#animorphsreread

I remember not liking this one when I was younger – I think I only read it once. I liked the regular books better than Megamorphs in general, and I think I put this one in the category of “time travel book where nothing actually changes at the end.” So I was pleasantly surprised to find that this was actually a good addition to the series.

I very much enjoyed seeing more of the Cassie & Marco connection. I’m calling them “Team Perceptive.” It was pretty cool to see that they totally know they’re a team and can communicate with just looks.

Marco’s chapter after Jake died broke my heart.

Dug up my notes on #28 for the return of the Animorphs reread. I think I posted this when the reread was eventually going on, but I figure it’s better to post it again than to send people searching for a years-old post.

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Maybe it’s a bad sign that, two days after reading this book, I had to struggle to remember what it was about.

I don’t actively dislike this book, not like #14 or #24. But it’s not one of my favorites, either. Overall, it felt kind of… pointless. They go to all this trouble to stop the Yeerk plan, and it turns out that the plan was something that could never have worked in the first place (why did the Yeerks even think they could manage something like that?), and everyone goes home as if the whole thing never happened. Nothing changes.

I wasn’t a fan of the lecture-y tone this book had, either. The narrative bits about the evils of slaughterhouses and animal testing felt like they were talking directly to the reader, and they felt out of place. Yes, there are a lot of problems with farming today, and yes, animal testing is bad. But there’s a line between demonstrating something to a reader and shoving your opinions directly down their throat, and this book crossed it. It’s not the opinions themselves that bother me, but the way they were presented. I went into this book for a story and got a lecture instead.

However, I did find Ax’s narration interesting, especially the parallel between him and Tobias. While Tobias has been gradually becoming more separate from humanity and human culture (especially after he was given the choice to become fully human again, and had to face the fact that it wasn’t really what he wanted), Ax is going through the opposite process. Or, in a way, the same process, because they’re both growing away from the culture of their species and into an alien (literally, in Ax’s case) way of life.

We’ve seen Ax grow more distant from, and disillusioned with, Andalites and Andalite culture. And of course, by now he’s probably getting more resigned to the fact that the Andalites aren’t going to rescue him, or at least won’t for a long time. (And if they did show up to take him home… he would probably make the same choice as Tobias. Choose his friends and the fight against the Yeerks over regaining what he’s lost.) He seems to be reacting by not just studying human culture, but trying to understand it the way a native would. To see things from a human perspective. I don’t think he’s ready to admit to himself the reasons behind his fascination with human culture yet, but that doesn’t mean the reasons aren’t there.

He still does the Andalite rituals. But how much time does he spend on his morning ritual, and how much time does he spend watching soaps? He doesn’t think anymore about what will happen when the Andalite ship comes for him. He thinks about The Young and the Restless.

(In fact, his thing with “your minutes” may not just be a throwaway joke, but his attempt to deny the fact that he’s identifying more and more with Earth and humans…

…Or maybe I’m reading too much into a simple recurring joke. Who knows.)

So, not the greatest plot, but this book is definitely worth reading just to watch how Ax is changing.

Thoughts while reading:

“‘Online’ is a primitive human method of communicating in short, truncated, interrupted sentences with anonymous individuals.” This sentence reminded me that when these books first came out, talking to people online was still something of a novelty.

Why haven’t the Yeerks ever considered apes as hosts? They’d be easier to conquer than humans, and they would at least be better than Gedds. I suppose the issue would be getting them off the planet without the humans noticing. But an ape army might be pretty helpful in their war against the humans once they’ve moved from a secret invasion to an open invasion.

This time, Aftran’s fate didn’t seem as good to me as when I first read the book. Before, I saw it as a really nice ending, much like the Animorphs did. She could swim around like a Yeerk, but with more abilities and freedom. Now, it seems kind of lonely to me to be the only one of her kind (though it’s certainly better than starving to death).

Speaking of aliens being alone in the world, this book showed what a vulnerable position Ax is in. Other books have highlighted the emotional difficulty of his situation, but here we see that he’s also in real danger. He gets sick, and there’s no one who knows anything about how to heal an Andalite but him. What if he didn’t know about yamphut? That would have been it for Ax.

Lastly, I have decided Cassie/Marco interactions are my new favorite thing. There wasn’t a ton of it in this particular book, but it’s been building for while now for me. There’s something great about how they see things so differently from each other, but they are probably the two who are the best at reading people. They can see the same things, but they tend to come to different conclusions. 

So I haven’t interacted in Animorphs fandom enough to know what other people think of this book, but I loved this one when I was a kid and I love it now. I tend to either love or hate Cassie books; fortunately, this is one of the good ones.

I like the Yeerk peace movement plotline (with the caveat that I haven’t finished the series and don’t know how this particular plotline progresses); I like seeing the Yeerks as more than a one-dimensional enemy. Not only that, but Cassie’s faith in Aftran turned out not to have been misplaced. I may have problems with her reasons for doing what she did in book 19, but she chose to humanize her enemy and that is something I will never argue against. Whether that worked out in her favor or not was mostly dependent upon the general worldview of the author, I think – that’s how it tends to work – and I’m glad it worked out this way.

(Also, Cassie’s solution for what to do with Aftran after the rescue only confirms my belief that if the Yeerks had all been given the same choice – a one-time morph into the species of their choosing, and life as a nothlit – the war could have been over a lot sooner. But a solution like that would never occur to the Andalites, with their arrogance and their hatred of Yeerks… and, above all, their memory of what happened the last time they shared their technology with the Yeerks.)

Cassie often comes across as weaker than the others, simply by virtue of being more sensitive and less confrontational. She’s shown plenty of times that this isn’t the case, but never as much as in this book. Here, the others can’t help her. She has to complete the mission on her own. And she does it. She pulls it off. She doesn’t need Jake’s plans, or Rachel’s violence, or Marco’s ruthlessness to carry her. She manages it on her own.

Cassie’s narration was especially strong in this book, I thought. In general she tends to be one of the weakest narrators – her narration doesn’t usually show nearly as much personality as, say, Marco’s or Rachel’s. But in the way Marco’s books (especially his early books) are usually full of observations that would only occur to Marco, this book has thoughts that would only occur to Cassie, like near the beginning when she thinks about how she sometimes tries to imagine how it would feel to experience an ordinary human sensation for the first time. (And later in the book, she gets to experience exactly that, when she morphs Illim and experiences how it feels for a Yeerk to take a host.)

I like that Cassie was the one to morph a Yeerk. Rachel or Marco would have distanced themselves from the experience. Jake would have shut down and just gotten it done. Ax would have flat-out refused. Tobias… I’m not sure. But Cassie, of all of them, is the one who is the most willing to see through the eyes of the enemy.

Thoughts while reading:

Apparently I reread this one a lot as a kid. I don’t consciously remember all that much of it, but the pattern of the words feels familiar and homey.

Why does Ax only get food-obsessed in human morph and not in other morphs with mouths? I know not every animal can taste as well as humans can, but what about, say, the seagull morph, which makes them all a bit obsessed with food to begin with?

Why can’t Erek do the surgery on Ax if Cassie isn’t back in time? They covered the fact that he doesn’t have any special medical knowledge, but surely he couldn’t do any worse at it than Tobias, Cassie’s previous backup plan. And I highly doubt his nonviolence programming would object to lifesaving surgery.

Maybe it’s a bad sign that, two days after reading this book, I had to struggle to remember what it was about.

I don’t actively dislike this book, not like #14 or #24. But it’s not one of my favorites, either. Overall, it felt kind of… pointless. They go to all this trouble to stop the Yeerk plan, and it turns out that the plan was something that could never have worked in the first place (why did the Yeerks even think they could manage something like that?), and everyone goes home as if the whole thing never happened. Nothing changes.

I wasn’t a fan of the lecture-y tone this book had, either. The narrative bits about the evils of slaughterhouses and animal testing felt like they were talking directly to the reader, and they felt out of place. Yes, there are a lot of problems with farming today, and yes, animal testing is bad. But there’s a line between demonstrating something to a reader and shoving your thoughts directly down their throat, and this book crossed it. It’s not the opinions themselves that bother me, but the way they were presented. I went into this book for a story and got a lecture instead.

However, I did find Ax’s narration interesting, especially the parallel between him and Tobias. While Tobias has been gradually becoming more separate from humanity and human culture (especially after he was given the choice to become fully human again, and had to face the fact that it wasn’t really what he wanted), Ax is going through the opposite process. Or, in a way, the same process, because they’re both growing away from the culture of their species and into an alien (literally, in Ax’s case) way of life.

We’ve seen Ax grow more distant from, and disillusioned with, Andalites and Andalite culture. And of course, by now he’s probably getting more resigned to the fact that the Andalites aren’t going to rescue him, or at least won’t for a long time. (And if they did show up to take him home… he would probably make the same choice as Tobias. Choose his friends and the fight against the Yeerks over regaining what he’s lost.) He seems to be reacting by not just studying human culture, but trying to understand it the way a native would. To see things from a human perspective. I don’t think he’s ready to admit to himself the reasons behind his fascination with human culture yet, but that doesn’t mean the reasons aren’t there.

He still does the Andalite rituals. But how much time does he spend on his morning ritual, and how much time does he spend watching soaps? He doesn’t think anymore about what will happen when the Andalite ship comes for him. He thinks about The Young and the Restless.

(In fact, his thing with “your minutes” may not just be a throwaway joke, but his attempt to deny the fact that he’s identifying more and more with Earth and humans…

…Or maybe I’m reading too much into a simple recurring joke. Who knows.)

So, not the greatest plot, but this book is definitely worth reading just to watch how Ax is changing.

Thoughts while reading:

“‘Online’ is a primitive human method of communicating in short, truncated, interrupted sentences with anonymous individuals.” This sentence reminded me that when these books first came out, talking to people online was still something of a novelty. Remember those days? 

Why haven’t the Yeerks ever considered apes as hosts? They’d be easier to conquer than humans, and they would at least be better than Gedds. I suppose the issue would be getting them off the planet without the humans noticing. But an ape army might be pretty helpful in their war against the humans once they’ve moved from a secret invasion to an open invasion.

I really enjoyed this book. Almost everything worked for me.

The pace was fast and exciting thanks to the time limit the Animorphs were up against.

The characters had interesting interactions with each other that showed their personalities well, especially Rachel and Tobias. Tobias has changed so much from the kid he was in the first book, hasn’t he? And yet, the change is believable.

The morphs were a big highlight in this book. The whale was great, and the squid was even cooler. This book has one of the best covers, but I wish it had actually shown the incredible size of the squid, even if Rachel would have to be a speck.