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3.6 AVERAGE
3.6 AVERAGE
adventurous
fast-paced
the spinoffs are so wacky and i love this. not a super riveting plot tho. some batshit amazing plot moments tho, my faves are 'rachel vs tree = amnesia', 'morphing a flea to disappear', and 'whale bomb' (pretty sure this one is plot relevant later).
also more gore yippee! grizzly!rachel gets both her arms wood chippered off by the monster! animorphs really does have way more graphic injuries than your usual children's series...
also more gore yippee! grizzly!rachel gets both her arms wood chippered off by the monster! animorphs really does have way more graphic injuries than your usual children's series...
adventurous
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I loved the menagerie of perspectives but honestly a little bit of a let down? It just felt like a lot of stuff happened and it wasn't as satisfying. I love Ax and I just don't feel like his thoughts were given the proper introduction. I liked the Veneek but I also felt like it was squeezed in. Eh
adventurous
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This was a pretty good one, fast paced and fun at times. Though what happens to Rachel is a bit...unnecessary. I really liked Marco here, and Jake, too. I especially like the end and the solution that they come up with. However, though it was an exciting book it wasn't a terribly memorable one. Nothing much happened that doesn't happen in other books and there were no great shining character moments. Though I did like the Ax and Marco scenes.
This was terrible. Amnesia and a giant dust monster... I can't even. I seriously struggled through this. It doesn't add anything necessary to the overall story, and I just wanted it to end. I'll definitely be skipping the next megamorphs book when it comes up in the chronology.
I remember thinking this volume was the best of the series so far when I was a kid, but it didn't hold up as well this time around. A character getting amnesia at the beginning felt like a soap opera plot, and the baddies' super weapon was kind of ineffective in the end. Overall, it just didn't grab me.
adventurous
emotional
funny
hopeful
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
"<What are you singing?> Jake asked her. <What are the words?>
<It isn't words, exactly,> Cassie said. <But if it were, it would be just one word: hope.>"
This Megamorphs book is Not one of my favorites in the series. Compared to everything that's come before it, it reads very clunky, especially at first. It also includes a very weird amnesia subplot for ??? some reason? which, despite centering around my favorite character (Rachel), I would say was the worst chapters to follow up until the end. I can't say anything about that, but the clunkiness can probably be attributed to the fact that this is the first time all character POVs are being used in the same book, which I'm sure it took some getting used to to write.
A short description of it would be: the kids have to deal with a strange monster chasing them and also Rachel is missing (her chapters also including some ableism with a strange woman who's yeerk had been starved out of her head who appears, burns down a house, and then... never shows up again). The first 20 chapters or so are the kids switching POV chapters where... not a lot happens, everyone is confused and things don't move much. However, despite not loving it, I can pinpoint things I enjoyed very much. The dialogue between Marco and Ax is always appreciated, the "Marco can't drive" gag is always good, and the closer we got to the end of the story - the more the kids started to understand what was going on with the creature chasing them, the more invested I felt to the story itself.
I also liked the creature itself, the Veleek - Animorphs has some fascinating and creative aliens and the Veleek is no different.
It held within it what I called "a rare gem", as one of the last chapters had a very good moment between Cassie and Tobias where they talk about fear and bravery. Cassie feels like a coward for allowing the monster to take Marco because she was too scared to morph in some earlier chapters, and it dwells in her up until the end, where she makes a plan and requests to be the one who carries it out. It's especially poignant as the last book was Rachel's, where she also struggles with feeling "weak" for being afraid and wanting to leave the war altogether. This, I would say, is the best side plot or storyline in the book, though it only takes up the last few chapters.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Ableism, Body horror, Confinement, Violence
Moderate: Car accident
Minor: Animal death, Body shaming, Fatphobia
The Andalite's Gift is both a pause from the marathon of the main series, and a strange kind of relay race for the Animorphs. This book is about exhaustion both mental and physical, terror, more nightmares, and losing oneself, with a little bit of hope at the end.
It has a strange place in the continuity because it addresses some consequences from The Stranger, but it can't move the story forward because people might miss something important then. What it does do is give the first glimpse of Ax's perspective because of the rotation narration, and it lets us see what each Animorph thinks of each other in relation to the same event. Cassie does the first in what will be an ongoing thing of her carrying out amazing and almost impossible feats of morphing and it's really cool to read, but unfortunately the Megamorphs books are stuck within the continuity in a way that means they can't work as a sample of this world in the way that the various Chronicles books are able to in a pinch.
It has a strange place in the continuity because it addresses some consequences from The Stranger, but it can't move the story forward because people might miss something important then. What it does do is give the first glimpse of Ax's perspective because of the rotation narration, and it lets us see what each Animorph thinks of each other in relation to the same event. Cassie does the first in what will be an ongoing thing of her carrying out amazing and almost impossible feats of morphing and it's really cool to read, but unfortunately the Megamorphs books are stuck within the continuity in a way that means they can't work as a sample of this world in the way that the various Chronicles books are able to in a pinch.