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A review by the1germ
The Departure by K.A. Applegate
5.0
This book is so f*cking good I'll never get over it. Might be the best in the series.
Following up on Cassie losing her mind over brutalizing that triceratops, homegirl finally has a break down and quits the Animorphs. After leaving and whilst living her life, riding horses and enjoying meadows, she comes across a little girl at the edge of the forest being attacked by a bear. Cassie morphs to rescue her, and the two get lost in the woods. Welp--turns out the little girl is a controller, now she knows that the Animorphs are humans, and getting her back to her parents means signing her friend's death sentences.
Zero percent of my 12 year old brain was ready to process this book when it came out. The bulk of it is spent as a back-and-forth between Cassie and the Yeerk as a little girl, exploring the gray morality of the war, debating who gets to decide which creatures get to live & be protected and which become cattle, confronting the PTSD Cassie is suffering, and her moral struggle with the need to kill this child, but not wanting to... because, well, it's a child. And it turns out, the Yeerk kinda has a point.
Applegate said the following regarding writing this book:
This book had me crying. Cassie was hands down my least favorite character when originally reading the books, and with how much I loathe her narrator in the audiobooks I almost skipped her books entirely in this reread. I'm glad I didn't, because she is by far the most interesting from an adult perspective.
Following up on Cassie losing her mind over brutalizing that triceratops, homegirl finally has a break down and quits the Animorphs. After leaving and whilst living her life, riding horses and enjoying meadows, she comes across a little girl at the edge of the forest being attacked by a bear. Cassie morphs to rescue her, and the two get lost in the woods. Welp--turns out the little girl is a controller, now she knows that the Animorphs are humans, and getting her back to her parents means signing her friend's death sentences.
Zero percent of my 12 year old brain was ready to process this book when it came out. The bulk of it is spent as a back-and-forth between Cassie and the Yeerk as a little girl, exploring the gray morality of the war, debating who gets to decide which creatures get to live & be protected and which become cattle, confronting the PTSD Cassie is suffering, and her moral struggle with the need to kill this child, but not wanting to... because, well, it's a child. And it turns out, the Yeerk kinda has a point.
Applegate said the following regarding writing this book:
"Sometimes the bad guys of the world come at you guns blazing. Sometimes they come at you wearing a mask, hiding their intentions, deceiving and manipulating, turning one person against another without giving you a fair chance to fight back. Life would be easier all around if evil people would simply announce that they are evil so we could all reject them. But in many cases evil creeps in, hiding behind politics, philosophy, patriotism, law, religion, science, art. Sometimes evil can be very plausible, logical. That's why I've gradually fleshed out the history of the Yeerks. I hope that readers will, on occasion, find themselves thinking, 'You know what, the Yeerks are making sense. They kind of have a point.' It's easy to figure out right and wrong when it's clear as black and white." But the challenge in our lives is "to be able to figure out right and wrong even when the bad guys 'kind of have a point'."
This book had me crying. Cassie was hands down my least favorite character when originally reading the books, and with how much I loathe her narrator in the audiobooks I almost skipped her books entirely in this reread. I'm glad I didn't, because she is by far the most interesting from an adult perspective.