62 reviews found

You might as well subtitle this book Cassie Has the Worst Day Ever. Literally. Take a look at these totally not-at-all-made-up chapter titles to get an idea of how terrible Cassie’s day was:

Chapter 1: Cassie Quits the Animorphs Chapter 2: Cassie Has the Most Awkward Exit Interview Ever Chapter 3: Cassie Makes a Friend! Chapter 4: Cassie’s Friend is Evil! Chapter 5: Cassie and Friend Nearly Get Eaten by the Leopard Chapter 6:…

I want to say that I don’t remember these books being as dark as they seem now, but I think that would be a lie. Young!Kara recognized the darkness—but for me, at that age, that wasn’t even the draw. I was more about the adventure and the heroism of these young characters—the science-fictional elements were really the coolest thing. Now when I read Megamorphs #2: In the Time of the Dinosaurs I’m focusing more on…

I have a real soft spot for The Decision, because it is so awesome.

I remember the “Animorphs get pulled into Z-space” book from my childhood reading of the series—but I didn’t remember it coming so early. I loved the whole concept. Indeed, while not quite as long as the Megamorphs books, I’d argue that the plot of The Decision is just as cinematic and huge as any of those books—and maybe superior to…

Haters gonna hate, but I don’t care: oatmeal is a fantastic weakness. I mean, think about some of the weaknesses enemies or superheroes have had in other stories. Kryptonite? Water? Tricking them into saying their names backwards? Country music? Oatmeal is a legit weakness—and Applegate very specifically restricts it to maple and ginger instant oatmeal. Throw in the additional snag that it doesn’t kill a Yeerk, just renders the Yeerk mad and keeps it from…

Yo dawg, I heard you like Internet sites.

The plot basically goes like this: Jake is online, back in the days when most of the people online were nine-year-olds and 40-year-olds on the prowl for nine-year-olds. He discovers a Yeerk website and lurks in the chatroom, wondering if these people are for real or if it’s a trap. The Animorphs decide to investigate by raiding the offices of the AOL analogue that holds all the…

Marco books might be the best books if you’re looking to jump into Animorphs. After fifteen books that might very well be the case. Applegate, cognizant of course that random books from this series would end up on library shelves the world over, with unconscionable gaps as a result of poor funding and attrition, tries her best to summarize the key points at the beginning of every book. But Marco does it best: succinct,…

I’ve spent a lot of time so far talking about how the Animorphs series is amazing. It deals with complex topics and themes in a way that remains entertaining and accessible for adolescents. It’s a great gateway drug to full-blown science-fiction fandom. Although most of the books tend to feel light and fun, there is a very serious undertone to the entire series, one that finally comes to the fore as Applegate (and her legion…

The titles of Animorphs novels might seem mundane, but they are always appropriate. The Change begins as another supposedly simple Animorphs versus Yeerks plot. It turns out to be so much more. Still, an alternative and equally appropriate title might have been The Hope.

Following the revelations from The Andalite Chronicles, Applegate finally returns to the perspective of the most marginalized Animorph, Tobias. Trapped in hawk morph, a nothlit, Tobias can’t exactly contribute…

So … yeah. This book made me cry, at the end.

I remember reading the hard copy version of this as a kid and marvelling at how much thicker it was than your typical Animorphs novel. Don’t get me wrong—by that age I was already mainlining The Lord of the Rings and Dune, so I was already acquainted with long novels. Until now, though, Applegate had intentionally been keeping her stories not just short,…

When it comes right down to it, Animorphs plots are pretty silly. I mean, they kind of have to be, for a bunch of kids to stymie Visser Three on a regular basis. He is only slightly more competent than Dr. Drakken.

(I’m just going to pause here for a moment so you can envision the gloriousness that would be an Animorphs/Kim Possible crossover. That’s right. How awesome would that be?)

Fortunately, Applegate…

It’s time … to travel … in time.

Animorphs played with time travel once before, in #7: The Stranger, but that was at the hands of the Ellimist. This time, the Animorphs accidentally create a Sario Rip—technobabble for “hole in space-time,” which is technobabble for … well … you know … stuff—when the Dracon beams they fired from a stolen Bug fighter intersected with the Dracon beams from Visser Three’s Blade ship, and—

—what?…

The Android is an excellent example of the greatness of the Animorphs series. If you were going to jump in to this series rather than start from the first book, you could do worse than start here. In addition to the now-boilerplate introduction required to get such new readers up to speed, Applegate continues to expand the mythology of the series. We meet the Chee, programmed to be peaceful by the joy-loving but now extinct…

So we begin the Second Age—dare I say, the Silver Age?—of Animorphs with The Secret. Applegate combines one of the ongoing themes of environmentalism with a personal look at the tolls this secret war takes on Cassie, the most empathetic of the Animorphs.

See what I did there? These titles, simplistic though they might seem, are always multi-faceted. The eponymous secret could be so many things. It could be the Yeerk invasion. It could…

The Alien represents the end of the First Age of Animorphs. It is Ax’s first time as narrator, and so with this book, all of the six Animorphs have had a chance to tell their story. As with the introductions to each of the human Animorphs, this book lets us hear in Ax’s own words why he is fighting the Yeerks. Thanks to his knowledge as an Andalite, he also allows Applegate to share more…

Seven books into the Animorphs series, and K.A. Applegate has a problem. The series is popular. Too popular. See, it’s so popular that its sales are already so high that any improvement is not only unlikely but mathematically impossible … unless she can come up with some way to make the series even bigger, even crazier. Something so wild that it transforms a horizontal asymptote on that time versus sales graph into a vertical one.

…

Marco finds the location of the main Yeerk pool. (It’s underneath the Gap, guys! We don’t have a Gap in Thunder Bay any more. But I remember when we had one—in the nineties.) It’s too difficult to destroy the pool, but if they can find the Kandrona that emits the rays the Yeerks need to live, then they can deal a serious blow to the Yeerks. Don’t worry, the Animorphs have a plan ……

Are you ready for this?

Guys, are you ready for this?

It doesn’t matter what you answered. You are not ready for this. None of the preceding five books could prepare us for The Capture.

See, the Yeerks have built a shiny new hospital that they have staffed with Controllers. That way, they can infect the people who go there for treatment—including powerful people, like the state governor, who might one day be the…

We arrive at the last of the introductions to the original five Animorphs: Marco, no last name (as usual). He is, in our Animorph boy band, the Funny One (not the Pretty One, though he might try to sell you on that). (Debate which of the other Animorphs are which boy band stereotype in the comments!) He has spent the past four novels providing comic relief, sometimes at the most inopportune times, and generally…

One of the highlights of re-reading this series is the intense 1990s nostalgia it’s bringing back. These books have aged so much, and it’s no one’s fault but the march of time and technology. In The Visitor, Rachel talks in code by inviting Jake over to listen to a new CD. And here in The Message, Jake produces a VCR tape of a nightly news show—kids, I won’t bother explaining what…

One of the most important parts of designing a magic system, or a set of superpowers, or anything that allows characters to defy the ordinary laws and assumptions of our universe, is deciding what the costs will be. You can’t get something for nothing, and if you break the rules, you have to pay a price. For the Animorphs, it’s a two-hour time limit. If you stay in a morph longer, you’re stuck there. No…