A review by tresdem
Elfangor's Secret by K.A. Applegate

2.0

This was not a great book for me. Inn fact I think it was kind of terrible and unnecessarily dark, even for Animorphs. The concept itself was an interesting one but entirely too big and complicated for what the book can actually cover. If they just went back to one time period, fine, but going back to so many and time noodling all over the place? And I get that that's part of it, like the Visser doesn't know what he's doing and they don't know what they're doing and everything is confusion and chaos but... to what end?

They learn about war and pain and loss and hard decisions and dying? Well that's not something they have to learn, they do that anyway on their day to day basis. Even the set up is confusing. They end up screwing with history anyway in the end and who is to say they didn't miss something vital in that. They are just kids. Also the whole title and setup is kind of a bait and switch. Elfangor's secret is not actually about Elfangor. Jake dies but so what he comes back. I mean they had to work for it but he still came back... and it wasn't as if they knew he'd come back either.

In the end I just didn't like this book. Great high concepts but messy, uncertain execution and nothing that we haven't seen before.