Another mission, another victory - but, as Rachel and her friends demorph after the battle, something goes wrong. They're spotted - and photographed. Yeerk or
innocent bystander, it doesn't matter. They need that film, before Visser Three finds out that the "Andalite bandits" are just human kids. But their plans to snatch
the camera are disrupted by the return of an old enemy.
The Helmacrons, pint-sized problems with gargantuan egos, agreed never to return to Earth if they were allowed to recharge their ship on the "morphing energy" from
Elfangor's blue cube. Unfortunately, bargains made with lesser species mean nothing to them. They've returned - and this time, they've taken a hostage. Before anyone
can stop them, a team of Helmacrons has marched up Marco's nose. Once inside him, they pose a serious problem: their Dracon beams could do some real damage, especially
if they get as far as his heart. The Animorphs put their camera mission on hold to free their friend, using the shrink ray of the Helmacron ship... only something goes
wrong. The shrink ray works too well, reducing them to cellular size. The Helmacrons sabotaged their own technology, knowing the Animorphs would use it to follow them.
Now they're too small to harm even the tiny Helmacrons, and the clock is ticking both on the missing camera and on Marco's life.
But the Helmacrons made one mistake: they made Rachel mad.
Review
I believe this represents the nadir of the series. The Helmacrons, irritating in their first adventure, are even more annoying in their return. The whole
concept feels pitched at a lower level than the rest of the books, with its focus on snot and phlegm and Magic School Bus-like tour of the body. With a plot this
shallow and villains this silly, there's no room for depth, let alone interest. The writing style doesn't even read like Applegate. Like the first Helmacron encounter
(in Book 24, The Suspicion), this adventure wraps up with a quick non-conclusion. A clear case of series padding, or author burnout.
Of all the Animorphs, Tobias has made the most sacrifices. On their first mission to the Yeerk pool, he gave up his humanity when he became a nothlit, trapped
in hawk morph. Regaining his morphing ability through the interference of the Ellimist, Tobias had a chance to return to human - to stay a human forever, to be with
Rachel as a normal boy - but chose to remain in the fight as an Animorph. When they needed someone to destroy the Yeerks' Anti-Morphing Ray, Tobias volunteered to be
the test subject... and endured unimaginable torture at the hands of Taylor, the sadistically insane sub-visser in charge of the project. That was when he nearly gave up
his own sanity, and the horror, the weakness of being entirely in Taylor's control, still haunts him.
Tobias had thought Taylor dead; she displeased Visser Three, after all, and few who fail him once last long enough to do so again. But then, after being injured by an
eagle attack and sent to an animal hospital, there she was. His captor. His torturer. His bane. Instead of killing him, however, she lets him go - after telling him that
she wants the help of his friends. Many Yeerks, she claims, are unhappy with how the Vissers and the Council have botched their empire's expansion. She wants to destroy
Visser Three and spark a revolution that will resonate across the galaxy. Taylor has a plan that is every bit as heartless as she is, devastatingly simple. A victory in
one blow.
Tobias is torn. On the one hand, the chance to cause trouble for the invasion is too good to pass up, even if it means partnering with such an unsavory, unstable person.
On the other, he alone knows just how evil Taylor truly is at heart... and how hard it is to break free of her clutches.
Review
How many middle-grade books explore the ramifications of torture and post-traumatic stress? Not many. Applegate writes a brilliant follow-up to Tobias's darkest
adventure, pitting the tortured against the torturer on an ever-shifting playing field. He struggles to reconcile his lingering sense of helplessness and weakness,
his shame at having been broken, with the the greater needs of the war and his friends - and, by overcompensating, nearly destroys everything he's ever fought for. The
Animorphs find their ethics tested and twisted to the utmost, as they weigh the costs of victory at any price against their own humanity. The war has changed them all,
leaving scars that will never heal. They aren't children anymore, but soldiers in the truest sense of the word. A fine return to form after the inane meanderings of
Book 42.
When Cassie and her friends got wind of alien wreckage discovered by the government, they knew they had to act fast. The Yeerks would do anything to keep any evidence
of their technology from ending up in official hands, which means that the Animorphs must ensure that it does just that. Powerful as the invasion has grown, it's still
not strong enough to withstand the forces of national defenses should the feds be alerted. During the mission, Cassie becomes separated from the others. One firefight
later, and she finds herself in the cargo hold of a jumbo jet... with Yeerk Bug fighters hot on her trail.
By the skin of her teeth and the speed of her morph, she manages to escape, to find herself in the middle of a vast red desert... the Australian Outback. It's not the kind
of place the Yeerks would be interested in - unless, of course, they thought an Andalite was hiding there. All alone, in a strange land, Cassie fights for her survival on
the slim hope of returning home.
Review
This might've squeaked by with an Okay rating, but it was just too unoriginal to pull it off. The story feels like a "field trip" filler episode of a sagging TV show,
when they move the cast and crew to an exotic location in a misguided attempt to boost ratings. Being seen by a native boy who helps her fight back comes straight out
of The Extreme (Book 25), when a Native American helps the team find a polar bear to morph. Also like that book, the natives take people turning into animals in
stride due to their cultural heritage, mostly because the book doesn't want to have to deal with the ramifications of outsiders learning about the Animorphs. Aside from
meeting an Aboriginal boy and visiting Oz, this book serves no purpose in the mytharc. Cassie's character doesn't grow, the Yeerks are neither helped nor hindered by the
sidetrack, and the whole adventure amounts to a delaying tactic before the next book, which begins the build-up to the series finale in Book 54. It's not a bad story, per
se, but Applegate is capable of so much better... and gratuitous padding like this just cheapens the series. (The book also missed a bet: Australia is home to animals with
some of the deadliest venoms on Earth, a worthy addition to the morphing arsenal. The only native Australian Cassie does morph is a red kangaroo, which she could've found
at the zoo back home.)
From the first, the Animorphs have struggled to keep their families - most of them probably innocent, at least one a human-Controller - from learning of their
abilities, let alone the fight against the Yeerks. To do so would put all of them in danger. If need be, they know they'll probably have to sacrifice loved ones for
the sake of the cause. Marco, of all the Animorphs, should know this: his mother, long thought drowned, lives as the enslaved host of Visser One. Even when his
father fell in love again and remarried, he kept his mouth shut, kept living the lie that his real mother was dead. The greater good prevailed.
But then his father came home from work one evening, babbling about a revolutionary breakthrough at the engineering firm where he works: the discovery of a brand-new
layer of existence. Zero-space.
The nondimension where extruded mass goes during small morphs... and where alien spaceships travel interstellar distances in days rather than centuries. Marco and
his friends know more about Zero-space than any other free humans... until now.
So far, the Yeerks have maintained their cloak of secrecy, lacking the strength and firepower to take on human military forces in the open. But if a human blundered
onto their Zero-space transmissions, the hiding would be over. The only way to stop Earth from learning of their invasion is to infiltrate the project. Make
Controllers out of the engineers involved.
Including Marco's father.
He's already lost his mother to Visser One. Can he stand by, like a good soldier, and let Dad be taken by the enemy? Or will he do something very brave, very stupid,
and very, very dangerous, for him and the rest of his friends... like finally reveal his secret identity to the only family he has left?
Review
After maintaining a holding pattern for longer than was strictly necessary, the series kicks into gear again in the countdown to the finale, a mere nine books out.
Compressing events that could've unfolded more naturally over two or three books into one makes for a bit of a rushed story, unfortunately. There isn't time for the
full emotional impact of the mytharc-changing events to be properly established or explored. As the title implies (and the preview blurbs explicitly reveal), Marco's
father becomes the first of the Animorphs' relatives to learn of their secret identities - a revelation he takes remarkably well, all things considered. That alone
could've made up the core of a good book, but Applegate shoehorns in three or four more major alterations. By the end, the final ultimatum has been sounded, the final
deadline placed before the Yeerks take the invasion out of the shadows. It should've been a far more profound moment, but instead it was lost in the general rush. A
little disappointing, but not enough to put me off reading on - then or now.
Since coming to Earth on board the doomed Andalite Dome ship with his war-hero brother, Aximili has changed in many ways. Once an untested aristh, a warrior-cadet,
he has now fought more Yeerks than many Andalite adults. Once convinced of the moral and technological superiority of his species, he has been humbled - and disappointed -
many times. But, still, he clung to the hope that the Andalites would come to liberate Earth from the Yeerk threat, that he and his friends were merely fighting to delay
Visser Three's forces.
Now he knows better.
Almost overnight, the tone of the invasion has shifted. What once was a stealth mission moves toward all-out war, now that Visser Three has been officially promoted to the
rank of Visser One. His first act is brilliant, ruthless, and bold: trigger a third World War, and let humans exhaust their weapons and resources exterminating each other
until no possible resistance can be mounted.
The Animorphs, of course, hurry to thwart the Visser's plans... but they're used to guerrilla warfare and infiltration, quick strikes against the enemy, melting into the
shadows before the violence and death toll rise too high. Ax and his companions thought they were blooded warriors already - but, now, they're about to get their first
taste of real, open, no-holds-barred war. And they'll learn that, when it comes to war, they have a lot to learn: about the enemy, and about themselves.
Review
This book, which picks up literally where the last one left off, danged near lost itself a half-star. The change in tone, the higher body count and blood cost, has been
so abrupt that it almost reads like an entirely different series. It didn't help that a fair chunk of this book relied on in-depth knowledge of the armaments and
infrastructure of a modern Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, which Jake and his friends spew out in long strings of technobabble. If nothing else, the character evolution is
thrown into sharp relief at the Animorphs' first taste of all-out war - at least, their first taste on Earth, in their own timeline, in a battle that they cannot sidestep
or back away from because it's not their fight. Ax especially learns just how far he's willing to go to save humans and defeat the Yeerk scheme; like Elfangor before him,
Ax has been seduced by the primitive, contradictory natives of Earth (though not in so literal a sense as his big brother,) but even he is surprised at just what he'll
sacrifice in the name of victory. Bloody, violent, fast-paced, and dark, The Deception continues what Book 45 started, a mad race to the ultimate confrontation
between Animorph and Yeerk.
He is called the Ellimist, a seemingly immortal interstellar meddler, sworn enemy of the evil Crayak. He appears from nowhere, making the most unexpected offers in
the most unexpected situations, and the Animorphs both respect and distrust his word. Though they recognize Crayak as an enemy, the Ellimist is far too much of an enigma
to call a friend. He is known throughout the galaxy, sometimes feared, sometimes worshipped, sometimes hated, but never understood. Until now.
Toomin, a young Ketran, is a slacker, obsessed - like many his age - with his race's uninet and its many games, where he goes by the screen name of "Ellimist." When his
people begins to develop an interstellar ship of their own, like those of the few offworlders to visit Ket, he never expects to be picked for even nonessential crew...
but, somehow, his name ends up ont he list, thanks to an influential and enigmatic friend. He is about to begin a journey that will take him light-years and eons from the
crystal sphere he calls home, as a gamer in a contest with the highest stakes the galaxy has ever known.
Review
As usual, Applegate delivers an unexpected story behind one of her more intriguing characters. This one gives grim shades of things to come in her Animorphs
series, but one of the points of the book is that the struggle between Earth and the Yeerks is but a small part of a much greater and much older game. Overall, an
excellent outing, even if it is shorter and slightly less satisfying than her other "extra" stories.
Everything's falling apart. Visser Three is now Visser One. The secret invasion moves toward open warfare. The Andalite relief ships aren't coming, now or - most
likely - ever. Already Marco and his family are officially "dead," hiding with the free Hork-Bajir in the mountains beyond the national forest. How much longer before
Rachel has to join them? Or Cassie? Jake, leader of the Animorphs, doesn't know how much more he can stand, how much longer he can hold out against impossible
odds.
While cleaning out the basement for his mother, Jake finds an old family heirloom: the uniform and diary of Lieutenant Isaiah Fitzhenry, Civil War soldier. The tale of
Fitzhenry's battle, a battle with too few troops and unreliable orders and an undefeated Rebel general whose forces vastly outnumber and outgun his own, eerily mimics
Jake's fight... especially when Cassie calls with grim news. One of the free Hork-Bajir has been captured and re-infested. With a guide to lead them, the Yeerk troops
are heading straight toward the hidden valley sanctuary. It's a death trap, with no way out - but the Hork-Bajir refuse to flee. And Jake has no choice but to lead
them in a fight that cannot be won.
Review
Drawn in shades of blood red, hopeless white, and black smears of despair and foreshadowing, The Resistance brings the battle to the sheltered Hork-Bajir.
Like the previous book, innocent bystanders find themselves in the line of fire, forced by cruel circumstance to take up arms against an enemy they didn't know
existed and fight - or die - in a war they do not understand. The alternate-chapter cuts to Isaiah Fitzhenry's diary, describing his doomed efforts to protect a
town from Rebel soldiers, drove home parallels about racism (or speciesism), freedom, and the dark reality of war with concussive force. Further hints are dropped
that, during the "holding pattern" stories, plenty has been happening that the readers were left unaware of - for instance, Jake and his friends finally learned how
to morph clothing other than Spandex. It makes me wish that the publishing schedule hadn't been so brutal, so Applegate herself could've had more time to develop
those stories (or at least more time to properly oversee the efforts of the ghostwriters.)
For weeks now, Rachel has been plagued by nightmares. Anyone in her shoes - given the ability to morph animals, thrown onto the front lines of a war against parasitic
alien invaders, constantly in fear of discovery by her enemies - would be insane not to have bad dreams, but Rachel's are worse than normal. In them, her dark side, the
bloodthirsty beast in her own heart, takes over, threatening her friends and comrades even as she thrills in its amoral power. But they're just dreams... or are
they?
Rachel finds herself trapped in a multi-layered nightmare, too real to be a dream yet too impossible to be reality. At the center of it lurks the evil red eye of
Crakak... and a white rat named David. The seventh Animorph, whom they trapped in rat morph when he went rogue. Crayak offers Rachel's dark side a chance to emerge, to
flourish. It has the strength to destroy Visser One. It has the power to save Earth. And all it will cost is one life: the life of Jake, the leader of the
Animorphs.
If Rachel accepts the Crayak's gift, she will become the most powerful being in this sector of the galaxy. If she rejects it, she'll end up with David: trapped as a
rat. Forever.
Review
This book, following through on Crayak's earlier attempt to seduce Rachel to his side of the conflict, stumbles by trying too hard. It wants to be Rachel's equivalent
of Tobias's torture at the hands of the mad Yeerk Taylor in The Illusion (Book 33), crossed with a follow-through on the fate of David and some temptation-of-evil
for good measure. Any one of those, alone, might have made a stronger story, but mashed together it just becomes too surreal. The whole book has a nightmarish overtone,
as Crayak bends and warps reality on a whim to ensare Rachel in his plans. Given the series finale, there's more than a little character foreshadowing here, as she
confronts the reality of her near-addiction to the danger of warfare; even if the Yeerks left tomorrow, she'll never be able to pretend she's an ordinary girl again,
that she'll be happy just shopping at The Gap or chilling in front of the TV. It's been a theme with her character since the beginning, and the degree to which it's come
to dominate her life shows just how severely the war has affected her. David, in his return, does less than I might have expected - and, frankly, of all the characters
the Animorphs have encountered, all the tantalizing loose threads from previous adventures, I wouldn't have picked him as the one to revisit, as his arc had a solid
resolution. Still, given that it reads more like a head-trip than an active progression of the mytharc, the book does its job.
Since becoming Animorphs, joining the fight against the unseen Yeerk enemy, Tobias and his friends fought not only for the Earth, but for the safety of their families.
Even Jake, whose older brother Tom is a high-ranked human-Controller, would do anything to protect them. For a long time, it was merely a hypothetical threat; Visser One
remained convinced that the "bandits" harrying the invasion were trained Andalite warriors.
Now, he's figured out the truth.
As the Animorphs scramble to figure out how much the Yeerks know, and how to save their families (if it's not already too late), Tobias makes a startling discovery: his
mother, who abandoned him when he was little more than a baby, is still alive. She lives just a few blocks from where the human boy Tobias cried himself to sleep at night
in his uncaring uncle's house, inventing story after story about why she'd left, and when she'd come back for him.
How much will Tobias risk to meet her? How much is her life - the life of a woman who was barely a mother to him, who never even bothered walking down the block to see
him - worth? And why can't Tobias seem to leave her behind as easily as she left him?
Review
After Marco revealed his secret to his father in The Revelation (Book 45), this story - the endangerment of the Animorphs' families, the decision whether or not
to sacrifice their own flesh and blood to the Yeerks - was inevitable. Tobias would normally be an outsider in such a decision; even when he was human, his "family" was
little more than a roof over his head and (sometimes) a meal on the table at night. Bringing his long-lost mother Loren, last seen as a kid in The Andalite
Chronicles, felt a bit like a stretch in the logic department, but it gave Tobias (and the readers) a sense of closure on her story. The reunion is bittersweet, as
Tobias finally learns just why she walked out on him, but if he thought he'd have a TV-movie reconciliation that erased all the scars of his past, he's sadly mistaken...
especially when the Yeerks are still gunning for him and his friends, and are no longer afraid of the consequences of public displays of force. The tension continues to
ratchet up on the way to the finale.
On a side note, the original cover's morph shows a serious misunderstanding of how a hawk would morph into a dog... a further sign that the series is nearing the end of
its active shelf life.
Life in the Hork-Bajir refugee camp is stressful enough. Add in too-close quarters, parents who still cannot accept the real and imminent danger of the Yeerks, the
knowledge that, however much they drill and practice, they simply cannot survive a direct assault, and the fact that Jake's family - mother, father, and brother -
are all Controllers... well, it's hardly a wonder that the Animorphs are falling apart. Cassie watches helplessly as Jake's fire dwindles to a cold, empty pit of apathy.
She no longer knows him, the boy she used to consider more than a friend. He needs help.
He needs more troops. More Animorphs. Because, even though the experiment with David turned out to be a disaster, the original six can no longer fight this war
alone.
The trouble is finding people who will, unlike their parents (or most adults, in their experience), accept the dangers and the responsibilities of morphing... and who
are guaranteed not to already have an alien slug in their brains. Cassie knows just where to recruit, from a population that the Yeerks - and the humans - dismiss without
a second thought. The hospital beds of sick and disabled children.
But, even as she tells Jake and the others her plan, she has to wonder: is Jake the only one losing touch with their humanity, or has her soul become just as calloused
and empty as his?
Review
This is just the sort of plot development that should've come earlier in the series, a sideline that would've added fresh interest and nice, new storylines. But, then,
these last books feel like a wind sprint through all the stuff Applegate meant to do, but kept putting off to crank out filler plots. Jake comes closer to cracking than
ever before, the loss of his whole family driven home by day after day of watching Marco, Cassie, Rachel, and even the orphaned Tobias with their safe-and-sound parents.
Cassie wants to believe she's still the same person she used to be before the war, but watching her parents react to her new self drives home her own transformation into
someone she doesn't particularly like, but cannot seem to break away from. In the end, Cassie risks everything once she held dear for redemption... even, possibly, her
love for Jake. Returning to the internal conflicts and moral dilemmas that were always the strength of the series, The Ultimate demonstrates that the spark is still
alive, even fifty-odd books later.
Marco and Tobias were monitoring suspicious troop movements near town, a possible indication of Yeerks manipulating the National Guard, when they ran into trouble:
a squadron of peregrine falcons and golden eagles.
Their worst fears, realized.
Since Jake's brother Tom escaped with Prince Elfangor's blue cube, the Animorphs are no longer the only morph-capable fighters in this war. Worse, with Visser One's
operatives controlling some, if not all, of the guard units, he has military-grade Earth-based firepower and combat-trained human-Controllers at his beck and call.
The invasion's about to go public.
Which means the Animorphs have to do the same.
While Jake and the others distract the Yeerk-controlled National Guard, Marco, Tobias, and Ax head to the state capitol. Their plan? Warn the governor about the Yeerks
before they can slip a slug into her brain. Only she has the authority to call in more guards, or send for help from the Pentagon... too far away from the Yeerk pool for
Visser One to have reached. If nothing else, it's time the general public knew what was going on - before the Dracon beams of Yeerk Bug fighters start carving up the city
streets in broad daylight. Of course, they have to dodge Controllers - in morph and out of it - to reach her, but with only three members, they should have no problem with
stealth.
The operative word, unfortunately, being "should"...
Review
A high-action thrill ride, this book creates an interesting dynamic by splitting the core group. Without Jake to lead them, Marco and the others can't turn to anyone
else to make decisions for them. Fortunately, they're veterans in this war by now; the Animorphs of even twenty books ago wouldn't have been able to function as smoothly
on their own. In the governor, the Animorphs may at last have found a grown-up who can handle the news of alien invaders - if they can keep her alive and uninfested long
enough to do them any good. With only three books left in the series, both Animorphs and Yeerks prepare themselves for the upcoming final showdown, the ultimate battle
for the fate of the Earth.
Incidentally, it's long been apparent, but these later books' titles really must be the result of some sort of random word generator... there's no reason for this one, of
all the books, to be called the "absolute" anything.
And on another note, I cannot believe how high the prices are for these later Animorphs installments... check your local library for a much more economical option, unless
you're planning to collect them all.
Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill, younger brother of the hero Prince Elfangor, has lived and fought with the Animorphs since they rescued him from the wreckage of the
Andalite Dome ship. He has come to respect humans, even - occasionally - admire them. He has stood beside "Prince Jake," against every law and custom of the Andalite
people, who hold themselves above and apart from even their allies. Like Elfangor before him, Ax thought he might live and die for Earth, his human comrades-in-arms at
his side.
But, as the face of the war has changed, his friends have changed with it... in ways that confuse and frighten him.
Once a unified group, now the pressures of the Yeerk war turn them against each other. Even Jake can't seem to hold the Earth resistance together. In desperation, Ax
has taken to covertly contacting his Andalite superiors. They have a strong leadership, and a firm plan for Earth... a plan that essentially uses humans as bait to lure
Yeerks to their doom, when the fleet annihilates every living thing from the planet's surface. The sacrifice of one backwards, divided, antagonistic species to save the
galaxy from the Yeerk threat.
Now, Jake and his friends have learned that the Yeerks have tapped into the city's subway system, mass-infesting hordes of new hosts every day. They mean to destroy the
new tunnels... and the Yeerk pool. A devastating attack that could break Visser One's stranglehold on the planet - and doom the Andalite High Command's plans.
Stand with his prince, or obey his people? Help the Animorphs destroy untold numbers of Yeerks, or sabotage their efforts? Wherever he looks, Ax finds only bad choices,
and no answers.
Review
Once more, Aximili must look himself in the eye and decide where he stands... only this time, the stakes are higher and the choices nowhere near as clear-cut as they
used to be. His friends are not the same people he once swore to stand beside, and the war is no longer a covert cat-and-mouse game in the shadows. Learning of Cassie's
terrible choice in The Ultimate (Book 50), the choice that gave morphing technology to the Yeerks, only makes things that much harder... especially when he hears
her reasons, reasons that are either childishly naïve or bravely forward-thinking. The Animorphs begin pulling themselves back together for the final two books, with a
fatalistic sense of impending resolution. One way or another, this war will end soon, and in these final books the Animorphs are, in their own ways, making peace with who
they are and what they've become.
On an unrelated note, the editing on some of these later books is downright sloppy, with thought-speech brackets and spoken-speech quotation marks terribly intermixed.
Scholastic was just rushing them out by this point.
Three years.
Three years, since Jake and his friends took the shortcut through the old construction site. Three years since the dying Prince Elfangor told them of the secret Yeerk
invasion. Three years since five human children and one Andalite warrior-cadet joined forces to defend the world, using all the power of the animal kingdom.
Now, the secrecy is over. The Yeerk pool under the city lies in ruins, but Visser One has only stepped up his campaign of open warfare. To feed his people with vital
Kandrona rays, he has landed the massive Pool ship. This is it: the heart of the invasion force. A battleship to dwarf the strength of the Visser's own Blade
ship.
It's a target too big, too tempting, for Jake and his companions to resist... but impossible for them to take.
Or so they thought.
While disrupting construction of a new Earth-based Yeerk pool, Jake discovers a secret group of rebels within the Yeerk ranks, in the most unlikely of places. The
Taxxons, giant cannibalistic centipedes, want out of their lopsided alliance with the Yeerks. If the Animorphs will help them, the Taxxons claim they can deliver the
keys to the Pool ship.
Jake has a target. He has a plan - a ruthless, terrible plan, a plan that the old Jake, that thirteen-year-old boy standing in the construction site, could never have
believed himself capable of devising, let alone executing. It might end up with one or more of his friends dead. It might get every resistance fighter on Earth - the
newest Animorphs, the free Hork-Bajir, the parents of his friends, the last of the Yeerk-free military, everyone - killed.
But it's the last - the only - chance for victory. And Jake isn't about to let it slip through his fingers.
No matter what the cost...
Review
And so, at last, it comes to end-game. Though there is one more book in the series, the actual final battle begins - and mostly plays out - in these pages. The levity
of the earlier Animorphs books has almost entirely dissipated; these are no longer kids, but war-weary soldiers who finally see the end in sight. Jake has transformed
from a reluctant leader beset by inner doubts to a ruthless general capable of issuing orders that are tantamount to suicide... orders that may twist in his gut, but
which he issues nonetheless. By this point, he knows his allies and his enemies inside and out, placing them with all the care and deliberation of a chess master setting
his opponent up for the ultimate checkmate. It is the sort of character transformation one rarely sees even in grown-up fiction, let alone middle-grade series. The
month-long wait for the conclusion in Book 54 was excruciating... a wait, fortunately, I don't have to replicate now.
Once, they were five human children and one Andalite warrior-cadet, hidden warriors fighting to save Earth from an invisible, parasitic threat. Fighting the foul
Abomination, the sole Andalite-Controller in the galaxy. Fighting the animal minds of their morphed bodies. Fighting their own inexperience, their own doubts and
fears.
Three years later, the secrecy is gone. The Yeerk war is over.
And, in the final, terrible battle, six became five.
Now, after years of fighting, of fear, of making soul-scarring decisions no sentient, feeling being should be forced to make, the surviving Animorphs find themselves
thrust into the international - and interplanetary - spotlight. Hailed as heroes, mobbed by fans, courted by politicians, and targeted by terrorists, Jake and his
companions face their greatest challenge ever: the beginning of the rest of their lives. It should be a time of relief, of joy, of hope. But the old scars linger, as
do the old warrior instincts. For not all of the Yeerks surrendered at the end of the war... and so long as the rebel Blade ship remains free, interplanetary peace may
be just a temporary illusion.
Review
I remember the hammer-blow to the gut I felt the first time I read The Beginning. Realistically, Applegate could've ended the story of the Animorphs with one
or two more chapters at the end of Book 53. Most authors would have. Instead, she chose a more challenging, more honest route, giving readers a look at the lives faced
by war veterans and other survivors. Jake and his friends each became nothlits in their own ways, morphed into soldiers by the necessities of war only to find -
at the end - that they had overstayed the limit, and could no longer demorph into the innocent children they used to be. It takes the concept of the series to a whole
different level, and provides a more realistic portrayal of after-the-victory life than most books dare. The ending... well, Applegate caught a lot of flak from fans.
I admit, I wasn't too keen on it the first time, myself. But, in rereading the books, I don't think she could've done justice to the characters or the series had she
let things lie where most people would have, in the happy honeymoon glow of war's end. Jake and his friends had been too deeply changed, too deeply wounded in heart and
mind, for such a happy-taffy send-off. (Even the little page-corner morphs - a feature of the books, where you flip the pages to see them morph - give the Animorphs a
proper send-off, with the profiles of the characters fading to nothing.)
In the afterword at the end of the book, Applegate explains why she ended it how she did. She also explains that it was time to walk away from the Animorphs world.
There's enough meat left on the bones, enough lingering loose strings, that she could easily revisit the universe in the future... but I don't expect she ever will.
She told the story she wanted to tell. And, on the whole, she did it brilliantly.
In the end, I was left with a few regrets as a reader, a few wishes that will forever go unfulfilled. I wish there had been fewer unnecessary extensions and filler books
(not helped by the uneven quality, likely due to ghostwriters), that kept the story from advancing as smoothly as it should have. I wish I'd been able to spend more time
getting to know the newer Animorphs and other allies from the final phase of the war. I wish I'd been able to discover the answers to some of the nagging stray threads
left over from earlier adventures. But mostly I find myself sad that I'll probably never read its like again... not even from K. A. Applegate (whose Everworld
series ended on a strong note, but whose Remnants series petered out disappointingly.) For five years, the Animorphs series provided me (and my father and
mother, both of whom swiped my books as soon as I finished) with a monthly fix of action, adventure, and the occasional burst of humor. I always knew they were
treasures, but not until I reread them did I realize just what rare jewels they truly were.
So, Applegate, if you're reading this, I offer a belated and heart-felt "thank you."
The Animorphs series, Alternamorphs 1 K. A. Applegate Scholastic Fiction, MG Gamebooks/Sci-Fi Themes: Aliens, Shapeshifters ***
Description
This "choose-a-path" book stars you as an Animorph. In this version, you are in the abandoned construction site with Jake and the others when Prince Elfangor's
crippled ship lands. You are there when the Andalite warrior offers a handful of humans the power to fight the Yeerks. You become one of the Animorphs, a kid with
the Andalite technology that allows you to become any animal you can touch. Do you have what it takes to fight the Yeerk invasion?
This book follows you, the rookie Animorph, through two adventures. The first puts you in the alternate version of the first book. The second is a follow-up on a
later Animorph story. You choose your animal morphs, but choose with care, for - as the Animorphs quickly discover - the Yeerks are not the only threat you'll
face.
Though part of the Animorphs series, this book exists on an independent timeline.
Review
When I was younger, I loved the Choose Your Own Adventure books (well, most of them, but that's another review for another time.) The basic idea was the same
as this book: read the story, make a choice at a critical plot point, turn to the page indicated, and read the results. I could read them over and over, getting a different
story each time. They allowed for variable endings, happy and sad, and one "wrong" move didn't necessarily negate your chances of a reasonably satisfactory
conclusion.
Now, I know from the official web site that Applegate turns out one Animorph book a month, six months before the publishing date: an extremely fast turnaround time
in the publishing industry, and a difficult pace to keep up. I know that "extra" projects like this book must be squeezed in around this schedule, most likely with the
assistance of a ghostwriter or two. Still, I would've appreciated it if she had drawn a little more from the masters of the Choose Your Own Adventure line of
books. It was essentially a straight tale, with one answer being right and the others being dead ends. There was no incentive to read it more than once. It was also
written to a distinctly lower (or shallower) audience than other Animorph books. The first tale races through the events of the first book, knowing that the
reader has "been there, done that" and just wants to get to the end. The second was just as rushed and just as shallow, but at least it wasn't a rehash of what we'd
already seen. I also found one pretty major editing flaw near the end of the first adventure. All in all, Alternamorphs was uninspiring, without much in the way
of the series' usual charm. What it comes down to is either Applegate doesn't get the concept of alternate-ending books, or she just plain doesn't have the time to
properly chart one out.
The Animorphs series, Alternamorphs 2 K. A. Applegate Scholastic Fiction, MG Gamebooks/Sci-Fi Themes: Aliens, Shapeshifters ****
Description
This is the second "Alternamorphs" book, a choose-your-own-adventure spin-off of the Animorphs series. In this book, you - not David - are the kid who finds
Elfangor's blue box in the construction site. The box with the power to bestow the Andalite technology of morphing, used by Elfangor to create the Animorphs. The box
that both Visser Three and the Animorphs will go to great lengths to retrieve. Will you do better than he did with the power and responsibility that comes with
morphing?
Though part of the Animorphs series, this book exists on an independent timeline.
Review
This was a much better book than the first Alternamorphs. It wasn't as simple as one choice being right and the other being immediately lethal. Once again,
there are two adventures involved, both taken from previous Animorph books, but it didn't feel as trite as the last one. It also didn't seem quite as condescending,
if I may use that term. True, it used the same premises as two previous stories, but enough was altered to make for a (mostly) original adventure. Still not quite at the
level of complexity that some of the original Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books reached, but this story is one I am not hesitant to place in the same category as
Applegate's other books.
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