#animorphs 1

This one doesn’t have a rating because I thought the circumstances under which I listened to this book created too much bias. I listened to an (very) unofficial audiobook of this on spotify during a road trip with my sister. I missed a lot of words and lost the thread of what was going on a few times, and instead of trying to pick it up myself I just asked my sister what was going on because she was a real animorphs girl back in the day. So this is going to be something I reread this year; I already have all the ebooks downloaded.

What I will say is this: I cried like a baby during Elfangor’s entire sequence. Like I was staring out the window trying not to show my sister I was crying, and that was WITH some random dude narrating the entire thing in monotone. Genuinely devastating on several levels.

I haven't been sure how I'm going to like the series so far.  But I've really enjoyed the character of Cassie.  I like that she lives on a farm and already has all this experience with animals, from having worked in wildlife rehab.  (I worked in wildlife rehab myself for awhile as part of a job placement program in special ed.)  I like that this gives her the ability to morph more readily than the rest of them.  I like that she has no real sense of style.  I just like her.  Farm girl, like generations of my family.  But no stereotype at that.  I've read a few of the books including one from her POV now, so I'm not sure how much of what I read came from where but I don't think there's any spoilers in what I just said.

My other favorite character so far is Tobias, but there's spoilers for the end of the first book and everything thereafter in a lot of what interests me about him, so maybe I better hold off discussing him until next week.

I generally like books or shows for their characters.  It's the people that keep me coming back, even if I also like the plots and situations and themes and ethical conundrums.  So of course my first post on Animorphs is gonna be on my favorite two characters.

And you've got them:  Cassie and Tobias.

I guess I can also, without spoilers, get away with saying that I love the complexity that Tobias's character brings to the story later on.  I keep putting myself in his shoes and wondering what I'd do, how I'd feel.  Often I come up with the same solutions he does.  Sometimes I don't.

I've never read the Animorphs before and I think I'm at the middle or end of #4.  Just to give you some idea where I'm at.  I'm wondering why I never picked up this series as a kid.  It was something about the covers looking too cheesy and not really getting what the plot could be about, I think.  It was like I never read the Goosebumps series, which was often in the library right alongside Animorphs and some other series.  Not that I realized how scary Animorphs would be, from the covers.

But the first one got me hooked and now I've got to read all of them.

One thing I can't help thinking every time I re-read book one is how sad I am that it's not the first book I read, way back when. I look at all the foreshadowing about Tobias getting stuck (among some other foreshadowing for later books), and I wonder how it would have felt to read it not knowing that he was going to get stuck. I wonder what that surprise and dread would have felt like when I got to the end of the book. But I'll never know.

It was nice to see the characters in their early days, Cassie especially. As much as she annoys me later on in the series, she's great in the earlier books.

And Rachel! Oh, Rachel, I adore you. I knew there was a reason I named and based my main Commander Shepard after you. <3

Tobias, baby, let me love you!