juushika

( Series bulletpoints: gods, Senna, vs. Animorphs. )

( Gateway to the Gods (Everworld Book 7) )

( Brave the Betrayal (Everworld Book 8) )

( Inside the Illusion (Everworld Book 9) )

( Understand the Unknown (Everworld Book 10) )

Title: Mystify the Magician (Everworld Book 11)
Author: Katherine Applegate
Published: Scholastic, 2001
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 200
Total Page Count: 371,815
Text Number: 1366
Read Because: fan of the author, hardback borrowed from the Wilsonville Public Library
Review: The Old Worlders finally face off against Senna. After hating the previous book, I'm pleasantly surprised that I ate this one up. There's no narrative cul-de-sacs here; it's all plot all the time, doing clever things with the parallel-world setup, carrying through on character arcs (I'll never like Christopher, but he's a good PoV for this book) and the ongoing theme of Everworld eclipsing their original/"real" lives. It retains the flaws endemic to the series, primarily the historical reductivism, but also mediocre writing (ex. the key to defeating Senna is obvious to any reader who's the least trope-aware; neo-Nazis as easily-manipulated pawns of the antagonist is painfully on the nose—but effective, don't get me wrong). But, since I don't know if the series will end well, and since it's been relatively underwhelming up to this point, I'm gratified to have at least one strong book near the end to reward my persistence.

Title: Entertain the End (Everworld Book 12)
Author: Katherine Applegate
Published: Scholastic, 2001
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 155
Total Page Count: 371,970
Text Number: 1367
Read Because: reading the series
Review: The cast struggle to unite the gods against the Sennites and Ka Anor, but with the gateway gone there's a real chance they'll disappear from one of the two worlds. Practically speaking, this is an adequate ramp up to a finale; but we never see that finale, and are given a lingering afterword that explains only where the cast ends up. —And that's no small thing, but the reveal feels unsubstantiated (and for April, PoV for this book, even unwarranted).

But I'm not torn up about a sudden end to the series. Everworld shares some DNA with Animorphs, but is nowhere as successful; it's a rocky read and ultimately not worth recommending. But having come this far, the series provides a fantastic penultimate book that offers much of the closure an ending needs, and a final book then gracefully lets the series die—lingering in the imagination but not forcing the reader through another handful of mediocre books. I call that a win.

Current Music: Eternal Winter - Tomoki Miyoshi (Winter's End - I Am Setsuna OST)

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) )

Current Music: I Saw the Bright Shinies - The Octopus Project

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!

( The Absolute (Animorphs Book 51) )

( The Sacrifice (Animorphs Book 52) )

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?

( Quote. )

(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.

( Also two Jake and Cassie quotes. )

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. ( Source quote. )

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.

"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) )

"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.

Current Music: Wolves - Phosphorescent

( The Familiar (Animorphs Book 41) )

( Back to Before (Megamorphs Book 4 / Animorphs Book 41.5) )

( The Journey (Animorphs Book 42) )

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.

( The Test (Animorphs Book 43) )

( Two meaty (pun intended, I suppose) Taxxon quotes )

( The Unexpected (Animorphs Book 44) )

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.

( Teeniest of quotes. )

Current Music: Devil's Spoke - Laura Marling

A pretty weak batch, despite that it includes lots of Andalites (I will forever wish their worldbuilding were more interesting!) and gay Andalites (this actually is interesting) and that nightmare scene where an ant morphed into Cassie.

( The Mutation (Animorphs Book 36) )

( The Weakness (Animorphs Book 37) )

Title: The Arrival (Animorphs Book 38)
Author: K.A. Applegate
Published: Scholastic, 2000
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 150
Total Page Count: 302,190
Text Number: 1007
Read Because: reading the series
Review: This is a vast improvement over the last few books. I wish, as always, that Andalite worldbuilding were more robust than "pretentious warrior-scientists—surprise, actually they're huge hypocrites!" but at least Ax's relationship with his people, as a race and as individuals, is nuanced. I have a hard time getting a grasp on Ax's character, as he vacillates between boring and comic relief, but the rare book like this one does a lot to correct that. The plot is manipulative for the sake of tension, but I'll take elided details over bad communication or characterization any day, and honestly it works.

(Vague memories of this one, too.)

( The Hidden (Animorphs 39) )

( The Other (Animorphs 40) )

( The Next Passage (Alternamorphs Book 2 / Animorphs Book 40.5) )

Current Music: Laura Marling

( The Conspiracy (Animorphs Book 31) )

( The Separation (Animorphs Book 32) )

( The Illusion (Animorphs Book 33) )

( The Prophecy (Animorphs Book 34) )

( The Proposal (Animorphs Book 35) )

Title: Visser (Animorphs Chronicles Book 3 / Animorphs Book 35.5)
Author: K.A. Applegate
Published: Scholastic, 1999
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 210
Total Page Count: 301,565
Text Number: 1003
Read Because: reading the series
Review: This approaches the difficult task of humanizing an antagonist while maintaining that they're objectively awful but opting not to resolve any of the contradictions that creates—and there are many, and they don't always make for cogent characterization, but it's still the right choice. The ambiguity creates nuance, while everyone else is in-character enough to sell the whole. And it shouldn't be able to surprise me anymore, but still does: this is dark, mean, and honestly doesn't feel like middle grade, especially with the focus on motherhood. I also appreciate the wealth of worldbuilding details, particularly re: Yeerks and the way they're affected by their host bodies. I still didn't enjoy this—the narrative is disjointed, and I have mixed luck any time the series moves away from the core cast. But it's surprisingly successful.

( Worldbuilding tidbits of interest )

Current Music: Shake Off Your Flesh - The Huntress and Holder of Hands

Title: The Attack (Animorphs Book 26)
Author: K.A. Applegate
Published: Scholastic, 1999
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 145
Total Page Count: 296,775
Text Number: 982
Read Because: reading the series
Review: The humor in ~~anything~~ this series can be too much for me, but the way it work here, a vivid bizarro world in contrast to dire survival, is fantastic and memorable. The ending is trite, but the path there has rewarding logic. But the true highlight of this book is Jake. I love the ambiguity of his leadership, the ruthless logic of his manipulations contrasted with the vulnerability and uncertainly we see only in his PoV. I love the tension between his position as leader and his position as friend and romantic partner, and the utterly predictable but still satisfying first kiss. It's the surprisingly strong characterization which is keeping me engaged now that I've passed the series's halfpoint.

( Two quotes, two notes. )

( The Exposed (Animorphs Book 27) )

( The Experiment (Animorphs Book 28) )

( The First Journey (Alternamorphs Book 1 / Animorphs Book 28.5) )

( The Sickness (Animorphs Book 29) )

( Elfangor's Secret (Megamorphs 3 / Animorphs 29.5) )

( The Reunion (Animorphs Book 30) )

Current Music: Heart of a Dog - The Kills

( The Discovery (Animorphs Book 20) )

( The Threat (Animorphs Book 21) )

( The Solution (Animorphs Book 22) )

( The Hork-Bajir Chronicles (Animorphs Chronicles Book 2 / Animorphs Book 22.5) )

( The Pretender (Animorphs Book 23) )

( The Suspicion (Animorphs Book 24) )

( The Extreme (Animorphs Book 25) )

Some notes:

Yeah, I did it, I gave another Animorphs book (The Pretender, Book 23) 5 stars, making this both two 5-star Animorphs books and three 5-star books in February. All of them have been id-books, like: objectively there may be flaws, and normally an objective flaw will color a book even if I really enjoy it, but there's a horizon where enjoyment outstrips objectivity and I just love the thing. Tobias angst always has the potential to sail over that horizon; I can see why he was so memorable & formative to adolescent readers—like, you know, me.

The Extreme is the first ghostwritten book, and from now on almost everything is ghostwritten, excepting only The Attack (Book 26), The Separation (Book 32), and The Answer and The Beginning (Books 53 and 54, the last in the series). I'm sure there will be some issues with this, and I've already noticed some weird editing problems I'll discuss in the next batch, but The Extreme (Book 25) read fine to me. If anything, The Pretender (Book 23) felt out of place for being more frank re: marginalization, and it's not ghostwritten!

The takeaway of the above being: 1) episodic format forgives a lot, 2) even single author(s) [given that Katherine Applegate and Michael Grant co-authored the Animorphs books] can vary over a long series with an episodic format, and 3) the Applegate oversight must provide some quality control, even if it's still a compromise.

I have so many shipping feels in this goddamn series, and I normally don't get fannish about books. Is this because of the nostalgia? because the episodic style reads almost like a more shippable medium like television? because the MG/YA cusp lends well to both of the above? because of all the Weird Alien Sex things and star-crossed romances and "my boyfriend, the hawk" and "Prince Jake" and "that time I let a Yeerk into my brain"?

My favorite dynamics are Rachel/Tobias, Aximili/Jake, Jake/Cassie, Cassie/Aftran 942, Tobias/Ax, and all the various interspecies monsterfuckers of my formative adolescence. There's so much weirdness and tension in all the relationships in this series, especially complicated by the fact ( NSFW-adjacent rambling )

I say "the various interspecies monsterfuckers of my formative adolescence" in jest but uhhhh this is another "revisiting a thing from my childhood only to discover, oh, That Explains A Lot."

I didn't take a break between batches 15-19 and 20-25 because 20-22 ended up being one cohesive arc. And then I didn't take a break after 25 because I was having a rough day & wanted to read Animorphs. I set these arbitrary break points primarily to prevent burnout, so I don't care about ignoring them if I'm not burned out. And I'm not. All I want to do read these books. It's such a successful reread project & I really needed something this absorbing right now.

(That said, when I do manage to read something else, especially if it has wildly different worldbuilding, there's this sense of freshness, almost a shock. Animorphs is never routine—it has so many wild setpieces; it refuses to be routine—but it has in a way become a default for my expectations.

Current Music: Vienanmeri - ginkiha

( The Warning (Animorphs Book 16) )

( The Underground (Animorphs Book 17) )

( The Decision (Animorphs Book 18) )

As a side note: why did Andalites invent morphing technology if they don't use it/consider it valuable? Is it one of dozens of equally sophisticated inventions that we haven't seen? Is it socially devalued for class/labor/other reasons, despite its potential? They're the only species in the known universe that has it, and it's desirable technology and effectively a status symbol, but doesn't jive at all with what we've seen of Andalite society. (Which may just be the consequence of bad worldbuilding that the narrative is forever trying to patch up.)

( In the Time of the Dinosaurs (Megamorphs Book 2 / Animorphs Book 18.5) )

Title: The Departure (Animorphs Book 19)
Author: K.A. Applegate
Published: Scholastic, 1998
Rating: 5 of 5
Page Count: 160
Total Page Count: 295,130
Text Number: 971
Read Because: reading the series
Review: Cassie books could easily be pure navel-gazing, but they're stubbornly realized: a punishing lived experience with potentially devastating consequences. I love that the dilemma is never fully resolved, I love that the supporting cast spans a spectrum of agreements and disagreements, I love the necessary optimism of the resolution. I love the intimate ethical dialogue paired against substantial and thoroughly satisfying elaborations on Yeerk worldbuilding.

I've been grading the Animorphs books on a curve, if you will, to account for limitations like repetition and page length and writing style; I'm still stingy with "perfect" ratings, but for an Animorphs book this could well be perfect—it certainly meets and exceeds my other favorites so far.

Perhaps not always with utmost grace, but this book directly answers some worldbuilding questions re: Yeerks, such as, "Do they only self-actualize in host bodies?" and "Have they considered the ethical implications of this?" and it's fascinating.

( Two quotes, three notes. )

One small side-note: The book titles have become relevant to the books's contents! This is a welcome change.

This set of reviews only goes through book 19 because, as was a surprise to me, book 20 begins a 3-book arc. I'll shove that whole thing in the next group of reviews.

Title: The Forgotten (Animorphs Book 11)
Author: K.A. Applegate
Published: Scholastic, 1997
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 160
Total Page Count: 290,410
Text Number: 951
Read Because: reading the series
Review: I remember this book! Indicating that I just skipped book 10, probably because of spiders. (And, you know what, 12-year-old me? That's fair.)

And it's fantastic. A clever plot (set comfortably within genre convention, but kid-me didn't know better and adult-me doesn't mind); memorable settings (this beautiful/terrifying depiction of the rainforest was formative for me) and scenes (the bear/ant part is so traumatizing!). And, best of all, it has a strong interior view into Jake which is driven less by angst and more by characterization. It's a step up from the bad communication and obviously stupid decisions that motivate much of the tension in earlier books; here, Jake's decisions feel justified while still having devastating consequences, exploring his role as leader in productive ways.

( The Reaction (Animorphs Book 12) )

( The Andalite Chronicles (Animorphs Book 12.5) )

( The Change (Animorphs Book 13) )

( The Unknown (Animorphs Book 14) )

( The Escape (Animorphs Book 15) )

A few follow-up notes:

I had sincerely wondered if I stopped reading the series at book 10, which seemed unlikely, as there's scenes I remember that haven't/hadn't come up in the books yet; but no, everything since then is still familiar! I'm curious to see how far my remembering extends. I can't recall the books cold; it's not until I'm given the context of each book that I remember what happens next.

In further Yeerk worldbuilding: Taxxon hunger is so strong that Taxxon-Controllers are still cannibalistic; as with Chapman's limited rebellion, some things not just challenge a Yeerk's control but must be accommodated in order for a Yeerk to maintain control. (What manages to challenge/requires accommodation has way more to do with "convenient/interesting for plot" than strength of will or any character judgement that might imply.)

Embodiment is central to Yeerk social interaction and also gender identity and, by implication, personality. (I mean, not at all by implication insofar as the text is concerned, because that would mean interrogating the link between symbiont/host and body/gender/social role, none of which the text intends to do; its unquestioned default is a [literal] universal heteronormative gender binary. But that's a) bad and b) boring, so let's disregard it.)

TL;DR: What is a Taxxon-body experience like for a Yeerk? Is there a constant conflict re: cannibalism, where the Yeerk is disgusted by Taxxon urges and/or ashamed by their lack of control over the host? Which Yeerks get Taxxon bodies and what are the social repercussions—is it the shitty host race? do they shun each other for a loss of control that clearly no one can master? Are there Taxxon-Controllers that don't cannibalize because they're super strong-willed?

Hork-Bajir-Controllers speak pidgin—is this because of the Hork-Bajir's limited intelligence? Is a horse-Controller limited in intelligence? It was an issue with the shark proto-Controllers. This hasn't been mentioned re: Gedd-Controllers. Because, obvs., the ethical solution to the Yeerk are consenting and/or non-sapient host bodies (and also, like, not doing the colonialism and genocide thing anymore), but perhaps there's actual hurdles to that.

Do I just want to use the Yeerk to expand my thoughts/feels about the Trill? Like, probably, yeah, that's fair.

This is about when I started to wonder if my reading list had the correct chronology for the spin-offs, which it did not, so I went through by hand to double-check everything; as such, I've already read The First Journey (because it takes place after book 11), the first Choose Your Own Adventure and actually book 28.5, but I'll include that review when I get to the book 26-30 block. I wasn't sure on the relative publishing dates of The Andalite Chronicles and book 13, so read them in reverse order. It works either way, but, yeah, some Tobias-revelations make more sense with The Andalite Chronicles as context.

That original reading list also marked some books as bad/skippable, and included both The Change (marked as mildly not-great) and The Andalite Chronicles (marked as awful & skippable) which. is wrong. is objectively and horribly wrong. But okay.

Title: The Capture (Animorphs Book 6)
Author: K.A. Applegate
Published: Scholastic, 1997
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 150
Total Page Count: 288,800
Text Number: 943
Read Because: reading the series
Review:

"I can't believe we are actually going to practice a morph," Marco said. "We never practice. We just do it, and when it's a huge disaster we try and deal with it then."

The conflicts in these frequently rely on coincidence, but they're still fascinating intersections of horror, worldbuilding, and personal conflict; Jake's predicament here is fantastic. The cast is also unexpectedly competent, and I wonder if that will persist and/or if it was only possible because much of it occurred offscreen—stupid decisions still creates narrative tension, and I imagine that'll never entirely go away, but this was a delight regardless, particularly in the second half of the book. How satisfying!

( The Stranger (Animorphs Book 7) )

( The Andalite's Gift (Megamorphs Book 1) )

( The Alien (Animorphs Book 8) )

A moment to consider heteronormativity, here established to be so universal as to apply even to symbiotic brain worms who seem only to live fully when embodied in a host—how does gender work in that situation? What is embodiment-as-gender/-in-sex like for a Yeerk, given that they appear hate their host species? The book doesn't mean to raise these questions, obviously; heteronormativity is just the unconscious result of when it was written and for what audience. But it makes me wonder what fandom has done with Animorphs xenobiology.

(In The Android (Book 10), it's confirmed that Yeerk rarely communicate with each other while in the pool in slug form, verifying that embodiment is central to Yeerk social interaction.)

( The Secret (Animorphs Book 9) )

( The Android (Animorphs Book 10) )

Title: The Invasion (Animorphs Book 1)
Author: K.A. Applegate
Published: Scholastic, 1996
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 185
Total Page Count: 284,975
Text Number: 923
Read Because: reading the series
Review: This is a more robust beginning than I expected, establishing the series's premise and major worldbuilding, also the character dynamics, and it has a mini-conflict and climactic action scene. The writing is workman-like and telepathy makes for convenient infodumping, but these aren't bad things: they make it possible to cram a lot into a short book. And I'm surprised by how well I remembered it, given that I haven't touched this series in 20 years. It's a phenomenal combination of elements—the tension between body horror and wish-fulfillment; the distinct characters made emotionally accessible by morphing into animals (the seductiveness of an animal's mind is great; the scenes where characters pet other-characters-as-animals is even better).

I imagine my response to the sequels will frequently be "same! but with various additions/exceptions" and so I won't review them in this much detail. But this was a great start. I can see why I loved it as a kid, and I'm excited to read more now.

( The Visitor (Animorphs Book 2) )

( The Encounter (Animorphs Book 3) )

( The Message (Animorphs Book 4) )

( The Predator (Animorphs Book 5) )

On account of how there are 54 main + 10 side books in this series, and because they're short and I'm reading them in bursts, I'll post these reviews in groups of ~5 at a time. Some overarching thoughts on reading the series so far:

( Read more... )

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Entries tagged with obsession: books: animorphs

Book Reviews: Everworld 7-12 by Katherine Applegate

Book Reviews: Everworld 1-6 by Katherine Applegate

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

Book Reviews: Animorphs by K.A. Applegate, books 46-50

Book Reviews: Animorphs by K.A. Applegate, books 41-45

Book Reviews: Animorphs by K.A. Applegate, books 36-40

Book Reviews: Animorphs by K.A. Applegate, books 31-35

Book Reviews: Animorphs by K.A. Applegate, books 26-30

Book Reviews: Animorphs by K.A. Applegate, books 20-25

Book Reviews: Animorphs by K.A. Applegate, books 16-19

Book Reviews: Animorphs by K.A. Applegate, books 11-15

Book Reviews: Animorphs by K.A. Applegate, books 6-10

Book Reviews: Animorphs by K.A. Applegate, books 1-5

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