a great way to end the series—they're substantial, meaningful, etc. 2) This is the death of a species! insofar as I presume that the snake-nothlit Taxxons could only reproduce non-sapient snakes. That's a big deal! which connects to: 3) The series has a mixed track record with ableism, depicting but condemning it, but using cultural taboos surrounding it as fridge horror, and uncritically depicting sanism. "Better dead than cursed with this Taxxon body" and "better ending the species than remaining Taxxons" are functionally similar and uhhhhh icky—icky is my big takeaway here. Depicting states of being/disability which remain awful regardless of accommodation is valid; depicting autonomy in functionally-disabled people is important; there isn't an obvious positive outcome for the Taxxons; "better dead than..." is still a problem. I don't mean to imply that the series treats it as an un-problematic solution, but it falls I think within the purview of its uncritiqued ableism.



• At one point Cassie outright says, "Jake, you can't equate the victim and the perpetrator," and I feel like this messy MG cult series gets this concept better than one thousand Deep Takes about how oppressed people can be dangerous, too!! in The Witcher/Bioshock Infinite/Dragon Age/edgy grown-up narratives that I've bitched about at length in the past.



• Jake's breakdown in the series's endgame is so good. I mentioned when reviewing The Revelation (Animorphs Book 45) that for the bulk of the series, these books retain a measure of status quo—there's continuity, there's character arcs, but the general premise of the cast and conflict remain consistent. It's part of what makes the series readable, rendering it episodic-friendly but also rendering it friendly—there's an implicit promise that no one will die in this book, because the series needs to keep going. Deviating from these implicit promises is what makes game-changers like bringing the parents into the fold so memorable. But Jake's troubles are a less exciting, more frustrating alteration of the status quo and, as with the series finale, these apparent weaknesses are productive: his breakdown—and thus the impact of the war—have meaning because they lack the resolution promised by the episodic format and expectation of a happy ending.
  
  
• To wit:
  
  

  Part of me wanted what we'd had in the old days, Cassie and me. But that wasn't possible. I knew that. I had come to accept that all of that, all of what I'd had with Cassie, Tobias, Ax, even Marco, all of it was "in the war." And the things that were "in the war" didn't seem to translate into real life. Like they were written in incompatible computer languages or something.
  
  I still cared for Cassie, for all of them. I always would. My life was divided into three parts: before, during, and after the war. And that middle section was so overwhelming, so big, so intense, it made the other two portions seem dim and dark and dull.




• The way the romantic relationships resolve an antidote to every insipid Harry Potter-style epilogue. The "meet your hetero true love before you turn 16" archetype of MG/YA is limiting and discouraging, and I was already feeling that when I was in the MG/YA reading age—because that archetype insists that who I was as a depressed kid, and my goals and relationships, is who I would be forever.
  
  (fun fact, I met Devon when I was 17; but I am an outlier and as a trope it's still a gross trope!)
  
  
• These things—the validation of Jake never getting a happy, normal ending and the insistence that we are not limited to the romances we have as teenagers, or: nothing changes, except for the good things—are not for me conflicting. They're honest to the experience of the characters and the themes of the series, and they're a productive antidote to our impulses re: what a successful, completed narrative should look like.



• I'm in no ways married to the ongoing plot as sketched in the epilogue. The details I think are forgettable and the structure and tone of the final book are a bit of a mess. But the major character beats and the general thrust of the ending are, I think, essential. I couldn't imagine the series ending any other way.
  
  I wish that kid-me had finished reading it at the time! I would have appreciated and benefited from it.

Comments

[starshipfox]

I've really appreciated your reviews of these books, and it's really good to read your thoughts on the final books and their world building. I've enjoyed seeing how everything developed, albeit from a distance, and your insights. I'm impressed and pleased that the ending didn't tie the romances down and left things open for characters -- yes please.