Animorphs
bold move with the title, but they really pull it off this book. this is a great final installment. the entire book is good, but here's a couple moments that stuck out. ::: spoiler spoilers I forgot how it starts, with menderash willingly turning into a nothlit(mirroring tobias in the first book) so that he can pilot the Yeerk ship to take them to investigate the kelbrid space is so exciting! I wonder how many mirrors of the first book there are that I didn't notice since I was devouring the story. the extended internal torment where Jake is reckoning with Rachel's death and his responsibility as a war criminal who sends his friends to their death. That Jake and Cassie don't end up together. but all the anamorphs are pretty much unfulfilled, carrying on Rachel's legacy. ::: I can't sing this book's praises enough, it really is a solid ending with room to continue or conclude a limited run if they want to.
lots of great writing here. this is probably my favorite description of an andalite in the series: "he was a blue-furred centaur with a pair of extra eyes on movable stalks and a tail like a chef’s knife tied to the end of a bullwhip." ::: spoiler spoilers Finding arbron again is strange. weird that he is still a nothlit, weird that he has become the leader of his adopted species. "come on cassie, show me where to go next." is such a great show don't tell apology by Jake. It's so great that Jake trusts Cassie again and everybody else can see that she was right to let Tom take the morphing cube. finally! it's been awful seeing her get treated like a traitor for so long. and Jake basically asks Cassie to marry him, which is great. I very much like the moment Tom realizes Jake is alive and the visser sarcastically congratulates Tom on his astute observation. i also really like how the visser is completely aware and resigned to his fate. I wish he was a little more realistic and not so goofy as an evil son of a bitch most of the series. :::
"Acceptable" mass casualties. All of the emotional and moral discussions in this book are extremely well expressed and kick you in the gut. ::: spoiler spoilers I was surprised that Ax was still wavering so strongly this late in the series, but it makes perfect context for his absolute shock at Cassie's betrayal. Everyone can see now that Rachel has a problem with enjoying violence and can't stop herself from indulging anymore. the opening scene with Ax letting someone go free and Rachel rescinding that action was brutal. :::
::: spoiler spoilers Rachel's sisters meet ax and That's how they react to him. everything ax does makes me crack up, but this struck me as particularly funny. It's a great spot of comic relief in an otherwise very bleak run. :::
War. ::: spoiler spoilers A human in morph dies right away so you know what you're getting into, then things are pretty much exploding and bring destroyed for the whole book while they protect a governor, which seems like a bit much until you reach the end of the book and the governor announces the yeerk invasion to the world. which is a really great ending. funny note, Marco talks about how did are ax great long-distance flight morph, and finished them to the reliability of a 747. Maybe that was correct twenty years ago, when Boeing still did maintenance on their planes with sturdy materials. :::
Maybe the least relevant title to content? or maybe the title is lost in context since every character is the most unlike they have every been in the series and this book is all about coming to terms and impressing upon the naive that the only choices left to make in war are terrible choices. ::: spoiler spoilers everyone dies or you find a few more soldiers willing to sacrifice themselves. It's pretty difficult watching the game pedantically and repeatedly explain to their parents that the life they thought they had is gone and people are dying and getting hurt. and you can't choose the moral high road unless you're willing to sacrifice others. and the Animorphs have to hold the line on this reasoning because they're the only ones who really understand where the line is. This is the controversial (as I remember it) decision to recruit disabled kids to be soldiers, because they're sure that the yeerks don't want any physically disabled bodies. The ending really shocked me, I figured Cassie was going to kill Tom so that Jake didn't have to, and they could recover the morphing cube, I completely forgot that she bit Jake to slow him down and allow Tom to get away with the morphine cube because of her HUNCH that letting him have the morphing cube with the right thing to do. that is a brassy hunch. :::
I thought that Marco getting his face ripped off was the crazy part of this book but then i read the rest of it. ::: spoiler spoiler major spoilers Oh dang. All the parents have been told and rescued in dramatic and violent ways, Jake's parents try to kill him, Loren can see, this was another dip dop HELL of a story. also ax saying that Rachel's sisters think he's a "pokey-man" is pretty funny. :::
Vabarx, also known as the Yeerkbane, are large, transparent, and purple with a tubelike head. They eat Yeerks by sucking the controller's head until the Yeerk comes out.  Weirdos
Wow, this is one of the best in my reread. I was riveted. The shirt-abs on the cover are a little goofy, but the entire book is an absolute series of nightmares and moral horror. A scrabbling shove into rough madness.
Revelation, war, and loss. Crossing more lines they hadn't crossed before. ::: spoiler Title I think it's interesting that visser 1 uses the morph from the first book, signaling that the story we started with us being it's conclusion. Humans start to die, the war is extending beyond the animorphs, it's too big for just them and they can no longer protect everyone by going on there missions they choose. They have to aid those dedicated to hopeless caused. :::
Disclaimer: lt's a fairly late plot point in this not unpopular book, so I'm changing the character name so that you don't recognize it if you happen upon the book one day. It's Morphin' Time: "...she realized she was flying. For a moment, human thought and hawk instinct clashed, and her wings flapped frantically. She dropped like a stone. Derry forced herself to let go, to let the unfamiliar senses guide her, and her wings made the correct angle and she caught the wind again. She thought she had the trick of it now. One had to exercise enough control to keep one’s memory and purpose, but had to give the hawk enough rein to control the body. She made a slow circle to face toward the palace, watching the ground rush by below in impossibly fine detail and trying not to think about what her wings were doing. Derry had not taken this form lightly. A few powerful strokes of her wings took her higher and she flew toward the palace, astonished again at the power and strength of such a small body. She had risen above and almost overshot the palace before she caught herself and turned back. It was no wonder human sorcerers lost themselves when they changed shape. If her sense of urgency hadn’t been so strong, it would have been easy to play on these wind currents until she forgot who she was."
More ramping up. ::: spoiler spoiler The nuclear option. ::: Another amazing book.
The beginning of the end, what an insane series. ::: spoiler spoiler Marco abandons Nora to the yeerks to make things simpler for his biological mom and dad to get back together. It's real dark. Cold blooded. They boil a yeerk pool. Tobias forced to explain how torture changes someone, since he's been through it. There's so much foreshadowing and a lot a bit of of murder, man this was an exciting, desperate tale. I love this whole last run, they capture the shock of Marco revealing himself so well. ::: If you aren't going to reread the whole series, you will not regret rereading this one.
   
Scary opening for a minute when nobody is answering Cassie and she thinks she's all alone on the mission. Forrrreshadowing. ::: spoiler spoiler Definitely written in 2000, a massive firefight erupts in an airport that everybody just shrugs off and things keep going normally instead of the entire place locking down, and planes in a baggage are left unsecured, just a regular transit station instead of a Homeland security nightmare. Also, the most exciting opening for Cassie in a long time, that turns into one of the most consistently exciting adventures, with Cassie alone. Non stop action. ::: The Australian outback is such a good setting for an adventure. I'd like to read a longer version of a story like this. Actually there was that popular YA series "tomorrow when the war began", that was a great series.
Blech, always hate it when anyone has to morph a taxxon. Also hate being confronted with tobias' torturer. Probably not as much as Tobias does, though. Great inside cover!
Is this one a "yikes" for everybody? Maybe they just needed a break from a book every month for five years. ::: spoiler spoiler Marco's heart exploding, or being exploded, is pretty harrowing, but the helmacrons combined with the trope theme is impossible not to roll my eyes at. I still like the animorphs themselves within the story and I like Marco's initiative, but this book is odd and somewhat unsatisfying. Maybe they needed some breathing room to get ready for the final run. :::
I owned most of these books and this was one of the ones I reread the most because of how poetic so many difficult personal struggles and fears are faced and worked through so rapid fire, it's pretty overwhelming without being trite. This book ends perfectly, ::: spoiler Title the simple act of asking Cassie if she was okay when he didn't ask her like he should have the day before. :::
I cannot remember the first time I read this series, but I can't imagine thinking anything other than "ah, The power of friendship!" Which upon this reread is hilarious given how clearly the authors wanted to portray a gay couple in 2000, which wasn't done often in a series fronted by a major publisher. ::: spoiler spoiler This time, I was like "oh right, the andalites living together, and then I was inundated with the hunts of gardening, super fitness, pink furniture, shunned by society, debilitating incurable illness, cared for by "best friend", androgynes, and especially the poetic language of how the became friends, they were both pilots and their wings tangled together and they crashed to the ground together. Pretty awesome that when so other few authors were willing to have gay characters, especially in a young adults series, ka and grant went full bore and even named this title "the other". I always thought the "Marco" being bi what sort of and unsupported gimme afterthought, but they already had an unmistakably gay couple having badass adventures. I wonder if they made them both pilots because of top gun? And this title is not merely a showcase of queer culture, the story is as developed and well told as any of the other books, and of course more so than some of them. I find the thought-speak across great distances very interesting, how visser 3 doesn't want anything to do with either of them because of andalite culture treating difference as an embarrassment, and also how ax is very openly hostile toward both of them. ::: It's another good book!
::: spoiler spoiler It is very creepy when the ant begins turning Cassie, but it's downright horrifying when the Buffalo begins to learn how to speak while it's morphed into chapman. That is so yikes that it makes perfect sense. They have to fry him at the end. ::: Yikes. They really get at some horror here.
Credit to "no banana" for the image and Hobbes_Dent for the title. Zero credit to me for doomscroll.
Ax gets a big ol' crush on ::: spoiler spoiler A genocidal sort of asshole. Still, the heart wants what it wants. ::: This is a great book, testing ax's loyalty again. A very good example of people insisting they're doing some necessary thing for the greater good by becoming the thing they're fighting against. The characters and their Dynamics were very interesting in this book, non-stop action.
I remember this book because as soon as you realize that Jake is gone, you're like oh shit. Wow! This book is really good, dealing with leadership and Marco's criticisms and how poorly Rachel deals with the leadership she thought she wanted, ::: spoiler spoiler and then the absolutely batshit insane plan at the end that foreshadows Rachel's final act. ::: I also never understood why the garatron looks so much like an andalite. Are they just like hey isn't evolution weird? This one thing looks like another thing but they're not the same thing. I don't get why that was so important. Also, I was so glad that Jake spoke with Rachel shortly at the end of the book. Perfect ending.
Since I learned the word estreen, the andalite word for an extremely talented morpher, I searched for fanart based on that and found some interesting stuff. Beautifully colored, is this oil painting? Artist is artbyLars
Update: Estreen! That's the word. Found it! An exceptionally talented morpher is an estreen! I knew there was a word for it. --- I can't find the word. Isn't there a specific andalite word for how good Cassie is at morphing? Artist - iara catunda
Yikes, I only remembered one scene from this book, and somehow managed to forget ::: spoiler Title The Atlanteans slicing open living humans and aliens to harvest their organs in the blood and sowing them back up into mummies. ::: Pretty hardcore. And there's some cute Tobias Rachel back and forth. Man, I wanna morph an orca.
Tons of good quotes in this one. I like that inside cover too, how they can't actually show the guy ::: spoiler spoiler strangling a dog, ::: even though of course it's described in great detail in the book. Ax is so funny as a human. When he finds out that Marco's dad is dating, and ax's been getting used to TV, he says <Ah. Perhaps your father is Young and Restless. Those who are Young and Restless frequently change mates.> Love it. You know what else is interesting, that both sides in this war look like humans, they look like anybody else, even though both sides can turn into murderers at the drop of a hat. Sure. The aliens look like humans, but the child soldiers who change into animals all the time and kill people also look harmless most of the time. And Jake has a great line about how they're all different and they have to deal with their trauma in their own way. And also Jake said I love you to Cassie! Wooo! Marco has this great quote: "Self-pity is the easiest thing in the world. Finding the humor, the irony, the slight justification for a skewed, skeptical optimism, that's tough." I am definitely an unlikely optimist, I wonder if this book had any part to play in that particular personality development.
A great book for Cassie, although her books are always the most difficult because so many of her choices are to go against her nature as a pacifist and make some kind of sacrifice for the greater good. Like literally letting two different aliens control her in different books. We get to read some impressive morphing showcases here and this inside cover is great.