62 reviews found

Well, here we are. Almost four years ago I started re-reading Animorphs. I had been wanting to do this for a while, and then my Goodreads friend and occasional Twitter DM enthusiast Julie started her own, finally galvanizing me to just do it, as Shia Le Nike says. (You should also read Julie’s review of #54: The Beginning as well!) It has taken me considerably longer than Julie to finish re-reading this series, but…

I read #53: The Answer and #54: The Beginning back-to-back because this book ends on a cliffhanger. Like the rest of my reviews of Animorphs, I’m not really flagging this as having spoilers despite discussing the plot, because I figure that if you’re reading this review of the end of a 50-book series 20 years later, then you probably don’t care that much about spoilers.

ALSO, weirdly enough, very specific spoiler for Buffy season…

Because there’s nothing like reading some Animorphs books out of order …

#51: The Absolute is where the proverbial manure hits the air redistribution machine. I mean, I haven’t generally been marking these reviews with spoiler alerts, because I feel like if you’re reading a review for book 51, you’re either in way too deep or you don’t care about being spoiled. But I had to flag this review, because this …

… this…

So, um, owing to a clerical error on my part, I read this before reading #51: The Absolute. Oops! I will definitely go back and read that before going on, but just keep this fact in mind while reading this otherwise perfect review of #52: The Sacrifice.

Ax has kind of had it with humans in this book, at least at first. Cassie gave up the morphing cube on purpose, and now…

Last Cassie book is best Cassie book.

#50: The Ultimate is, quite simply, vicious. In its final arc the Animorphs series discards any pretense that this is anything less than a series about children being at war. Cassie, Jake, and the other Animorphs are the de facto leaders of a resistance comprising some free Hork Bajir, pacifistic Chee, and their parents (and maybe a peaceful group of Yeerks, but we haven’t heard from them…

In what might be one of the most efficient stories in the series, The Diversion delivers an emotionally intense blow to the Animorphs as Applegate hammers home to her readers that nothing will ever be the same.

In Tobias’ last solo turn as narrator, we learn that the Yeerks have finally clued into the possibility that these Andalite bandits are actually humans. So they’ve begun a massive project of sifting through DNA samples, trying…

Decidedly mixed feelings about this one! The Return asks some important questions about Rachel and her attitude towards fighting this war against the Yeerks. It also features the much-anticipated … uh, return … of David, one-time Animorph. Yet, like many Animorphs books, I find that the actual story/plot doesn’t bear up under the weight of the themes the series is trying to explore.

This is a deep cut, even for this series, but I’m really…

Here we are, the last of the Animorphs Chronicles books. The impending conclusion of the series feels a lot more real having read this, and not just because the book opens with the Ellimist alluding to one of the Animorphs dying!!111.

Despite the book being set during the final battle of the last book, however, this book was published following #47: The Resistance. Julie, my guru of all things Animorphs, did everything short…

“And then … AND THEN … THEN THEY HAVE TO TURN INTO BEAVERS—fucking beavers!—to save the day. By building a DAM. Because they’re BEAVERS.”

Occasionally I like to imagine how a book might have been pitched if the pitch meeting involved lots of drinking. (Disclaimer: I have never been drunk. Maybe beavers are inherently sobering.)

The Resistance is such a weird instalment in the Animorphs series. On the one hand, the fate of the…

Previously, on Animorphs…

The Animorphs have literally just succeeded in contacting the Andalite command. The Deception picks up with no time passing. The conversation goes about as poorly as you might expect. After the Animorphs narrowly escape with their lives, they discover that the former Visser Three is now Visser One (!!!!!) and there’s a new Visser Two in town who wants to fuck everyone up by starting a nuclear war.

So what do our…

I’m wrekt.

The Revelation reminds me of the beginning of that final seven-episode story arc of Deep Space Nine. And I was not ready.

I was not ready for so much to change.

In a very Marco-centric book, Marco’s dad find himself inadvertently working on a Yeerk-controlled project to build a better zero-space communicator. The Animorphs narrowly manage to extract Marco’s dad before the Yeerks make him into a controller. Meanwhile, Visser One—the slug…

Nobody expects the Australian Inquisition!

Animorphs #44: The Unexpected is a wildly uneven book that vacillates from cringe-worthy to touching and back, with little to no regard for anything resembling a unified plot, coherent characterization, or actual writing skills. It’s not that it’s a bad story; it’s just a mess.

Cassie ends up in Australia after inadvertently stowing aboard a passenger jet bound for that country. The first half of the book comprises her hiding…

Alternative title: Tobias is Not OK. Another extremely well-written, gut-punching character story with an otherwise uninteresting plot to keep it chugging along.

The Test reveals that Tobias is still basically shattered from his torture at the hands of the sadistic, and possibly mad, Yeerk Taylor. While the rest of the Animorphs have been dealing with their own shit, apparently, for the last ten books, Tobias has been keeping it together around them…

Animorphs has become so dark! I feel like a broken record, like I say this every review, but wow. The Familiar opens up, as several other recent books have done, in the middle of a big, chaotic battle. The Animorphs have inflicted damage on the Yeerk troops, but the latter are practically inexhaustible, while the former are six adrenaline-fuelled-but-scared kids. And as the tide of the battle turns against them, they start losing…

The Helmacrons, first seen in #24: The Suspicion make their second appearance in Animorphs. This time, the Animorphs voluntarily shrink themselves to extract the Helmacrons from Marco. Hilarity(?) ensues.

My feelings for this book are similar to my feelings for The Suspicion. If I were to make a list of the “essential” Animorphs novels to read, The Journey wouldn’t be on it. The B-story, in which Marco must retrieve a camera that…

It’s the last Megamorphs entry, and Back to Before closes this series-within-a-series with a bang. Pushed to the breaking point by yet another horrifically gruesome battle, Jake succumbs to the temptation presented by Crayak’s minion, the Drode. He agrees to let the Drode rewrite time so that Jake, Cassie, Marco, Rachel, and Tobias never walk through that construction site, never acquire morphing abilities, never meet Elfangor or Ax or learn about Yeerks. Yep, this is…

The Other reminds us how far the Animorphs have come from being the naive kids they were at the start of the book. Gone are the days of insufficient plans. Enter the world of automatic suspicions, backups, dissembling and disguise. The Animorphs are tried-and-true insurgents now. And Marco, joker that he is, might be the most strategically-minded of them all.

There are other Andalites on Earth. (Again.)

They don’t want to fight the Yeerks. Mertil…

Cassie is the Animorph who will kill you kindly, with her apologies.

Rachel, of course, would just flat-out murderize you with her polar bear or grizzly bear or elephant morph, and you would be Dead. Jake would kill you because it was necessary, not because he particularly enjoys it. Marco would make lame jokes about death, then find a way to engineer your death.

Slowly but surely, all the Animorphs are getting far too acquainted…

Tfw you’re too lazy to write a review because Julie’s is literally word-perfect.

I’m actually just going to quote stuff I like from her review and add a few thoughts of my own in order to pretend I’m doing work here and justify counting this as a “review” of my own….

Ax's characterisation is pitch-perfect

So much yes! Ax is a fun narrator because of his alien perspective, but in the wrong hands that…

My friend Julie’s review pretty much nails why #37: The Weakness is, coincidentally, so weak. I’m just going to pile on with a few more observations.

This is Rachel’s chance to lead while Jake is away. She bungles it, but not as badly as the ghostwriter of this book (Elise Smith) bungles Rachel’s characterization. Her portrayal as an insecure megalomaniac gives me flashbacks, as it did Julie, to aggressive Rachel from #32: The Separation;…