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Animorphs #40.5
Back to Before
What would you do if you had the opportunity to change your life? Not just where you live or who you hang out with, but your past, present, and future? Sounds like it might be pretty cool, right? Well, that's what Jake thought. He thought it might be easier if the Animorphs had never existed. If they'd never met Elfangor. If they all had the chance to be "normal" kids.
Jake gets his wish.
But things aren't quite as simple as they seem. Just because the Animorphs no longer exist doesn't mean the Yeerks no longer exist. Except now Jake, Rachel, Tobias, Cassie, and Marco can't morph. They don't even know the Yeerks are out there. And it's not such a wonderful life. . . .
Jake gets his wish.
But things aren't quite as simple as they seem. Just because the Animorphs no longer exist doesn't mean the Yeerks no longer exist. Except now Jake, Rachel, Tobias, Cassie, and Marco can't morph. They don't even know the Yeerks are out there. And it's not such a wonderful life. . . .
179 pages, Paperback
First published January 11, 2000
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January 29, 2023
The Animorphs are slowly crumbling under the pressure of war. The temptation is too great for Jake. When the Drode offers him an alternate reality in which the Animorphs did not walk home through the abandoned construction site, he accepts it. And we learn what would have been the fate of each of them, had they not met Elfangor, learned of the threat of the Yeerks and gained their powers.
This story does so many things right. It hooks you from the very first sentence, immediately dropping us in the middle of a gripping action scene. It’s a character-driven story and it expertly shows you how much every single Animorph has grown as a character. We get to see who they were in the very beginning of the series. And how it would have affected all the Animorphs, had they not gotten their powers in the very first book. This book also does a fantastic job of showing you just how the Yeerk invasion would have impacted the world without the Animorphs to slow them down. And it’s this what makes the Animorphs realize how important they are to the war in the grand scheme of things.
But this story unfortunately does one thing wrong: it doesn’t advance the series as a whole. Because at the end, we go back to the status quo at the start of the novel and everybody pretty much loses their memories. The only reason why this is done, is so this story can serve as a filler story. It’s a mistake that happens quite often in this series. And it’s such a shame as we see so much gripping character development in this one. Though this story does still serve as a good reminder of how much the Animorphs have all grown as characters throughout the series.
If this wasn’t just another filler story, I’d definitely rate this one higher. Because it’s a really strong character-driven story. But there are just a bit too many filler stories in this series.
This story does so many things right. It hooks you from the very first sentence, immediately dropping us in the middle of a gripping action scene. It’s a character-driven story and it expertly shows you how much every single Animorph has grown as a character. We get to see who they were in the very beginning of the series. And how it would have affected all the Animorphs, had they not gotten their powers in the very first book. This book also does a fantastic job of showing you just how the Yeerk invasion would have impacted the world without the Animorphs to slow them down. And it’s this what makes the Animorphs realize how important they are to the war in the grand scheme of things.
But this story unfortunately does one thing wrong: it doesn’t advance the series as a whole. Because at the end, we go back to the status quo at the start of the novel and everybody pretty much loses their memories. The only reason why this is done, is so this story can serve as a filler story. It’s a mistake that happens quite often in this series. And it’s such a shame as we see so much gripping character development in this one. Though this story does still serve as a good reminder of how much the Animorphs have all grown as characters throughout the series.
If this wasn’t just another filler story, I’d definitely rate this one higher. Because it’s a really strong character-driven story. But there are just a bit too many filler stories in this series.
September 11, 2017
It’s the last Megamorphs entry, and Back to Before closes this series-within-a-series with a bang. Pushed to the breaking point by yet another horrifically gruesome battle, Jake succumbs to the temptation presented by Crayak’s minion, the Drode. He agrees to let the Drode rewrite time so that Jake, Cassie, Marco, Rachel, and Tobias never walk through that construction site, never acquire morphing abilities, never meet Elfangor or Ax or learn about Yeerks. Yep, this is the Animorphs � (TVTropes) episode, as contractually required by International Literary Law (look it up). And it is chilling.
Let’s talk about each Animorph’s experience in this alternative timeline. Back to Before contains almost no morphing in it, obviously, and very little Yeerk-fighting. So what we get instead is a refreshing look at the Animorphs� relationships to each other and the people and world around them. I feel like more recent books in the series have distanced themselves from these things, focusing more on the grand battle. This is a nice chance—albeit through a reset—to remind us who these characters are.
Jake is no longer the leader of the Animorphs. Actually, he never was, which is important. This book reminds us we’ve seen so much character growth over the course of this series. In this timeline, Jake never had to make any of the tough decisions that have changed him, made him harder and craftier. He’s still just a kid. His innate leadership skills are there, as particularly evidenced towards the end where everything starts to fall apart. But his confidence and clarity have been wiped away along with his fatigue.
Rachel is once more a shopping-obsessed teenage girl, forced to fend off Marco’s overt advances and educate her friend Cassie about fashion. As with Jake, seeing this regression is a bit of a shock. Rachel’s warrior attitude has come to dominate her characterization in recent books; it has been a long time since we thought about her family life, her interests outside of fighting as part of the Animorphs. Yet when Marco draws her back into things when he believes he has spotted his mother, Rachel naturally leaps into action: she wants to do something, take a stand, even if she isn’t sure it’s the right thing.
Cassie is a shy, very passionate girl. Oh, and she loves Jake. And he loves her, in that sweet will-they-or-won’t-they teenage way. Although Applegate has continued to develop their romantic feelings over the series, this book is a more intense reminder of it, and it shows how much fighting the Yeerks has warped the Animorphs� otherwise adolescent priorities.
Ax provides a lot of comic relief here. He has to escape from the sunken Andalite dome ship on his own. Then, when he starts to integrate into human society, he has a much tougher time of it than when he had the other Animorphs� help. Mostly, though, what we see here is Ax without a prince to follow. He isn’t all that bad at taking initiative and coming up with his own plans, actually—but there is a loneliness to him, an edge that he doesn’t have in the original timeline. We realize how much he has come to belong with the other Animorphs.
Arguably, though Back to Before shines most brightly when it comes to Marco and Tobias� stories.
Marco see his mom, Visser One, and all hell breaks loose. She just appears in public in front of him, resulting in a dramatic chase sequence until she disappears again. These “glitches� become more frequent until the end of the book. (The whole excuse of Cassie being “sub-temporally grounded� is a very clunky way to break up this new timeline, but I’m willing to overlook it. Every temporary reset book needs one.) Marco’s sudden desperation to find his mother after spotting her is such a kick to the gut given recent events with Visser One and the way it has altered Marco, both as a son and as a character in general.
Finally, Tobias. Poor, poor Tobias. Is there anyone in the series who gets beat up as much as Tobias? He’s such a (TVTropes). And it’s such a delicious irony that his life is not better now that he is a human instead of a hawk. Instead, he gets a first-hand look at how the Sharing recruits vulnerable youth and turns them into Controllers. Although the Sharing’s procedures have been intimated in the past, this is the first time we really get a glimpse of them from the inside. Applegate draws heavily from real-life fascist recruitment tactics here: an older mentor/role model, targeting dispossessed and otherwise downtrodden youth, and giving them a taste of affection and empowerment. It’s devious and nefarious and, for Tobias, entirely too effective until it’s too late.
Although I can get over the sub-temporal grounding MacGuffin, this book once again reminds us in general how the Animorphs (via Tobias in particular) seem wrapped up in a game of cosmic destiny between Crayak and the Ellimist. I’m always ambivalent about stories like this that start with seemingly-random heroes and then retcon it to reveal that they were destined to be heroes all along. Like � why? Why can’t we have books where the forces of the universe ’t conspiring to make someone a viewpoint character?
Such philosophical quibbles about literature aside, though, Back to Before is an important instalment in the series at this pivotal point where the fatigue is becoming too much and there seems to be no end in sight. It is a signal for us to take a deep breath. There are fourteen more books to go—that seems like a lot, but things start happening quickly now.
My reviews of Animorphs:
� #40: The Other | #41: The Familiar �
Let’s talk about each Animorph’s experience in this alternative timeline. Back to Before contains almost no morphing in it, obviously, and very little Yeerk-fighting. So what we get instead is a refreshing look at the Animorphs� relationships to each other and the people and world around them. I feel like more recent books in the series have distanced themselves from these things, focusing more on the grand battle. This is a nice chance—albeit through a reset—to remind us who these characters are.
Jake is no longer the leader of the Animorphs. Actually, he never was, which is important. This book reminds us we’ve seen so much character growth over the course of this series. In this timeline, Jake never had to make any of the tough decisions that have changed him, made him harder and craftier. He’s still just a kid. His innate leadership skills are there, as particularly evidenced towards the end where everything starts to fall apart. But his confidence and clarity have been wiped away along with his fatigue.
Rachel is once more a shopping-obsessed teenage girl, forced to fend off Marco’s overt advances and educate her friend Cassie about fashion. As with Jake, seeing this regression is a bit of a shock. Rachel’s warrior attitude has come to dominate her characterization in recent books; it has been a long time since we thought about her family life, her interests outside of fighting as part of the Animorphs. Yet when Marco draws her back into things when he believes he has spotted his mother, Rachel naturally leaps into action: she wants to do something, take a stand, even if she isn’t sure it’s the right thing.
Cassie is a shy, very passionate girl. Oh, and she loves Jake. And he loves her, in that sweet will-they-or-won’t-they teenage way. Although Applegate has continued to develop their romantic feelings over the series, this book is a more intense reminder of it, and it shows how much fighting the Yeerks has warped the Animorphs� otherwise adolescent priorities.
Ax provides a lot of comic relief here. He has to escape from the sunken Andalite dome ship on his own. Then, when he starts to integrate into human society, he has a much tougher time of it than when he had the other Animorphs� help. Mostly, though, what we see here is Ax without a prince to follow. He isn’t all that bad at taking initiative and coming up with his own plans, actually—but there is a loneliness to him, an edge that he doesn’t have in the original timeline. We realize how much he has come to belong with the other Animorphs.
Arguably, though Back to Before shines most brightly when it comes to Marco and Tobias� stories.
Marco see his mom, Visser One, and all hell breaks loose. She just appears in public in front of him, resulting in a dramatic chase sequence until she disappears again. These “glitches� become more frequent until the end of the book. (The whole excuse of Cassie being “sub-temporally grounded� is a very clunky way to break up this new timeline, but I’m willing to overlook it. Every temporary reset book needs one.) Marco’s sudden desperation to find his mother after spotting her is such a kick to the gut given recent events with Visser One and the way it has altered Marco, both as a son and as a character in general.
Finally, Tobias. Poor, poor Tobias. Is there anyone in the series who gets beat up as much as Tobias? He’s such a (TVTropes). And it’s such a delicious irony that his life is not better now that he is a human instead of a hawk. Instead, he gets a first-hand look at how the Sharing recruits vulnerable youth and turns them into Controllers. Although the Sharing’s procedures have been intimated in the past, this is the first time we really get a glimpse of them from the inside. Applegate draws heavily from real-life fascist recruitment tactics here: an older mentor/role model, targeting dispossessed and otherwise downtrodden youth, and giving them a taste of affection and empowerment. It’s devious and nefarious and, for Tobias, entirely too effective until it’s too late.
Although I can get over the sub-temporal grounding MacGuffin, this book once again reminds us in general how the Animorphs (via Tobias in particular) seem wrapped up in a game of cosmic destiny between Crayak and the Ellimist. I’m always ambivalent about stories like this that start with seemingly-random heroes and then retcon it to reveal that they were destined to be heroes all along. Like � why? Why can’t we have books where the forces of the universe ’t conspiring to make someone a viewpoint character?
Such philosophical quibbles about literature aside, though, Back to Before is an important instalment in the series at this pivotal point where the fatigue is becoming too much and there seems to be no end in sight. It is a signal for us to take a deep breath. There are fourteen more books to go—that seems like a lot, but things start happening quickly now.
My reviews of Animorphs:
� #40: The Other | #41: The Familiar �
October 27, 2015
I WOULD LIKE TO GIVE THIS BOOK 9000 STARS. I don't even know where to begin or how to talk about it. In my opinion, it's possibly the very best of all the Animorphs books so far -- also appropriate, considering it's KAA's fourth-to-last. There are only three more left after this. :(
More and more often, these books are dispensing with the "My name is ____" formulaic introduction, and instead just slamming into a mission or situation in medias res. This one plunges you right into the quiet horror at the tail-end of a mission, when they're mopping up the pieces and literally piecing themselves back together and readying to go home. And it is, well and truly, beyond the breaking point. KAA's writing is so exquisite and darkly beautiful and horrifying in these opening chapters: Jake's detached voice, the way he's distanced from his own body and the damage he's seeing in himself and others, the way he's accustomed to it. The way he doesn't pause to deliver compassion to the fallen Controller at all (earlier in the series he would have, I don't doubt it), and instantly just assesses the situation in terms of danger and practicality.
It's too much. And that night Jake finally caves, and accepts a deal from Crayak to undo it all.
Frankly, it's surprising he hasn't done it before.
The story that unfolds is amazing, covering what would have happened with the invasion (The Invasion, even) and with the Animorphs if they hadn't walked through the construction site, if they'd never seen Elfangor and become a group and gained their powers. I wouldn't recommend this as a standalone book for newer fans, but as an installment in the 40s, it's perfect. Seeing the different paths their lives would have taken -- and in many ways, it's just so so so so so so much darker. As gruesome and terrible and bleak as their current situation is, somehow this is worse. I spent most of this book screaming about Tobias and burying my face in my hands. Awful, awful things happen to every single one of them.
But then there's also the small instability in the timeline, the little cracks and fissures in the foundation, as the 'real' timeline keeps trying to reassert itself and they catch glimmers and flickers of what should have been...
It's pretty much some of my favourite things in a story, down to roads-not-taken and parallel universes and questioning reality.
This book is supposed to come right before #41, but I accidentally read them in the opposite order. I see that a lot of people didn't like them being back-to-back because they saw them as too similar, but I actually appreciate having them so close because that means I can parallel/contrast them? As I've blathered to a friend, the books are exploring very different things (and in fact, I'm just gonna quote the message I wrote earlier): Back to Before is a genuine alternate reality, and pointing out that awful as their lives are right now, it might have been even worse if they'd never joined the fight at all. Showing where they would have been, still as kids, in their actual Darkest Timeline.
Whereas #41 is an artificial reality, created to examine Jake and his psyche and choices, more dreamlike / deeply symbolic / foreshadowing than a real portrayal of reality. The two books seem similar on the surface but are actually exploring different things.
Although jeez. Jeez. The opening chapter of Back to Before is even more gruelling and awful than The Familiar, IMO, because it's less screaming chaos, more detached deadened desensitisation.
I know a lot of people are probably bothered by the Animorphs' 'retconned' adventures too, since they've had a few shenanigans now with weird timelines and time travel and Sario Rips and the Ellimist's meddling, and this one is true to form because only will remember what happened.
But I still think this one is so, so important. It's showing how low, low, low they've gotten, and what happens when Jake finally snaps and just wants a reprieve, wants to lay down that heavy mantle for once, and you can absolutely understand and feel for him in doing so. He cracks. He gives in, and it's been a long damn time coming -- I even wrote back in my review for #16 (TWENTY-FIVE BOOKS AGO!!!), "Jake continues disintegrating under the pressure of being the leader, and it's heart-wrenching; I'm curious to see if this book represents a nadir and he manages to pull himself together for a while going forward. I suspect it's left deep cracks, though: as he himself describes, the fear corrodes you, hollows you out and leaves wounds that will never quite heal."
And yep. That's exactly what happened. That faultline finally splintered, and the Drode took advantage of it. His fears and weariness and stress are way beyond what he should have to deal with, and Rachel puts it so well when she rails against their fate in this war: "He shouldn't have to be [strong]. None of us should have to. This is enough. This has gone on too long."
Another of my favourite quotes is that when Jake is describing their inheriting the morphing power from Elfangor, it's now described as this: Power enough to win? No. Power enough to fight? Ah, yes. Just enough, little Jake, here is just enough power to imprison you in a cage of duty, to make you fight.
Just enough rope to hang yourself with, indeed. It's no longer a valorous, brave, gallant thing that they're doing -- it's basically their sentence, their own personal hell.
All of the scenes with the Drode are written brilliantly: he's slithery and tempting at turns, more conniving than the damned snake in the garden of Eden, pushing all of Jake's buttons and playing him perfectly. I love more signs of the chess match between the Ellimist & Crayak, always.
I'm not even talking much about the alternate timeline, because all I can say is that it's brilliant and heartbreaking, in so many ways. I WANT TO SEE IT AS A MOVIE.
(TANGENT. In fact, my proposal for the ultimate Animorphs 5-movie series is now the following:
-- The first one, spanning books 1, 2, 4, to establish their early disastrous missions, the failed attack on the Yeerk pool, Tobias becoming a nothlit, and meeting Ax. Marco's mother should make a cameo too, even if it isn't the full storyline of 5.
-- Megamorphs #1 I'M SORRY I JUST HAVE A WEIRD SOFT SPOT FOR IT. The goddamn car chase scene and baiting the Veleek and Cassie's whale-drop! I think the Megamorphs books work well cinematically in general, since they're multi-POV.
-- The David trilogy. SCREAMS
-- Back to Before. SCREAMS!!
-- A scattering of the last few books / end of the war, when shit gets real and to wrap things up. SCREAMS SOME MORE.)
I wanted to do my usual thing of typing up fave quotes in general, buuuut then I ended up typing literally the entire first chapters the book, and then chunks of the ending. The last lines are absolutely fucking brilliant. That curt, abrupt ending is jarring, disorienting, haunting, and leaves you with no real conclusion: just pain, and an awareness of the bullet they've dodged, this precipice that they've just barely skirted.
Really really LONG spoilery quotes below, because I am just obsessed with the beginning/end of this book:
More and more often, these books are dispensing with the "My name is ____" formulaic introduction, and instead just slamming into a mission or situation in medias res. This one plunges you right into the quiet horror at the tail-end of a mission, when they're mopping up the pieces and literally piecing themselves back together and readying to go home. And it is, well and truly, beyond the breaking point. KAA's writing is so exquisite and darkly beautiful and horrifying in these opening chapters: Jake's detached voice, the way he's distanced from his own body and the damage he's seeing in himself and others, the way he's accustomed to it. The way he doesn't pause to deliver compassion to the fallen Controller at all (earlier in the series he would have, I don't doubt it), and instantly just assesses the situation in terms of danger and practicality.
It's too much. And that night Jake finally caves, and accepts a deal from Crayak to undo it all.
Frankly, it's surprising he hasn't done it before.
The story that unfolds is amazing, covering what would have happened with the invasion (The Invasion, even) and with the Animorphs if they hadn't walked through the construction site, if they'd never seen Elfangor and become a group and gained their powers. I wouldn't recommend this as a standalone book for newer fans, but as an installment in the 40s, it's perfect. Seeing the different paths their lives would have taken -- and in many ways, it's just so so so so so so much darker. As gruesome and terrible and bleak as their current situation is, somehow this is worse. I spent most of this book screaming about Tobias and burying my face in my hands. Awful, awful things happen to every single one of them.
But then there's also the small instability in the timeline, the little cracks and fissures in the foundation, as the 'real' timeline keeps trying to reassert itself and they catch glimmers and flickers of what should have been...
It's pretty much some of my favourite things in a story, down to roads-not-taken and parallel universes and questioning reality.
This book is supposed to come right before #41, but I accidentally read them in the opposite order. I see that a lot of people didn't like them being back-to-back because they saw them as too similar, but I actually appreciate having them so close because that means I can parallel/contrast them? As I've blathered to a friend, the books are exploring very different things (and in fact, I'm just gonna quote the message I wrote earlier): Back to Before is a genuine alternate reality, and pointing out that awful as their lives are right now, it might have been even worse if they'd never joined the fight at all. Showing where they would have been, still as kids, in their actual Darkest Timeline.
Whereas #41 is an artificial reality, created to examine Jake and his psyche and choices, more dreamlike / deeply symbolic / foreshadowing than a real portrayal of reality. The two books seem similar on the surface but are actually exploring different things.
Although jeez. Jeez. The opening chapter of Back to Before is even more gruelling and awful than The Familiar, IMO, because it's less screaming chaos, more detached deadened desensitisation.
I know a lot of people are probably bothered by the Animorphs' 'retconned' adventures too, since they've had a few shenanigans now with weird timelines and time travel and Sario Rips and the Ellimist's meddling, and this one is true to form because only will remember what happened.
But I still think this one is so, so important. It's showing how low, low, low they've gotten, and what happens when Jake finally snaps and just wants a reprieve, wants to lay down that heavy mantle for once, and you can absolutely understand and feel for him in doing so. He cracks. He gives in, and it's been a long damn time coming -- I even wrote back in my review for #16 (TWENTY-FIVE BOOKS AGO!!!), "Jake continues disintegrating under the pressure of being the leader, and it's heart-wrenching; I'm curious to see if this book represents a nadir and he manages to pull himself together for a while going forward. I suspect it's left deep cracks, though: as he himself describes, the fear corrodes you, hollows you out and leaves wounds that will never quite heal."
And yep. That's exactly what happened. That faultline finally splintered, and the Drode took advantage of it. His fears and weariness and stress are way beyond what he should have to deal with, and Rachel puts it so well when she rails against their fate in this war: "He shouldn't have to be [strong]. None of us should have to. This is enough. This has gone on too long."
Another of my favourite quotes is that when Jake is describing their inheriting the morphing power from Elfangor, it's now described as this: Power enough to win? No. Power enough to fight? Ah, yes. Just enough, little Jake, here is just enough power to imprison you in a cage of duty, to make you fight.
Just enough rope to hang yourself with, indeed. It's no longer a valorous, brave, gallant thing that they're doing -- it's basically their sentence, their own personal hell.
All of the scenes with the Drode are written brilliantly: he's slithery and tempting at turns, more conniving than the damned snake in the garden of Eden, pushing all of Jake's buttons and playing him perfectly. I love more signs of the chess match between the Ellimist & Crayak, always.
I'm not even talking much about the alternate timeline, because all I can say is that it's brilliant and heartbreaking, in so many ways. I WANT TO SEE IT AS A MOVIE.
(TANGENT. In fact, my proposal for the ultimate Animorphs 5-movie series is now the following:
-- The first one, spanning books 1, 2, 4, to establish their early disastrous missions, the failed attack on the Yeerk pool, Tobias becoming a nothlit, and meeting Ax. Marco's mother should make a cameo too, even if it isn't the full storyline of 5.
-- Megamorphs #1 I'M SORRY I JUST HAVE A WEIRD SOFT SPOT FOR IT. The goddamn car chase scene and baiting the Veleek and Cassie's whale-drop! I think the Megamorphs books work well cinematically in general, since they're multi-POV.
-- The David trilogy. SCREAMS
-- Back to Before. SCREAMS!!
-- A scattering of the last few books / end of the war, when shit gets real and to wrap things up. SCREAMS SOME MORE.)
I wanted to do my usual thing of typing up fave quotes in general, buuuut then I ended up typing literally the entire first chapters the book, and then chunks of the ending. The last lines are absolutely fucking brilliant. That curt, abrupt ending is jarring, disorienting, haunting, and leaves you with no real conclusion: just pain, and an awareness of the bullet they've dodged, this precipice that they've just barely skirted.
Really really LONG spoilery quotes below, because I am just obsessed with the beginning/end of this book:
January 21, 2015
Loved this book so much. It's the first book I've read that felt like the series is starting to get to the end, drawing closer to the final battle and whatever happens. I'm so scared of what will happen. My heart is not prepared.
"Will it, at least, ever end?"
The Ellimist looked at me. Just at me. Sadly, I thought. Pityingly.
"It will end," he said. "It will end." (p. 175)
May 15, 2024
Not Applegate killing all the animorphs�
Also Marco and Rachel could be together if Tobias died, I Stan
Also Marco and Rachel could be together if Tobias died, I Stan
June 8, 2016
If I could give this ten stars, I would. It is pure brilliance of a “What if?� situation, one that Jake and likely the other Animorphs have at least begun asking themselves from time to time. This book opens with the immediate aftermath of a huge battle - which the Animorphs barely survive, again - and the weight of everything has become too much for Jake. Then, the Drode pops in and offers him a carrot: Say the word, Jake, and Crayak will make it so you never walked through that construction site that fateful night.
But what sort of difference would changing that one event make? Is ignorance truly bliss, or does it just make you completely unprepared for what is to come?
Jake, Marco, Cassie, Rachel, and Tobias take a different route home. They never meet Elfangor, they never gain the ability to morph. Everything is different, yet the seeds of what could have been are there: in the way that Rachel hunts down deals for clothing, that Marco is paranoid enough to pursue someone that does not fit in this reality, that Jake is the one that others look to for decisions, that Tobias seeks out a place to belong, that Ax gets carried away with having a mouth in human morph. These seeds also show us, the reader, that we all have the potential to be different, to be more than we are, and part of what gets our personal changes and character evolutions started are the events and experiences we have. For the Animorphs, even without meeting Elfangor, they all still have the potential to become who they were becoming in the true time line. Without opportunity, what happens to all that potential?
This time line shift also shows us more of what Tobias went through before he became an Animorph � it is so much worse than he lets on in the true time line. His aunt outright makes him her slave and prevents him from going to school (Anyone else reminded of A Child Called “It� like I was?), on top of his uncle not caring about him and the extreme bullying at school. His decisions in this time line really make sense, given all that � even though it leads him where it does. At the same time though, it is a great message to kids of all ages about enduring bullying, and staying strong. There is always a worse alternative, and you can never give up the hope that things will get better.
The power made us responsible.
Endure. Outlast. Outwait.
Quotes and comments:
I did this section in three shots; four stars separate each subsequent day’s quotes/comments.
Marco was already demorphed. A kid. My age, but he looked so young to me. My best friend. � page 3
“I’m scared. Does that � does that make you happy, Andalite?� the dying man said.
[…] < No. It doesn’t make me happy, > I said. � page 5-6
The air was our surest way out. Grow wings and fly. Fly and put it all behind us. Pretty soon we’d be joking. Laughing. Trying anything that would make us forget what we’d seen.
What we’d done. � page 6
There was the destructive worm of knowledge: You are not alone. You are not safe. Nothing is what it seems. No one is who they seem to be.
The knowledge of betrayal and terror. The awareness of evil.
And then, the power.
The power made us responsible, see. Without the power the knowledge would have just been a worm of fear eating up our insides.
Bad enough. But it was the power that turned fear into obligation, that laid weight on our unready shoulders.
[…] Power enough to win? No. Power enough to fight? Ah, yes. Just enough, little Jake, here is just enough power to imprison you in a cage of duty, to make you fight.
Couldn’t anything make it end? Was there no way out? Was I trapped, fighting, fighting till one by one my friends died or went nuts? –page 9
Continued in the comments...
But what sort of difference would changing that one event make? Is ignorance truly bliss, or does it just make you completely unprepared for what is to come?
Jake, Marco, Cassie, Rachel, and Tobias take a different route home. They never meet Elfangor, they never gain the ability to morph. Everything is different, yet the seeds of what could have been are there: in the way that Rachel hunts down deals for clothing, that Marco is paranoid enough to pursue someone that does not fit in this reality, that Jake is the one that others look to for decisions, that Tobias seeks out a place to belong, that Ax gets carried away with having a mouth in human morph. These seeds also show us, the reader, that we all have the potential to be different, to be more than we are, and part of what gets our personal changes and character evolutions started are the events and experiences we have. For the Animorphs, even without meeting Elfangor, they all still have the potential to become who they were becoming in the true time line. Without opportunity, what happens to all that potential?
This time line shift also shows us more of what Tobias went through before he became an Animorph � it is so much worse than he lets on in the true time line. His aunt outright makes him her slave and prevents him from going to school (Anyone else reminded of A Child Called “It� like I was?), on top of his uncle not caring about him and the extreme bullying at school. His decisions in this time line really make sense, given all that � even though it leads him where it does. At the same time though, it is a great message to kids of all ages about enduring bullying, and staying strong. There is always a worse alternative, and you can never give up the hope that things will get better.
The power made us responsible.
Endure. Outlast. Outwait.
Quotes and comments:
I did this section in three shots; four stars separate each subsequent day’s quotes/comments.
Marco was already demorphed. A kid. My age, but he looked so young to me. My best friend. � page 3
“I’m scared. Does that � does that make you happy, Andalite?� the dying man said.
[…] < No. It doesn’t make me happy, > I said. � page 5-6
The air was our surest way out. Grow wings and fly. Fly and put it all behind us. Pretty soon we’d be joking. Laughing. Trying anything that would make us forget what we’d seen.
What we’d done. � page 6
There was the destructive worm of knowledge: You are not alone. You are not safe. Nothing is what it seems. No one is who they seem to be.
The knowledge of betrayal and terror. The awareness of evil.
And then, the power.
The power made us responsible, see. Without the power the knowledge would have just been a worm of fear eating up our insides.
Bad enough. But it was the power that turned fear into obligation, that laid weight on our unready shoulders.
[…] Power enough to win? No. Power enough to fight? Ah, yes. Just enough, little Jake, here is just enough power to imprison you in a cage of duty, to make you fight.
Couldn’t anything make it end? Was there no way out? Was I trapped, fighting, fighting till one by one my friends died or went nuts? –page 9
Continued in the comments...
September 29, 2013
Brought to you by !
The premise of this novel, the fourth and final Megamorphs, is simple: what would have happened to the Animorphs and Ax if the teenagers had not walked through the construction site and met Elfangor?
Even though this alternate-world has absolutely no bearing on the overall story arch, it’s one of the best novels of the series and well worth a read. Here are some major things to note that affect the plot:
~ Tobias, no longer a red tailed hawk nothlit, joins The Sharing.
~ Marco witnesses his ‘dead� mother in the city, and gives chase, and ends up being chased by thugs with laser beams.
~ Ax can’t wait for a rescue and needs to escape his sunken Dome ship alone.
~ Rachel, Jake and Cassie have less interesting alternatives, but Jake also attends some Sharing meetings, Rachel no longer has an outlet for her aggression, and Cassie thinks she’s losing her mind because she keeps seeing impossible things.
The reason I love this novel so much, I think, is because I love seeing the little details readers of the series will recognise. Rachel chases after Marco’s mother with him because she likes chasing things, Cassie notes that Rachel’s shopping instinct is like a hunting instinct, and she beats Tom with a baseball bat whilst still looking perfect, not a hair out of place. Similarly, Jake resists becoming a full member of the Sharing because he doesn’t want to be assimilated (for lack of a better word), and when the Animorphs figure out it’s an alien invasion, they all instinctively turn to him. Tobias� weakness is that the Sharing protects him from bullies and he’s literally got nowhere else to go.
The other great thing about the novel is that in this version,
For one little book, it sure does pack a punch.
March 22, 2017
Riveting and fun.
July 16, 2022
It’s the final and best Megamorphs installment involving alternate timelines to date.
We see where the Animorphs would be if they had never become Animorphs at all and of course, Tobias just breaks my heart.
Aside from a very odd interaction between Cassie and Rachel discussing whether or not Jake is a racist before Cassie moves forward with her crush on him (in case anyone was unclear about it, the opposite of a racist is not a “colorblind� white guy).
We open up on the exhausting and draining horrors and really see the toll taken on Jake’s mind before seeing the immediate contrast of the young, carefree jock he was on the path to becoming.
Cassie’s level of importance in the universe also skyrockets in a fascinating way that I’m curious to see get incorporated more later down the line.
Why did Applegate ever bother with that bullshit Nazi installment of Megamorphs when stuff like this could’ve been done the whole time !!!
CW: war, violence, slavery, death, slight gore, grief, child neglect, references to child abuse, absentee parents, bullying, misogyny
We see where the Animorphs would be if they had never become Animorphs at all and of course, Tobias just breaks my heart.
Aside from a very odd interaction between Cassie and Rachel discussing whether or not Jake is a racist before Cassie moves forward with her crush on him (in case anyone was unclear about it, the opposite of a racist is not a “colorblind� white guy).
We open up on the exhausting and draining horrors and really see the toll taken on Jake’s mind before seeing the immediate contrast of the young, carefree jock he was on the path to becoming.
Cassie’s level of importance in the universe also skyrockets in a fascinating way that I’m curious to see get incorporated more later down the line.
Why did Applegate ever bother with that bullshit Nazi installment of Megamorphs when stuff like this could’ve been done the whole time !!!
CW: war, violence, slavery, death, slight gore, grief, child neglect, references to child abuse, absentee parents, bullying, misogyny
August 7, 2014
Ohhh freaky. What would have happened if the Animorphs never existed?????
Notable moments and inconsistencies:
Interesting that this book finally acknowledges that no one knows why Rachel and Cassie are best friends. It's been pretty clear all along that they've nothing in common.
Cassie refers to herself as "African-American" in this book, which she hasn't done before, and also expresses some unprecedented insecurity about whether being black might affect how Jake, who's white, feels about her.
In the other Megamorphs books, the chapters in which Ax narrates are labeled "Ax." In this book, the first Ax chapter is labeled "Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill." The others are labeled "Aximili."
Other books suggest that Rachel has a capacity to think Marco is cute. In this book, both seem to acknowledge that each other are good-looking, but what they're attracted to in each other is all intellectual--daring, decision-making skills, bravery.
The Yeerk that infests Tobias in this reality is called Odret-One-Seven-Seven.
President Clinton is mentioned as being in office, solidly dating the story.
The Drode is complaining about "a group of six supposedly random humans that contains these four," but earlier in the sentence one of these "four" was "Elfangor's brother," Ax. He's not a human.
Notable moments and inconsistencies:
Interesting that this book finally acknowledges that no one knows why Rachel and Cassie are best friends. It's been pretty clear all along that they've nothing in common.
Cassie refers to herself as "African-American" in this book, which she hasn't done before, and also expresses some unprecedented insecurity about whether being black might affect how Jake, who's white, feels about her.
In the other Megamorphs books, the chapters in which Ax narrates are labeled "Ax." In this book, the first Ax chapter is labeled "Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill." The others are labeled "Aximili."
Other books suggest that Rachel has a capacity to think Marco is cute. In this book, both seem to acknowledge that each other are good-looking, but what they're attracted to in each other is all intellectual--daring, decision-making skills, bravery.
The Yeerk that infests Tobias in this reality is called Odret-One-Seven-Seven.
President Clinton is mentioned as being in office, solidly dating the story.
The Drode is complaining about "a group of six supposedly random humans that contains these four," but earlier in the sentence one of these "four" was "Elfangor's brother," Ax. He's not a human.
April 4, 2022
The fourth and final Megamorphs volume opens in media res, with the bloody aftermath of a recent Animorph skirmish against the Yeerks. By this point in the wider franchise, we don't need any specifics about that particular mission; we can simply see that it's been a rough one. Jake in tiger morph is pinned beneath a Hork-Bajir corpse, staring at one of his own severed legs across the room. Tobias is lying stunned and crumpled, likewise buried amid the carnage. Marco has just recently demorphed from an almost-fatal neck slash. And a dying human Controller keeps repeating, "Help me. I'm so cold," as the kids wearily pick themselves up and flee for home.
It's a quick scene, but it really sets the stage for how brutal and bleak this adventure will be. That night, Crayak's agent the Drode visits Jake and tempts him as the boy tosses and turns, unable to put the battle behind him and sleep. The offer is simple: grant those forces of destruction permission to rewrite reality so that Jake and the others never cut through the abandoned construction site and found a wounded Andalite prince who told them about the invasion and gave them the power to morph. Put this whole endless war out of mind and let it be someone else's responsibility. In a moment of weakness, the team leader agrees.
Immediately, we return to the day of Animorphs #1 and watch that alternate timeline play out. It's a fascinating what-if, drawing powerfully on our long familiarity with the characters and how they've developed under the stress of their grim resistance campaign. These versions of the teens are so young and carefree by contrast, but we can still recognize the kernel of strength and capability to them, particularly as they get caught up in the conflict regardless.
Well� not Tobias, I guess. Sadly, without circumstances leading him to become an Animorph and then a nothlit, he drifts away from his new friendship with Jake. Bullied in school and neglected by his family, he is an easy mark for the Sharing, the front organization for recruiting Yeerk host bodies. This is our most in-depth look at their cultish methods, and it's eerie to see how effectively the program works on a loner like Tobias. He's drawn in by the promise of community and joining something bigger than himself, and infested despite getting cold feet at the last minute. There's no happy ending for him in this universe, and readers expecting a rescue will be in for an unpleasant surprise.
As for the other heroes, they -- especially Cassie -- are seeing occasional flashes of their former world, like her conviction that a hawk should be sitting in the rafters at her parents' barn. But the major development comes when Ax, who in lieu of his recruitment in Animorphs #4 has freed himself from his sunken ship and journeyed up to the surface alone, appears in a local television studio to broadcast a warning about the alien oppressors to any humans willing to listen. That sets off alarms at the Sharing, and Jake, already suspicious of his brother Tom, follows him to the site only to observe him pull out a futuristic 'ray gun' and start blasting witnesses. (Earlier, Marco and Rachel see similar weapons after another time eddy briefly causes Visser One to appear before them. They're shot at by her bodyguards as they pursue, in a fun instance of the blond mallrat realizing how much she enjoys the thrill of the chase and the life-or-death stakes. However, I personally appreciate that chapter more for the fact that Marco asks her out and she seems to accept, a vindication for every shipper who's felt the possibility of romance in their regular prickly-yet-understanding dynamic.)
The butterfly effect of the new chain of events is interesting, with the Yeerks resorting to open warfare on humanity in a way they haven't so far in the plot of the main novels. Lacking their morphing or their hard-won experience, our protagonists are even more outmatched than usual, and not all of them survive through the end of the title. Yet ultimately, they come close to dealing a huge blow against the invaders, by capturing the Blade ship with Ax and preparing to fire on the orbiting craft containing the majority of Yeerk reinforcements waiting in their pool. At that point the Drode huffily freezes time and ends the experiment, not because the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of noncombatants would be an obvious atrocity -- our babies' first / latest war crime -- but because he and his master have decided the odds are actually better for them back in the original reality.
It's a bit of a narrative cheat, but only barely. This 'It's a Wonderful Life' gimmick was obviously never going to be a permanent shift even before folks started dying, and in my opinion, the trickster discovering that his gambit made things worse for his side is a fine way to end it. The detail that that victory and its steep cost were possible merely because Cassie is an anomaly whose sensitivity to the changing timeline helped disrupt the scheme is a clever wrinkle too -- though maybe difficult to reconcile with stories such as Animorphs #11 or Megamorphs #3 -- and I like the further reveal that Crayak's adversary the Ellimist has understood that about the girl and foreseen everything playing out this way all along.
I don't love how no one will clearly remember any of this happening, although that's probably for the best for Jake and Tobias alike, but at least we the audience have gotten to see the characters prove their mettle all over again in a most unusual situation. It's a strong what-if, one that demonstrates not just how everyone's core self would remain the same absent the crucible of trauma they've endured, but also that even the worst of those experiences have saved lives and brought about possibilities that aren't worth undoing. That's a great note to end the multi-perspective blockbuster Megamorphs on, as the larger series itself winds down.
This volume: ★★★★�
Overall series: ★★★★�
Volumes ranked: 4 > 2 > 3 > 1
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It's a quick scene, but it really sets the stage for how brutal and bleak this adventure will be. That night, Crayak's agent the Drode visits Jake and tempts him as the boy tosses and turns, unable to put the battle behind him and sleep. The offer is simple: grant those forces of destruction permission to rewrite reality so that Jake and the others never cut through the abandoned construction site and found a wounded Andalite prince who told them about the invasion and gave them the power to morph. Put this whole endless war out of mind and let it be someone else's responsibility. In a moment of weakness, the team leader agrees.
Immediately, we return to the day of Animorphs #1 and watch that alternate timeline play out. It's a fascinating what-if, drawing powerfully on our long familiarity with the characters and how they've developed under the stress of their grim resistance campaign. These versions of the teens are so young and carefree by contrast, but we can still recognize the kernel of strength and capability to them, particularly as they get caught up in the conflict regardless.
Well� not Tobias, I guess. Sadly, without circumstances leading him to become an Animorph and then a nothlit, he drifts away from his new friendship with Jake. Bullied in school and neglected by his family, he is an easy mark for the Sharing, the front organization for recruiting Yeerk host bodies. This is our most in-depth look at their cultish methods, and it's eerie to see how effectively the program works on a loner like Tobias. He's drawn in by the promise of community and joining something bigger than himself, and infested despite getting cold feet at the last minute. There's no happy ending for him in this universe, and readers expecting a rescue will be in for an unpleasant surprise.
As for the other heroes, they -- especially Cassie -- are seeing occasional flashes of their former world, like her conviction that a hawk should be sitting in the rafters at her parents' barn. But the major development comes when Ax, who in lieu of his recruitment in Animorphs #4 has freed himself from his sunken ship and journeyed up to the surface alone, appears in a local television studio to broadcast a warning about the alien oppressors to any humans willing to listen. That sets off alarms at the Sharing, and Jake, already suspicious of his brother Tom, follows him to the site only to observe him pull out a futuristic 'ray gun' and start blasting witnesses. (Earlier, Marco and Rachel see similar weapons after another time eddy briefly causes Visser One to appear before them. They're shot at by her bodyguards as they pursue, in a fun instance of the blond mallrat realizing how much she enjoys the thrill of the chase and the life-or-death stakes. However, I personally appreciate that chapter more for the fact that Marco asks her out and she seems to accept, a vindication for every shipper who's felt the possibility of romance in their regular prickly-yet-understanding dynamic.)
The butterfly effect of the new chain of events is interesting, with the Yeerks resorting to open warfare on humanity in a way they haven't so far in the plot of the main novels. Lacking their morphing or their hard-won experience, our protagonists are even more outmatched than usual, and not all of them survive through the end of the title. Yet ultimately, they come close to dealing a huge blow against the invaders, by capturing the Blade ship with Ax and preparing to fire on the orbiting craft containing the majority of Yeerk reinforcements waiting in their pool. At that point the Drode huffily freezes time and ends the experiment, not because the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of noncombatants would be an obvious atrocity -- our babies' first / latest war crime -- but because he and his master have decided the odds are actually better for them back in the original reality.
It's a bit of a narrative cheat, but only barely. This 'It's a Wonderful Life' gimmick was obviously never going to be a permanent shift even before folks started dying, and in my opinion, the trickster discovering that his gambit made things worse for his side is a fine way to end it. The detail that that victory and its steep cost were possible merely because Cassie is an anomaly whose sensitivity to the changing timeline helped disrupt the scheme is a clever wrinkle too -- though maybe difficult to reconcile with stories such as Animorphs #11 or Megamorphs #3 -- and I like the further reveal that Crayak's adversary the Ellimist has understood that about the girl and foreseen everything playing out this way all along.
I don't love how no one will clearly remember any of this happening, although that's probably for the best for Jake and Tobias alike, but at least we the audience have gotten to see the characters prove their mettle all over again in a most unusual situation. It's a strong what-if, one that demonstrates not just how everyone's core self would remain the same absent the crucible of trauma they've endured, but also that even the worst of those experiences have saved lives and brought about possibilities that aren't worth undoing. That's a great note to end the multi-perspective blockbuster Megamorphs on, as the larger series itself winds down.
This volume: ★★★★�
Overall series: ★★★★�
Volumes ranked: 4 > 2 > 3 > 1
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December 2, 2015
Endure. Outlast. Outwait. Three little words that have gradually come to be emblematic of the Animorphs' struggle over the past 40-some books as their guerrilla war against the Yeerk invasion drags on. The Animorphs are increasingly fighting not to foil the Yeerks' plans but just to break even, to maintain, hold on by the skin of their teeth. And even then they're slipping.
Like Megamorphs 3, this is an alternate timeline book; but where the 3rd installment focused on altered versions of famous battles and other broad historical events, Back to Before alters the personal timeline of the Animorphs themselves. The story opens from Jake's point of view, in the aftermath of a horrific battle. He is already emotionally stretched to his breaking point when the Drode, Crayak's wonderfully slimy emissary, appears to offer him a deal: what if the Animorphs could get a do over? What if they never walked through the abandoned construction site that night?
Jake accepts the deal, and he, Marco, Rachel, Cassie, and Tobias go back to their ordinary, pre-Animorph lives. No morphing powers. No responsibility. There's just one small problem: the Yeerk invasion is still happening.
Back to Before is the ultimate "what-if" scenario of the series, an absolutely unflinching exercise in taking the Animorphs' hopeless situation, the power and responsibility they've grown to hate, and showing how ignorance to the danger is still a worse alternative.
Speaking of alternatives, I've had to restrain myself from spending most of this review on Tobias' alternate timeline, because his story just broke me. I've rarely wanted to rescue a fictional character from their situation as much as I did while reading his. Tobias' inculcation into The Sharing is chilling and plausible: he's exactly the kind of vulnerable kid this organization was DESIGNED to prey on, with zero support and love at home and a bully magnet at school. Even as I relived just how bad his life was before becoming an Animorph, I still hoped he would magically make a different choice than on my last reread. You can see his downfall on the horizon and it is heartbreaking
I want to take a moment to discuss the cover: it's haunting, a black and white portrait of the five human Animorphs (Ax is notably missing) standing on a black substrate riven with cracks suggesting the broken pavement of the war zone their suburban home becomes at the climax of the book. The grayscale tones suggest a photo negative, visually reflecting the dark alternate timeline of the narrative's events. Superimposed over the five teens is the ghostly image of a red-tailed hawk, in a symbolic inversion of Tobias' typical representation in which his human image is subordinated to the hawk body that is now his true form.
Quite simply, Back to Before is a masterpiece, one of the best installments of the series. Definitely not recommended for new readers, since so many of the details and developments are so much richer and more significant for readers acquainted with the 40+ books of material that precede it. But for fans who've hung in this long, it offers a darkly tantalizing vision of what could have been.
Like Megamorphs 3, this is an alternate timeline book; but where the 3rd installment focused on altered versions of famous battles and other broad historical events, Back to Before alters the personal timeline of the Animorphs themselves. The story opens from Jake's point of view, in the aftermath of a horrific battle. He is already emotionally stretched to his breaking point when the Drode, Crayak's wonderfully slimy emissary, appears to offer him a deal: what if the Animorphs could get a do over? What if they never walked through the abandoned construction site that night?
Jake accepts the deal, and he, Marco, Rachel, Cassie, and Tobias go back to their ordinary, pre-Animorph lives. No morphing powers. No responsibility. There's just one small problem: the Yeerk invasion is still happening.
Back to Before is the ultimate "what-if" scenario of the series, an absolutely unflinching exercise in taking the Animorphs' hopeless situation, the power and responsibility they've grown to hate, and showing how ignorance to the danger is still a worse alternative.
Speaking of alternatives, I've had to restrain myself from spending most of this review on Tobias' alternate timeline, because his story just broke me. I've rarely wanted to rescue a fictional character from their situation as much as I did while reading his. Tobias' inculcation into The Sharing is chilling and plausible: he's exactly the kind of vulnerable kid this organization was DESIGNED to prey on, with zero support and love at home and a bully magnet at school. Even as I relived just how bad his life was before becoming an Animorph, I still hoped he would magically make a different choice than on my last reread. You can see his downfall on the horizon and it is heartbreaking
I want to take a moment to discuss the cover: it's haunting, a black and white portrait of the five human Animorphs (Ax is notably missing) standing on a black substrate riven with cracks suggesting the broken pavement of the war zone their suburban home becomes at the climax of the book. The grayscale tones suggest a photo negative, visually reflecting the dark alternate timeline of the narrative's events. Superimposed over the five teens is the ghostly image of a red-tailed hawk, in a symbolic inversion of Tobias' typical representation in which his human image is subordinated to the hawk body that is now his true form.
Quite simply, Back to Before is a masterpiece, one of the best installments of the series. Definitely not recommended for new readers, since so many of the details and developments are so much richer and more significant for readers acquainted with the 40+ books of material that precede it. But for fans who've hung in this long, it offers a darkly tantalizing vision of what could have been.
September 21, 2024
03/2020 READ:
The moment when Cassie, Jake, Marco, and Rachel are in the barn and Cassie starts glancing up at the rafters because she *knows*, for some unfathomable reason, that there’s *supposed* to be a bird up there—and then the kids all turn to Jake for answers of how to respond to the strange events they’ve been experiencing ever since that night they walked *around* the construction site instead of through it... when Jake steps into his role as de facto leader, and Rachel and Marco pivot to their roles of eager soldier and strategist, and then the skies open up and the angels sing: Wow. That’s all I’m saying.
That’s five stars on its own.
But there’s so much more to love here. First, let me state the obvious: the plot of this and #41 are similar, in that Jake in particular is transported to an alternate reality which fragments as he gets closer to its center. Having read #41 first, I was initially annoyed but quickly forgave the similarity because the idea of returning to the beginning of the Animorphs is such a strong premise that quickly feels distinct. I suspect it would be more difficult to go from this to #41, rather than the other way around.
Seeing these familiar setpieces from the past but from a different perspective is very cool. Even without the morphing power, all of the kids are such well-fleshed out characters at this point that the drama keeps you engaged. I loved getting Ax’s experience in the Dome Ship before the Animorphs came to rescue him (which they never did, in this reality). I loved getting Tobias as a human boy, and the terrifying inside look at what it is to become Yeerk-infested when he joins The Sharing. There’s a section of narrative in there where Tobias laments having “destroyed himself� because of his gloom, and it is a stellar, moving argument against suicide even in the face of an unbearable weight. There’s that incredible moment when Rachel recognizes Marco’s cunning and considers him in a new light.
I could go on and on. I know it’s not a compliment to tell a book this, but it is *so cinematic*. I could imagine the camera angles, the swell of music every step of the way. I get through these books fairly quick anyway, but this was one I was reading voraciously, never wanting to put it down. It’s sad that it ended so soon. I thought I’d spend a little bit more time with it, thinking about it, as I wrote this review. It was excellent stuff. Truly.
09/2024 READ:
I was in the mood for an ANIMORPHS audiobook and actually wanted to listen to MegaMorphs #3, the time travel book, but chose MegaMorphs #4 and was partway into the first chapter before I realized my mistake. Oh well. I remembered loving this book and so I was perfectly content to experience it again. I did, in fact, still love it.
This is only the third Animorphs audiobook I’ve listened to so far: the other two were book #10 (narrated by Marco) and book #6 (narrated by Jake), in that order. I immediately noted that the same performers who portrayed the characters in those earlier books reprised their roles here, so it seems to me that they must narrate those characters� books throughout the series. This was the first time I heard the performers for Ax, Cassie, Tobias, and Rachel. They all do a decent job, thought I think Sisi Aisha Johnson as Cassie and Adam Verner as Ax are the most true to their characters of the bunch. Ramón de Ocampo, Emily Ellet, and Gavin McLeod all sound too much like adults for me to take, though they manage their characters� mannerisms effectively. McLeod, though, has amazing range: he’s tasked here with giving voice to both the Drode and the Ellimist and he does so in a hugely entertaining way well-suited to the characters. I was similarly impressed by the voice he created for Temrash in Book #6, so it seems to me that doing voices for weird alien creatures is a strength for him. I likened his voice for Temrash to Krang from the ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles�; his voice for the Drode called to mind in the D&D episode of ‘Community�.
I think my 2020 review pretty sums up my feelings on the book pretty well: my feeling’s unchanged. That scene in the barn I described above truly made me tear up on this go round. One thing I appreciated more on this listen was that the first chapter narrated by Rachel is delayed, and when it comes it is the most action-packed of the book to that point. Of course Rachel’s chapter would be filled with action! It’s so well-orchestrated, too � a chase sequence through a museum ending with her and Marco, non-Animorphs in this reality, being fired on by handguns� and then� by laser guns (which we know are Dracon beams). It’s an incredibly effective sequence. Also, there’s a good number of K.A. Applegate’s classic, sobering lines which drive home the severity of the Animorphs� experience. After a particular brutal fight to open the book, Jake says, “Pretty soon we’d be joking, laughing—trying anything to make us forget what we’d seen. What we’d done.� He goes on to lament the violence they’d just endured and doled out: “We’d been in many fights. This one was bad. This one would invade my sleep and wake me sweating and crying.� Lastly, before the Drode comes and offers him the chance to escape responsibility and return to being a regular kid, Jake remembers the night they received the Andalite’s gift: “We were five kids taking a shortcut home from the mall at night. There was a ship. There was an alien. There was the destructive worm of knowledge.� It’s just� oh man, can Katherine Applegate (and Michael Grant, I guess) write. It hits so hard.
This book is great. I really love this series.
The moment when Cassie, Jake, Marco, and Rachel are in the barn and Cassie starts glancing up at the rafters because she *knows*, for some unfathomable reason, that there’s *supposed* to be a bird up there—and then the kids all turn to Jake for answers of how to respond to the strange events they’ve been experiencing ever since that night they walked *around* the construction site instead of through it... when Jake steps into his role as de facto leader, and Rachel and Marco pivot to their roles of eager soldier and strategist, and then the skies open up and the angels sing: Wow. That’s all I’m saying.
That’s five stars on its own.
But there’s so much more to love here. First, let me state the obvious: the plot of this and #41 are similar, in that Jake in particular is transported to an alternate reality which fragments as he gets closer to its center. Having read #41 first, I was initially annoyed but quickly forgave the similarity because the idea of returning to the beginning of the Animorphs is such a strong premise that quickly feels distinct. I suspect it would be more difficult to go from this to #41, rather than the other way around.
Seeing these familiar setpieces from the past but from a different perspective is very cool. Even without the morphing power, all of the kids are such well-fleshed out characters at this point that the drama keeps you engaged. I loved getting Ax’s experience in the Dome Ship before the Animorphs came to rescue him (which they never did, in this reality). I loved getting Tobias as a human boy, and the terrifying inside look at what it is to become Yeerk-infested when he joins The Sharing. There’s a section of narrative in there where Tobias laments having “destroyed himself� because of his gloom, and it is a stellar, moving argument against suicide even in the face of an unbearable weight. There’s that incredible moment when Rachel recognizes Marco’s cunning and considers him in a new light.
I could go on and on. I know it’s not a compliment to tell a book this, but it is *so cinematic*. I could imagine the camera angles, the swell of music every step of the way. I get through these books fairly quick anyway, but this was one I was reading voraciously, never wanting to put it down. It’s sad that it ended so soon. I thought I’d spend a little bit more time with it, thinking about it, as I wrote this review. It was excellent stuff. Truly.
09/2024 READ:
I was in the mood for an ANIMORPHS audiobook and actually wanted to listen to MegaMorphs #3, the time travel book, but chose MegaMorphs #4 and was partway into the first chapter before I realized my mistake. Oh well. I remembered loving this book and so I was perfectly content to experience it again. I did, in fact, still love it.
This is only the third Animorphs audiobook I’ve listened to so far: the other two were book #10 (narrated by Marco) and book #6 (narrated by Jake), in that order. I immediately noted that the same performers who portrayed the characters in those earlier books reprised their roles here, so it seems to me that they must narrate those characters� books throughout the series. This was the first time I heard the performers for Ax, Cassie, Tobias, and Rachel. They all do a decent job, thought I think Sisi Aisha Johnson as Cassie and Adam Verner as Ax are the most true to their characters of the bunch. Ramón de Ocampo, Emily Ellet, and Gavin McLeod all sound too much like adults for me to take, though they manage their characters� mannerisms effectively. McLeod, though, has amazing range: he’s tasked here with giving voice to both the Drode and the Ellimist and he does so in a hugely entertaining way well-suited to the characters. I was similarly impressed by the voice he created for Temrash in Book #6, so it seems to me that doing voices for weird alien creatures is a strength for him. I likened his voice for Temrash to Krang from the ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles�; his voice for the Drode called to mind in the D&D episode of ‘Community�.
I think my 2020 review pretty sums up my feelings on the book pretty well: my feeling’s unchanged. That scene in the barn I described above truly made me tear up on this go round. One thing I appreciated more on this listen was that the first chapter narrated by Rachel is delayed, and when it comes it is the most action-packed of the book to that point. Of course Rachel’s chapter would be filled with action! It’s so well-orchestrated, too � a chase sequence through a museum ending with her and Marco, non-Animorphs in this reality, being fired on by handguns� and then� by laser guns (which we know are Dracon beams). It’s an incredibly effective sequence. Also, there’s a good number of K.A. Applegate’s classic, sobering lines which drive home the severity of the Animorphs� experience. After a particular brutal fight to open the book, Jake says, “Pretty soon we’d be joking, laughing—trying anything to make us forget what we’d seen. What we’d done.� He goes on to lament the violence they’d just endured and doled out: “We’d been in many fights. This one was bad. This one would invade my sleep and wake me sweating and crying.� Lastly, before the Drode comes and offers him the chance to escape responsibility and return to being a regular kid, Jake remembers the night they received the Andalite’s gift: “We were five kids taking a shortcut home from the mall at night. There was a ship. There was an alien. There was the destructive worm of knowledge.� It’s just� oh man, can Katherine Applegate (and Michael Grant, I guess) write. It hits so hard.
This book is great. I really love this series.
September 14, 2015
If you can do it all over again, would you?
----
"There is a way out," the Drode whispered. "Say the word and it never was, Jake. Say the word, Jake, and you never walked through the construction site. Say the word and you know nothing. No weight on your shoulders. Say the word."
"Go away," I said through gritted teeth.
"How long till your cousin Rachel loses her grip? You know the darkness is growing inside her. How long till Tobias dies, a bird, a bird\ How can he ever be happy? How long till Marco is forced to destroy his own Controller mother? Will he survive that, do you think? How long, Jake, till you kill Tom? Then what dreams will come, Jake the Yeerk Killer?"
----
Jake won't. I'm proud of you, Jake, my son. *_* XDD
Long story short: even if they didn't pass the construction site, they'll still be in this mess. War is war. They're going to be participants, whether they can morph or not. The only thing that will change is how they'll play the game.
Sorry shitty review hahahhaha
----
"There is a way out," the Drode whispered. "Say the word and it never was, Jake. Say the word, Jake, and you never walked through the construction site. Say the word and you know nothing. No weight on your shoulders. Say the word."
"Go away," I said through gritted teeth.
"How long till your cousin Rachel loses her grip? You know the darkness is growing inside her. How long till Tobias dies, a bird, a bird\ How can he ever be happy? How long till Marco is forced to destroy his own Controller mother? Will he survive that, do you think? How long, Jake, till you kill Tom? Then what dreams will come, Jake the Yeerk Killer?"
----
Jake won't. I'm proud of you, Jake, my son. *_* XDD
Long story short: even if they didn't pass the construction site, they'll still be in this mess. War is war. They're going to be participants, whether they can morph or not. The only thing that will change is how they'll play the game.
Sorry shitty review hahahhaha
July 22, 2017
Wow... what a ride. So this is what would happen if they had never seen the ship crash... Poor everybody... That's about all I can coherently say.
February 3, 2022
Well, we're at the final Megamorphs book. We only have one special edition book in general left after this. We're starting to wind down. This is the shortest of the special books, which made me happy off the bat. So far Megamorphs has been a neat idea with mixed execution. Each got better than the last, and now we've reached this. And man it is by far the best of them. I quite like this one.
Special edition also means back to pure Appleagate, which is always nice to see. The writing in the megamorphs can be a bit mixed but to the swapping narrators, as they can blend in at times. Here the writing fares better, although at times I forgot who was narrating. That keeps happening with these so I didn't expect to be totally fixed here.
The plot is basically It's a wonderful life. After an especially harrowing battle (even for this series, like damn), Jake wants out. He's sick of all the pain he's had to see in this war. Then a buddy of the Cryak comes to the rescue. He gives Jake a deal: He'll use his powers to reset things back to the fateful day at the construction site, but this time they'll take another route and not get wrapped up in morphing and the Yeerks.
Jake takes it and from then we see h0w their lives would be if they didn't meet Elfangor and get morphing powers. The TV series actually did this idea a few years before, meaning they somehow both got the idea on their own. Maybe Applegate knew about it, it seems like it was just a weird coincidence. That episode was actually good, one of the better ones, but as I suspected, this does it better.
First off, as for how the Megamorphs format fares, the balancing is a bit weak. Rachel gets the shaft the most, only a few chapters. Takes a while to get Marco, and there's a few more cases of someone getting two chapters in a row. It's not a deal breaker but it's there. Otherwise, the format worked well with the setup.
The other Megamorphs were more about action than charecter stuff, since these don't impact the story by nature. This flips the script, as it's more about introspection and doesn't as much action til the end. This make sense since they're back to zero with no powers. I quite liked how they explore what everyone would be up to if they hadn't meet Elfangor.
Tobias gets the most focus, as he has to go back to his crappy life and gets roped up in The Sharing. We really get to see up front what he has to deal with and it's effective. We also see how The Sharing preys on people like Tobias. They approach vulnerable people, promising they will help them by making part of something bigger, when really it's just a sham cult. It does a good job showing how people get roped in things like this.
Everyone else is more basic but it is interesting. As much as I like these kinda stories, sometimes the ways things are worse off without them can be a bit silly just to drive home the point. This feels more "realistic" in showing what likely would go down if they never got the morphing powers. It's just interesting and the format works well in showing each character off. Ax gets good stuff here, since he has to fend on his own as that alt timeline means the kids never had to save him.
Pacing works well, as the lack of action doesn't make it less enjoyable. I went through it easily as I was into all the introspection. Things ramp up as we see big changes that lead to some intense and standout moments. It's wild to see how things escalate in this timeline.
As far problems, the ending is super abrupt, as is just a thing with the Megamorphs. The way the timeline ends is wonky. We find out something about Cassie that it just...odd to me. Like, her being in tune with moprhing was fine since she takes care of animals but what we have here is really pushing it. It's not a deal breaking but it was odd.
These aren't big at least. It's still not my favorite format personally but it did work well here. It's a good take on the story with solid introspection, which uses the format most of them well. It avoids the common problems of the others and just feels more important even if still won't have a big impact. I liked the first two fine, but these latter two were better and this one especially easily stands at the best one.
Overall, a pretty solid read. Oh and tomorrow marks one full year since my review/reading The Invasion. Yes, I've been at this for a year, damn. This is a good one to celebrate it with, I must say. If you're wondering, unless something happens, I'll wrap up in early June.
Next time, after my break, we return to Jake for the next cycle as we get...another alternative timeline story. Huh.
Side note: Jake calls Rachel "my beautiful cousin". Ugh that's bad enough but it's in the middle of an action scene, keep it in your pants mate!
Special edition also means back to pure Appleagate, which is always nice to see. The writing in the megamorphs can be a bit mixed but to the swapping narrators, as they can blend in at times. Here the writing fares better, although at times I forgot who was narrating. That keeps happening with these so I didn't expect to be totally fixed here.
The plot is basically It's a wonderful life. After an especially harrowing battle (even for this series, like damn), Jake wants out. He's sick of all the pain he's had to see in this war. Then a buddy of the Cryak comes to the rescue. He gives Jake a deal: He'll use his powers to reset things back to the fateful day at the construction site, but this time they'll take another route and not get wrapped up in morphing and the Yeerks.
Jake takes it and from then we see h0w their lives would be if they didn't meet Elfangor and get morphing powers. The TV series actually did this idea a few years before, meaning they somehow both got the idea on their own. Maybe Applegate knew about it, it seems like it was just a weird coincidence. That episode was actually good, one of the better ones, but as I suspected, this does it better.
First off, as for how the Megamorphs format fares, the balancing is a bit weak. Rachel gets the shaft the most, only a few chapters. Takes a while to get Marco, and there's a few more cases of someone getting two chapters in a row. It's not a deal breaker but it's there. Otherwise, the format worked well with the setup.
The other Megamorphs were more about action than charecter stuff, since these don't impact the story by nature. This flips the script, as it's more about introspection and doesn't as much action til the end. This make sense since they're back to zero with no powers. I quite liked how they explore what everyone would be up to if they hadn't meet Elfangor.
Tobias gets the most focus, as he has to go back to his crappy life and gets roped up in The Sharing. We really get to see up front what he has to deal with and it's effective. We also see how The Sharing preys on people like Tobias. They approach vulnerable people, promising they will help them by making part of something bigger, when really it's just a sham cult. It does a good job showing how people get roped in things like this.
Everyone else is more basic but it is interesting. As much as I like these kinda stories, sometimes the ways things are worse off without them can be a bit silly just to drive home the point. This feels more "realistic" in showing what likely would go down if they never got the morphing powers. It's just interesting and the format works well in showing each character off. Ax gets good stuff here, since he has to fend on his own as that alt timeline means the kids never had to save him.
Pacing works well, as the lack of action doesn't make it less enjoyable. I went through it easily as I was into all the introspection. Things ramp up as we see big changes that lead to some intense and standout moments. It's wild to see how things escalate in this timeline.
As far problems, the ending is super abrupt, as is just a thing with the Megamorphs. The way the timeline ends is wonky. We find out something about Cassie that it just...odd to me. Like, her being in tune with moprhing was fine since she takes care of animals but what we have here is really pushing it. It's not a deal breaking but it was odd.
These aren't big at least. It's still not my favorite format personally but it did work well here. It's a good take on the story with solid introspection, which uses the format most of them well. It avoids the common problems of the others and just feels more important even if still won't have a big impact. I liked the first two fine, but these latter two were better and this one especially easily stands at the best one.
Overall, a pretty solid read. Oh and tomorrow marks one full year since my review/reading The Invasion. Yes, I've been at this for a year, damn. This is a good one to celebrate it with, I must say. If you're wondering, unless something happens, I'll wrap up in early June.
Next time, after my break, we return to Jake for the next cycle as we get...another alternative timeline story. Huh.
Side note: Jake calls Rachel "my beautiful cousin". Ugh that's bad enough but it's in the middle of an action scene, keep it in your pants mate!
March 31, 2023
31 Mar 2023
Actual Rating: 5 stars, because I am surgically attached to these characters and this was a great "what if" premise.
Due to the nature of the story, spoilers will be unmarked.
1. So uh. Despite starting grim and ending grimmer, that was actually a genuinely great story to read. Of course, part of that lies in how much I love these characters (i still think about them regularly to THIS DAY and the series ended more than 20 years ago). I also love what-ifs and alternate realities and stuff so win/win. Pretty much the only complaint I can think of is the near-complete lack of humor (I am used to my Animorphs books being funny, and also thank you ax for making me laugh in the middle of this dark ass shit.) but it's not even a real complaint because this book is so fucking dark that any humor would have been out of place.
2. This is set in the later stages of the war, where everyone (with the possible exceptions of Cassie and Ax) are slowly and surely losing it. The Berensons, in particular, are two steps and one horrific murder away from complete breakdown. As is proved when Jake takes Crayak's deal to never have the whole met-a-dying-alien-who-gave-us-superpowers-and-trauma happen to any of them. he broke, and ngl I cannot blame him. It was a long time a-coming.
3. It's pretty fascinating to see glimpses of the kids true (original?) selves in a context where they do not have direct knowledge of the war. Stuff like how Rachel was always waiting for something new to come into her life, and how the shopping isn't a girly thing for the products as much as it is a variation of hunting because BOY did that make a lot of sense. The book also showed how easy it was for someone with no support structure or happiness to join a cult. And let's be real, Tobias did technically join a death cult in canon too. He was the guy who was all in on the Animorphs in the first place. Also wow everything from Tobias's pov in here was a straight up scifi horror story. I guess the rest of it is too, but the Tobias part was really disturbing. (Also, honey, whatever you started out as, you were not voluntary. If this is the bar for voluntary, I'm betting a ton of voluntaries are involuntary too.) Also, Rachel using a severed head of a hork-bajir to attack controllers is so on brand. That's my girl- there's a reason you are and will always be the OG badass in my head. Also Ax was pretty spectacular in this one. Are suicidal tendencies channeled via badassery a Fangor extended family thing bc I wanna know.
4. Anyway! Wonderful character study of what the kids would be like without the powers and the intergalactic war. Everything is terrible and everyone is dead, and they don't even get to be non-traumatized. I do think the premise (not the story) cheated a bit because Cassie's temporal thing mans that what the kids experienced would not be the same as what they would have experienced if they'd never taken that shortcut. The Ellimist really Xanatos Gambitted this one, huh?
5. //pins "BADASS" badges on Ax and Rachel before signing off.
Actual Rating: 5 stars, because I am surgically attached to these characters and this was a great "what if" premise.
Due to the nature of the story, spoilers will be unmarked.
1. So uh. Despite starting grim and ending grimmer, that was actually a genuinely great story to read. Of course, part of that lies in how much I love these characters (i still think about them regularly to THIS DAY and the series ended more than 20 years ago). I also love what-ifs and alternate realities and stuff so win/win. Pretty much the only complaint I can think of is the near-complete lack of humor (I am used to my Animorphs books being funny, and also thank you ax for making me laugh in the middle of this dark ass shit.) but it's not even a real complaint because this book is so fucking dark that any humor would have been out of place.
2. This is set in the later stages of the war, where everyone (with the possible exceptions of Cassie and Ax) are slowly and surely losing it. The Berensons, in particular, are two steps and one horrific murder away from complete breakdown. As is proved when Jake takes Crayak's deal to never have the whole met-a-dying-alien-who-gave-us-superpowers-and-trauma happen to any of them. he broke, and ngl I cannot blame him. It was a long time a-coming.
3. It's pretty fascinating to see glimpses of the kids true (original?) selves in a context where they do not have direct knowledge of the war. Stuff like how Rachel was always waiting for something new to come into her life, and how the shopping isn't a girly thing for the products as much as it is a variation of hunting because BOY did that make a lot of sense. The book also showed how easy it was for someone with no support structure or happiness to join a cult. And let's be real, Tobias did technically join a death cult in canon too. He was the guy who was all in on the Animorphs in the first place. Also wow everything from Tobias's pov in here was a straight up scifi horror story. I guess the rest of it is too, but the Tobias part was really disturbing. (Also, honey, whatever you started out as, you were not voluntary. If this is the bar for voluntary, I'm betting a ton of voluntaries are involuntary too.) Also, Rachel using a severed head of a hork-bajir to attack controllers is so on brand. That's my girl- there's a reason you are and will always be the OG badass in my head. Also Ax was pretty spectacular in this one. Are suicidal tendencies channeled via badassery a Fangor extended family thing bc I wanna know.
4. Anyway! Wonderful character study of what the kids would be like without the powers and the intergalactic war. Everything is terrible and everyone is dead, and they don't even get to be non-traumatized. I do think the premise (not the story) cheated a bit because Cassie's temporal thing mans that what the kids experienced would not be the same as what they would have experienced if they'd never taken that shortcut. The Ellimist really Xanatos Gambitted this one, huh?
5. //pins "BADASS" badges on Ax and Rachel before signing off.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 4, 2020
Original Review at
4.5/5
I gave this book four and a half stars!
This is the last Megamorphs of the series, and true to form, the Animorphs are in for quite a doozy. In a moment of weakness, Jake is offered a bargain from the Crayak's Drode creature. The offer? Simply say the word and they'll have never become Animorphs, never have to fight day in and day out for their survival. Never have to be involved in another bloody massacre. Jake accepts the deal, thrusting them all into a strange reality where morphing is an impossibility and Yeerks are all but forgotten. But not all is as it seems as events force them together once again in a quest for the truth.
I absolutely loved this book! So many things worked extremely well.
Our beloved characters are at it once again, and this time everything is different for them. Without knowledge of the Yeerks, morphing, and simply being kids again, I think each narrative was handled expertly. I believed each POV and how they were digesting the odd happenings around them. To be honest, I can't pick a favorite POV, as they all brought something vital to the journey. If I did have to nitpick, I would say that the POV's could have been a smidgen longer. I wanted to get a little more in depth with their new perspectives.
The plot was amazing. I love the scifi element of parallel universes (I'm obsessed if I'm being honest), and this story was handled with poise. I loved the reimagining what-if scenario with things slightly different, and the domino effect was palpable by the end. Now I have to mention, certain parts of this story were heart-wrenching, especially the later half. Obviously I can't spoil things, but several times I had to stop reading and just take a second to recoup. I'm sure my neighbors are thinking "why is Jonny shouting 'no' in his apartment?"
But honestly, that's the beauty of these Megamorphs stories. Horrible, depressing things may happen, but we know that they are more books to read after, so somehow there must be some kind of resolution, hope to hold onto.
By the end of the book, I was overwhelmed with how much I enjoyed this. With action, heartache, and plenty of scifi to enjoy, this novel is easily one of my favorites in the series and is well worth checking out.
4.5/5
I gave this book four and a half stars!
This is the last Megamorphs of the series, and true to form, the Animorphs are in for quite a doozy. In a moment of weakness, Jake is offered a bargain from the Crayak's Drode creature. The offer? Simply say the word and they'll have never become Animorphs, never have to fight day in and day out for their survival. Never have to be involved in another bloody massacre. Jake accepts the deal, thrusting them all into a strange reality where morphing is an impossibility and Yeerks are all but forgotten. But not all is as it seems as events force them together once again in a quest for the truth.
I absolutely loved this book! So many things worked extremely well.
Our beloved characters are at it once again, and this time everything is different for them. Without knowledge of the Yeerks, morphing, and simply being kids again, I think each narrative was handled expertly. I believed each POV and how they were digesting the odd happenings around them. To be honest, I can't pick a favorite POV, as they all brought something vital to the journey. If I did have to nitpick, I would say that the POV's could have been a smidgen longer. I wanted to get a little more in depth with their new perspectives.
The plot was amazing. I love the scifi element of parallel universes (I'm obsessed if I'm being honest), and this story was handled with poise. I loved the reimagining what-if scenario with things slightly different, and the domino effect was palpable by the end. Now I have to mention, certain parts of this story were heart-wrenching, especially the later half. Obviously I can't spoil things, but several times I had to stop reading and just take a second to recoup. I'm sure my neighbors are thinking "why is Jonny shouting 'no' in his apartment?"
But honestly, that's the beauty of these Megamorphs stories. Horrible, depressing things may happen, but we know that they are more books to read after, so somehow there must be some kind of resolution, hope to hold onto.
By the end of the book, I was overwhelmed with how much I enjoyed this. With action, heartache, and plenty of scifi to enjoy, this novel is easily one of my favorites in the series and is well worth checking out.
April 1, 2019
The last in what turns out to be a trio of dream/alternate reality books (in retrospect, grouping them wasn't a wise decision), and by far the most successful. A future without the Animorphs isn't new to the series (The Stranger, book 7), but a timeline entirely absent them is. And I buy it, particularly the limited-but-significant impact that the Animorphs have on their reality, like maintaining the balance between vissers One and Three. Also convincing: What happens to Tobias without the Animorphs; distinctive traits peeking through, like Rachel's violence; the deaths--character deaths are so often unwritten that they've come to lack weight, but seeing the cast as powerless in their human bodies is brutal. Less convincing is the timescale--it's awful to consider the events occurring over 40-some days but, given their scope and that we know many take place over weekends, also unrealistic. But I enjoyed this, right down to the end--it's a quick resolution, but to have the narrative acknowledged how many coincidences of fate exists within the core cast is gratifying.
May 20, 2022
What if the Animorphs had never walked through the construction site? Evil Crayak offers Jake the option to go back in time to explore this.
I like the what ifs; it's extremely plausible that Tobias would fall into The Sharing. It preys on the needy and vulnerable. (And I liked that the Visser One/Visser Three political game got included, too.)
A little less plausible is Marco and Rachel dating, but I liked that, too. And I liked how they appreciated each other's sense of humor, and also how they immediately worked well together in a crisis situation. I liked Rachel acknowledging how smart Marco is.
And I enjoyed Ax engineering his own escape from the sunken Dome ship, and his enjoyment of the shark morph and how it's made of triangles.
Would've liked more Marco chapters--he only had one, which is a crime because he's my favorite. But overall a good addition to the series.
I like the what ifs; it's extremely plausible that Tobias would fall into The Sharing. It preys on the needy and vulnerable. (And I liked that the Visser One/Visser Three political game got included, too.)
A little less plausible is Marco and Rachel dating, but I liked that, too. And I liked how they appreciated each other's sense of humor, and also how they immediately worked well together in a crisis situation. I liked Rachel acknowledging how smart Marco is.
And I enjoyed Ax engineering his own escape from the sunken Dome ship, and his enjoyment of the shark morph and how it's made of triangles.
Would've liked more Marco chapters--he only had one, which is a crime because he's my favorite. But overall a good addition to the series.
July 31, 2018
This was a well-written book, by K.A. Applegate herself. I wasn't going to give this 5 stars because there were some plot aspects I didn't feel made as much sense as I'd like them to. But wow, this actually was really well written! Clearly the best of the Megamorphs books. I also hesitated on 5 stars because this time shift does feel like something we've done already (you know what I mean), but this story manages to hold its own very well in spite of these issues.
September 26, 2020
It’s a pretty basic plot concept but man was it good and it lays so much ground work for the final arc
July 7, 2021
Dark and gritty just like I like! 🔥🔥🥺🥺
March 18, 2022
loved the look into this alt timeline/au but i wished there was more edriss tbh 🧐
March 28, 2023
It was enjoyable however it felt like a bit of a nothing book. There was some really good character moments but mostly nothing in between
March 28, 2023
This one was a real banger.
April 17, 2023
Kinda reminded me of the Star Trek: TNG episode Tapestry
November 1, 2023
(originally reviewed at
)
Narrator: Everyone!
Plot: After a particularly horrible battle, Jake is back in his room, dreading the inevitable nightmares that are sure to come: his friends dying, all because of his own decisions. At this weak point, Crayak’s servant the Drode appears and gives Jake an out: say the words and this can all go away, Jake and the other Animorphs can go back to blissful ignorance, back before they met Elfangor in the abandoned construction lot. From there, a weird alternate reality takes over.
Summary of my feelings during the entire book.
After meeting up at the mall one evening, Cassie and Rachel spot Jake, Marco and this guy named Tobias, (they think?) heading out. We witness the same exchange that we got from Jake’s perspective way back in book #1, but this time from Cassie’s POV. They agree to head home together, but instead of going through the construction site, they take the long way around. In the sky, they see a flash of what looks like a meteorite falling. Cassie gets an odd feeling, but they all reach home safely.
Over the next few days, we check in with the rest of the crew. Tobias is living with his uncle and has quickly fallen out of hanging around with Jake and Marco, getting the sense that while nice enough to him, they’re not really looking for new friends. This leaves Tobias at the mercy of even more bullies, that is until he’s invited by another kid to a meeting of The Sharing. He sees Jake and Tom there, but doesn’t talk to them.
Cassie is having weird dreams, voices in her head and images of the ocean. She goes into the barn now and then and is having weird memories of Marco lounging on hay bales (but Marco’s never been there) and a large bird of prey up in the rafters.
Ax is under the sea, waiting for rescue. It’s been weeks, however, and no one has come. We see him captures and acquire the hammerhead shark morph that he had when the Animorphs originally met up with him back in book #4. After a period of time, he finally decides to give up waiting just as a group of Controllers make their way towards the Dome ship. He escapes as a shark, taking out a bunch of Taxxons on his way, and makes his way to the surface.
Jake is receiving increasing pressure from Tom to join The Sharing. He has nothing against it, but is more and more beginning to resent the pressure from Tom to join.
Marco and Rachel go on a school trip together where Marco flirts outrageously with her. He is happy to find that there is more to her than her looks as she wittily matches him and puts him in his place with his ridiculous come-ons. Just as things are getting interesting, Marco spots his “dead� mom and takes off after her, trying to chase her down.
Rachel has felt all her life that something is missing, and when Marco takes off after some woman who can’t possibly be his dead mother, she doesn’t think twice, leaping into action and following after. The two chase Marco’s mom around town, finally backing her into a corner in an alley, only to find that she’s called reinforcements and now it’s they who are trapped. What’s more, the reinforcements don’t shoot regular guns, but some type of strange laser beam. Rachel and Marco manage to make their escape up a fire ladder in the end. They also start quasi-dating off page.
Tobias, now being protected from the bullies by members of The Sharing, finally decides to join as a full member. He meets Jake in the hall at school and mentions this. Jake seems suspicious of the whole thing, mentioning that any group that asks individuals to give up themselves in order to be part of some whole might be a bit weird. Tobias, though, at the mercy of bullies and practically no family, decides to go through with it. At The Sharing, he and a few others go into a room to become full members. To his surprise, Vice Principal Chapman and a strange man named Mr. Visser are there. Chapman gives a pretty speech about how Tobias will now be part of something bigger than he is. Mr. Visser scoffs at the necessity of the speech, but Chapman says it usually helps. Even with the speech, Tobias starts freaking out when they lock him down to a chair. From there, he’s infested with a Yeerk. But not just any Yeerk, a Yeerk who secretly works for Visser One and there to tell Visser Three that the Council of Thirteen wishes Visser Three to proceed with Visser One’s more secretive approach to the invasion on Earth.
Ax has found himself a place to stay: the mental hospital. But after a while there, he realizes that he must do more and the only way to tell if the Yeerks are on Earth is to present them with bait they can’t resist, an Andalite. He makes his way to a TV station and projects a short video of himself.
At home, Jake and Tom both see the video. Tom freaks out and tries to sneak out of the house, but Jake sees that he has a gun with him and, suspicious, stows away in the back of the car. Tom makes his way to the TV studio. There he meets up with Chapman, Mr. Visser, and, strangely, Tobias. A small fight breaks out, and in the chaos, Tom shoots at Jake with a ray gun (though he can’t see who it is to know it’s Jake). Jake briefly sees his own hand start to change into the paw of a tiger. He freaks out and rushes back to meet up with Rachel, Cassie, and Marco in the barn.
There, Cassie confesses to the strange visions she’s been having. Before Jake can describe the alien on the video, Cassie is able to describe him herself, based on these strange “visions.� They all agree that some sort of conspiracy is going on, likely involving The Sharing since they know Tom and Tobias were involved. Cassie watches the discussion and notes that everyone is the way they “should� be: Jake is the leader, making the decision when necessary; Rachel is ready to act, now; Marco is sitting back, cautious and analyzing the situation from afar. But something is still missing.
Back with Tobias, we see the slow spiral of his thoughts as he realizes the truly terrible situation he has gotten himself into. There’s no going back, and this is his life now. He also realizes that the Yeerk in his head is a bit scared, noting that Visser Three is being too accommodating of a Yeerk who just delivered bad news. At a meeting, Visser Three confronts Controlled!Tobias and accuses the Yeerk of working for Visser One. After threatening to starve him to death, the Yeerk confesses and Controlled!Tobias is shot in the head.
The others have decided to track Tom, their only known lead. But we see how difficult their task is without morphing abilities: even following him becomes almost impossible because they can’t drive. Jake and Marco try to sneak through Tom’s things, but don’t see anything. On the TV, however, they see another broadcast from Ax, this time on all of the stations. He explains about the Yeerks, how they Control people and that Earth is under attack. Marco quickly guesses that this is what has happened to Tom and his mother. Tom confronts them with a laser gun and tries to herd them out into a waiting car, likely to be infested now themselves. Rachel shows up with a bat and takes Tom out. From there, chaos breaks out.
A Bug fighter shows up in plain sight and begins chasing them. They manage to make it a few blocks before the fighter blows up some cars. The explosion beats up Rachel and Jake, but it kills Marco. Shell-shocked, they make their way to the mall and meet up with Cassie. Ax is there as well, having holed up in Circuit City to broadcast his message. On his way out, he runs into three teenage humans who are now being chased by a bunch of Yeerks through the mall. One of them knows his name. Cassie convinces Ax that she doesn’t know what’s going on, but something’s not right and they are supposed to be friends and allies. Ax says they need to make their way to the roof to escape.
On the way there, several fights break out and Rachel comes into her own with a blaze of battle prowess. But once on the roof, she is killed by a Hork Bajir. Ax, Jake, and Cassie run towards the Blade ship that has landed on the roof. As they run, Cassie, too, is shot and killed by a laser. Jake and Ax make their way on to the Blade ship, but they run into Visser Three who is about to kill them when Cassie appears again out of nowhere and kills him. A disembodied voice complains that she was dead and that this is getting out of hand.
Ax, Cassie, and Jake fly the ship into space and are just about to take out the Yeerk Pool Ship, likely resulting in their own death as well, when it all stops. A being that calls itself the Drode and an old, grandfatherly-like creatures calling itself the Ellimist show up. The other dead Animorphs also show up. The Drode complains that the Ellimist cheated, that Cassie is an anomaly that messed with the alternate reality. He accuses the Ellimist of “stacking the deck� by selecting Cassie, a time/space anomaly, Marco, the son of Visser One’s host, Tobias, Elfangor’s son, and Ax, Elfangor’s borther, to be part of his team. The Ellimist says that his decisions came into play before the timeline change, so it was a fair deal. It’s not his fault that Cassie’s mere presence will always ruin it, grounding the timeline into the one that is meant to be. Besides, the Drode was the one to call things off in the end, just as Jake, Ax, and Cassie were about to blow up the Yeerk Pool Ship.
Through all of this, the others regain their memories. Jake is horrified that he gave in and that this was the result. The Ellimist says that things will reset to the night Jake made this decision and that none of them would remember but for Cassie who would have vague images here and there. Cassie decides that whatever she remembers she will keep to herself. She doesn’t want Jake to know he ever caved to Crayak or Tobias to know he chose to be a Controller. Rachel comments that she will be more than happy to forget dating Marco.
Time resets. Jake is in his room, dreading his nightmares. The Drode appears and temps him, just as Jake is about to answer, the Drode sighs in annoyance, says never mind, and disappears.
Our Fearless Leader: The brief scene at the beginning of this book is brutally effective, especially given how short it is. We don’t know the details of the mission, but multiple members of the Animorphs almost die. They also have to walk out on a dying human Controller that was taken out in the action. There’s nothing special about this fight, which is what makes it all the more believable that it would be the one to break Jake. It isn’t a matter of the fight itself being worse, but the accumulation.
We get some good stuff from Jake throughout the book, but some of the bigger moments are his discussion with Tobias about The Sharing and his natural fall into leadership, even in this alternate reality. The former gets at Jake’s inherent distrust of organizations that call for the loss of the individual, and it’s a brief discussion, but very interesting for what it says about him. The second is a good example of just how inevitable it was that Jake would be the one to lead this group. He’s a natural leader, able to make tough decisions quickly when they need to be made, regardless of changed circumstances. It’s also definitely for the best that Cassie is the only one who will even partially remember this whole thing. Jake has enough weight to carry and the knowledge that he ever made this choice would surely be the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Xena, Warrior Princess: Rachel, too, falls naturally into her regular role. She pines for action from the very beginning and doesn’t question motives or sanity or anything when Marco takes off after his “mother.� She acts, and she acts quickly. She’s the one that really gets them out of the alley situation, vaulting Marco up to pull down the escape ladder.
There’s also the neat scene where she comes to Jake and Marco’s rescue when they’re being carted off by Tom, and she takes him out with a bat. We get this line from Jake, and it’s the kind of scene that you can picture showing up in a movie:
I stared at my cousin. Rachel was breathing hard. But her outfit, hair, and makeup had remained perfect.
We also see what has to be a contender for one of her most bad-ass moments in the entire series during the fights that take place in the mall. At one point, the group is fighting a bunch of Hork Bajir with the few ray guns they’ve manged to get their hands on. Things ’t looking good at one point when Rachel manages to use the decapitated head of one Hork Bajir to stab another Hork Bajir in the chest, killing him.
A Hawk’s Life: Omg, Tobias. His entire section is just heart-wrenching. What makes it all the worse is how very believable it is. Through the entire series, it’s easy to wonder what would make a person agree to be a Controller, and it’s hard to imagine any scenario where that would be a choice someone would make. But here, we see not just some random person do it, but a beloved hero we’ve followed through tons of books. Tobias’s life is terrible. His aunt and uncle are the worst kind of indifferent. One set of bullies was put off by Jake, but another group is always waiting to beat up on him next. Even his rescuers, Jake and Marco, don’t really do much to help Tobias. Sure, Jake stood up for him, but Tobias can sense their lack of interest in being friends, and he inevitably drifts away. The Sharing is perfectly positioned to prey on kids like him.
And when he’s Controlled, the situation is just worse. He sees his life before and acknowledges that it was terrible, and that while yes, there was nothing he could do at the moment to change it, all he had to do was endure. But even with these thoughts, it’s not made to seem like Tobias made a stupid, easy-to-avoid decision . His life was hard; even knowing that endurance will provide an escape at some point, the reality of what life is like for kids like this is still really tough. And then he gets shot in the head because the Yeerk inside him is caught out as a spy. Oof.
Peace, Love, and Animals: This is a great book for Cassie. Not only are her chapters fun to read (especially the first one when we experience the scene before the construction night from her POV), but her insights into the team are put to great use. Through her eyes, we see how these individuals have key characteristics that remain true, regardless of how things played out. Her visions of the future are also great, being just subtle enough to create disturbing moments for her (like her recurring vision of a hawk in the barn) and clear enough for readers to get excited about the familiarities. She never just “suddenly remembers� anything in the lazy way of writing that so easily could have happened. Instead, her small insights and visions are always just enough at any given moment to slowly push things. Her memory of Ax’s name is the biggest one. Without that name, there’s a good chance things would have gone very differently, with the team never coming together and all being killed before they could reach the Blade ship and fly it into space, creating enough of a threat to force the Drode to stop things.
And then, of course, there are passive things that Cassie caused, like Jake’s weird hand morphing incident and the much more extreme example of her essentially coming back to life just in time to kill Visser Three. Most importantly, she realizes immediately that any memory of this experience that she retains is one that she must keep to herself; it would be too damaging to the group to know, especially Tobias and Jake.
The Comic Relief: For all that Marco quickly calls out the insanity when they’re all in the barn discussing the possibility of some weird conspiracy with The Sharing, he’s also the one to really defend the idea too, nicely highlighting the strengths of Marco’s character: he can say what everyone is thinking, but do it in a way that also highlights the realities of the situation. He has several moments where he shows his smarts, especially when it comes to spying on Tom. While Rachel wants action (any action!), Marco knows that they have to be cautious. He’s the one who warns Jake to look for booby traps that Tom might have set to warn him if anyone snoops around his room. Because of this, Jake is able to see the hair placed in a door to do just that.
It’s also important that Marco spotted his mom in the beginning of this book. We know from what we saw in the beginning of this series that, while smart, Marco is a very pragmatic character and would likely be unmoved to get involved in this whole situation had he not had a good motivation. And now, like then, that motivation comes in the form of his mother. It’s interesting to think, then, that if the only thing that changed was missing that construction site meeting, then there had to have been some Animorphs-related mission in the normal reality that prevented Marco and Rachel from being at that theater and seeing Marco’s mother then, instead of on the ship in book #5.
E.T./Ax Phone Home: It’s great to get some scenes from Ax’s time in the Dome ship in the ocean before the Animorphs would have rescued him. We even get to see how he goes about acquiring the shark, which is a great little tidbit of a scene to throw to fans of the series.
It’s also interesting to see how (and what) he learns about humanity without the Animorphs to help him out. For one, it takes him a bit to even establish which living being he should be when trying to fit in on Earth. In another nice Easter egg, we see that he considered cows at first because of their physical similarities to Andalites before dismissing them as too stupid. He does settle on humans eventually and it’s also no surprise that he would then wind up in a mental hospital. More nice tidbits with references to his eating habits, having managed to once again eat cigarette butts. But this time he fixates on Oreos instead of Cinnabuns.
His plan with the TV studio is also interesting, especially his final broadcast when he transmits the entire plot to the world. It’s hard to know whether this was really a good plan, as it forces the Yeerks� hands into all-out warfare that humanity was clearly not ready for. But Ax is operating alone, and it’s easy to see him deciding to do something like this when he’s alone on a planet and playing any type of long-game would be incredibly difficult, both in actuality and emotionally.
...
(Full review on blog)
Narrator: Everyone!
Plot: After a particularly horrible battle, Jake is back in his room, dreading the inevitable nightmares that are sure to come: his friends dying, all because of his own decisions. At this weak point, Crayak’s servant the Drode appears and gives Jake an out: say the words and this can all go away, Jake and the other Animorphs can go back to blissful ignorance, back before they met Elfangor in the abandoned construction lot. From there, a weird alternate reality takes over.
Summary of my feelings during the entire book.
After meeting up at the mall one evening, Cassie and Rachel spot Jake, Marco and this guy named Tobias, (they think?) heading out. We witness the same exchange that we got from Jake’s perspective way back in book #1, but this time from Cassie’s POV. They agree to head home together, but instead of going through the construction site, they take the long way around. In the sky, they see a flash of what looks like a meteorite falling. Cassie gets an odd feeling, but they all reach home safely.
Over the next few days, we check in with the rest of the crew. Tobias is living with his uncle and has quickly fallen out of hanging around with Jake and Marco, getting the sense that while nice enough to him, they’re not really looking for new friends. This leaves Tobias at the mercy of even more bullies, that is until he’s invited by another kid to a meeting of The Sharing. He sees Jake and Tom there, but doesn’t talk to them.
Cassie is having weird dreams, voices in her head and images of the ocean. She goes into the barn now and then and is having weird memories of Marco lounging on hay bales (but Marco’s never been there) and a large bird of prey up in the rafters.
Ax is under the sea, waiting for rescue. It’s been weeks, however, and no one has come. We see him captures and acquire the hammerhead shark morph that he had when the Animorphs originally met up with him back in book #4. After a period of time, he finally decides to give up waiting just as a group of Controllers make their way towards the Dome ship. He escapes as a shark, taking out a bunch of Taxxons on his way, and makes his way to the surface.
Jake is receiving increasing pressure from Tom to join The Sharing. He has nothing against it, but is more and more beginning to resent the pressure from Tom to join.
Marco and Rachel go on a school trip together where Marco flirts outrageously with her. He is happy to find that there is more to her than her looks as she wittily matches him and puts him in his place with his ridiculous come-ons. Just as things are getting interesting, Marco spots his “dead� mom and takes off after her, trying to chase her down.
Rachel has felt all her life that something is missing, and when Marco takes off after some woman who can’t possibly be his dead mother, she doesn’t think twice, leaping into action and following after. The two chase Marco’s mom around town, finally backing her into a corner in an alley, only to find that she’s called reinforcements and now it’s they who are trapped. What’s more, the reinforcements don’t shoot regular guns, but some type of strange laser beam. Rachel and Marco manage to make their escape up a fire ladder in the end. They also start quasi-dating off page.
Tobias, now being protected from the bullies by members of The Sharing, finally decides to join as a full member. He meets Jake in the hall at school and mentions this. Jake seems suspicious of the whole thing, mentioning that any group that asks individuals to give up themselves in order to be part of some whole might be a bit weird. Tobias, though, at the mercy of bullies and practically no family, decides to go through with it. At The Sharing, he and a few others go into a room to become full members. To his surprise, Vice Principal Chapman and a strange man named Mr. Visser are there. Chapman gives a pretty speech about how Tobias will now be part of something bigger than he is. Mr. Visser scoffs at the necessity of the speech, but Chapman says it usually helps. Even with the speech, Tobias starts freaking out when they lock him down to a chair. From there, he’s infested with a Yeerk. But not just any Yeerk, a Yeerk who secretly works for Visser One and there to tell Visser Three that the Council of Thirteen wishes Visser Three to proceed with Visser One’s more secretive approach to the invasion on Earth.
Ax has found himself a place to stay: the mental hospital. But after a while there, he realizes that he must do more and the only way to tell if the Yeerks are on Earth is to present them with bait they can’t resist, an Andalite. He makes his way to a TV station and projects a short video of himself.
At home, Jake and Tom both see the video. Tom freaks out and tries to sneak out of the house, but Jake sees that he has a gun with him and, suspicious, stows away in the back of the car. Tom makes his way to the TV studio. There he meets up with Chapman, Mr. Visser, and, strangely, Tobias. A small fight breaks out, and in the chaos, Tom shoots at Jake with a ray gun (though he can’t see who it is to know it’s Jake). Jake briefly sees his own hand start to change into the paw of a tiger. He freaks out and rushes back to meet up with Rachel, Cassie, and Marco in the barn.
There, Cassie confesses to the strange visions she’s been having. Before Jake can describe the alien on the video, Cassie is able to describe him herself, based on these strange “visions.� They all agree that some sort of conspiracy is going on, likely involving The Sharing since they know Tom and Tobias were involved. Cassie watches the discussion and notes that everyone is the way they “should� be: Jake is the leader, making the decision when necessary; Rachel is ready to act, now; Marco is sitting back, cautious and analyzing the situation from afar. But something is still missing.
Back with Tobias, we see the slow spiral of his thoughts as he realizes the truly terrible situation he has gotten himself into. There’s no going back, and this is his life now. He also realizes that the Yeerk in his head is a bit scared, noting that Visser Three is being too accommodating of a Yeerk who just delivered bad news. At a meeting, Visser Three confronts Controlled!Tobias and accuses the Yeerk of working for Visser One. After threatening to starve him to death, the Yeerk confesses and Controlled!Tobias is shot in the head.
The others have decided to track Tom, their only known lead. But we see how difficult their task is without morphing abilities: even following him becomes almost impossible because they can’t drive. Jake and Marco try to sneak through Tom’s things, but don’t see anything. On the TV, however, they see another broadcast from Ax, this time on all of the stations. He explains about the Yeerks, how they Control people and that Earth is under attack. Marco quickly guesses that this is what has happened to Tom and his mother. Tom confronts them with a laser gun and tries to herd them out into a waiting car, likely to be infested now themselves. Rachel shows up with a bat and takes Tom out. From there, chaos breaks out.
A Bug fighter shows up in plain sight and begins chasing them. They manage to make it a few blocks before the fighter blows up some cars. The explosion beats up Rachel and Jake, but it kills Marco. Shell-shocked, they make their way to the mall and meet up with Cassie. Ax is there as well, having holed up in Circuit City to broadcast his message. On his way out, he runs into three teenage humans who are now being chased by a bunch of Yeerks through the mall. One of them knows his name. Cassie convinces Ax that she doesn’t know what’s going on, but something’s not right and they are supposed to be friends and allies. Ax says they need to make their way to the roof to escape.
On the way there, several fights break out and Rachel comes into her own with a blaze of battle prowess. But once on the roof, she is killed by a Hork Bajir. Ax, Jake, and Cassie run towards the Blade ship that has landed on the roof. As they run, Cassie, too, is shot and killed by a laser. Jake and Ax make their way on to the Blade ship, but they run into Visser Three who is about to kill them when Cassie appears again out of nowhere and kills him. A disembodied voice complains that she was dead and that this is getting out of hand.
Ax, Cassie, and Jake fly the ship into space and are just about to take out the Yeerk Pool Ship, likely resulting in their own death as well, when it all stops. A being that calls itself the Drode and an old, grandfatherly-like creatures calling itself the Ellimist show up. The other dead Animorphs also show up. The Drode complains that the Ellimist cheated, that Cassie is an anomaly that messed with the alternate reality. He accuses the Ellimist of “stacking the deck� by selecting Cassie, a time/space anomaly, Marco, the son of Visser One’s host, Tobias, Elfangor’s son, and Ax, Elfangor’s borther, to be part of his team. The Ellimist says that his decisions came into play before the timeline change, so it was a fair deal. It’s not his fault that Cassie’s mere presence will always ruin it, grounding the timeline into the one that is meant to be. Besides, the Drode was the one to call things off in the end, just as Jake, Ax, and Cassie were about to blow up the Yeerk Pool Ship.
Through all of this, the others regain their memories. Jake is horrified that he gave in and that this was the result. The Ellimist says that things will reset to the night Jake made this decision and that none of them would remember but for Cassie who would have vague images here and there. Cassie decides that whatever she remembers she will keep to herself. She doesn’t want Jake to know he ever caved to Crayak or Tobias to know he chose to be a Controller. Rachel comments that she will be more than happy to forget dating Marco.
Time resets. Jake is in his room, dreading his nightmares. The Drode appears and temps him, just as Jake is about to answer, the Drode sighs in annoyance, says never mind, and disappears.
Our Fearless Leader: The brief scene at the beginning of this book is brutally effective, especially given how short it is. We don’t know the details of the mission, but multiple members of the Animorphs almost die. They also have to walk out on a dying human Controller that was taken out in the action. There’s nothing special about this fight, which is what makes it all the more believable that it would be the one to break Jake. It isn’t a matter of the fight itself being worse, but the accumulation.
We get some good stuff from Jake throughout the book, but some of the bigger moments are his discussion with Tobias about The Sharing and his natural fall into leadership, even in this alternate reality. The former gets at Jake’s inherent distrust of organizations that call for the loss of the individual, and it’s a brief discussion, but very interesting for what it says about him. The second is a good example of just how inevitable it was that Jake would be the one to lead this group. He’s a natural leader, able to make tough decisions quickly when they need to be made, regardless of changed circumstances. It’s also definitely for the best that Cassie is the only one who will even partially remember this whole thing. Jake has enough weight to carry and the knowledge that he ever made this choice would surely be the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Xena, Warrior Princess: Rachel, too, falls naturally into her regular role. She pines for action from the very beginning and doesn’t question motives or sanity or anything when Marco takes off after his “mother.� She acts, and she acts quickly. She’s the one that really gets them out of the alley situation, vaulting Marco up to pull down the escape ladder.
There’s also the neat scene where she comes to Jake and Marco’s rescue when they’re being carted off by Tom, and she takes him out with a bat. We get this line from Jake, and it’s the kind of scene that you can picture showing up in a movie:
I stared at my cousin. Rachel was breathing hard. But her outfit, hair, and makeup had remained perfect.
We also see what has to be a contender for one of her most bad-ass moments in the entire series during the fights that take place in the mall. At one point, the group is fighting a bunch of Hork Bajir with the few ray guns they’ve manged to get their hands on. Things ’t looking good at one point when Rachel manages to use the decapitated head of one Hork Bajir to stab another Hork Bajir in the chest, killing him.
A Hawk’s Life: Omg, Tobias. His entire section is just heart-wrenching. What makes it all the worse is how very believable it is. Through the entire series, it’s easy to wonder what would make a person agree to be a Controller, and it’s hard to imagine any scenario where that would be a choice someone would make. But here, we see not just some random person do it, but a beloved hero we’ve followed through tons of books. Tobias’s life is terrible. His aunt and uncle are the worst kind of indifferent. One set of bullies was put off by Jake, but another group is always waiting to beat up on him next. Even his rescuers, Jake and Marco, don’t really do much to help Tobias. Sure, Jake stood up for him, but Tobias can sense their lack of interest in being friends, and he inevitably drifts away. The Sharing is perfectly positioned to prey on kids like him.
And when he’s Controlled, the situation is just worse. He sees his life before and acknowledges that it was terrible, and that while yes, there was nothing he could do at the moment to change it, all he had to do was endure. But even with these thoughts, it’s not made to seem like Tobias made a stupid, easy-to-avoid decision . His life was hard; even knowing that endurance will provide an escape at some point, the reality of what life is like for kids like this is still really tough. And then he gets shot in the head because the Yeerk inside him is caught out as a spy. Oof.
Peace, Love, and Animals: This is a great book for Cassie. Not only are her chapters fun to read (especially the first one when we experience the scene before the construction night from her POV), but her insights into the team are put to great use. Through her eyes, we see how these individuals have key characteristics that remain true, regardless of how things played out. Her visions of the future are also great, being just subtle enough to create disturbing moments for her (like her recurring vision of a hawk in the barn) and clear enough for readers to get excited about the familiarities. She never just “suddenly remembers� anything in the lazy way of writing that so easily could have happened. Instead, her small insights and visions are always just enough at any given moment to slowly push things. Her memory of Ax’s name is the biggest one. Without that name, there’s a good chance things would have gone very differently, with the team never coming together and all being killed before they could reach the Blade ship and fly it into space, creating enough of a threat to force the Drode to stop things.
And then, of course, there are passive things that Cassie caused, like Jake’s weird hand morphing incident and the much more extreme example of her essentially coming back to life just in time to kill Visser Three. Most importantly, she realizes immediately that any memory of this experience that she retains is one that she must keep to herself; it would be too damaging to the group to know, especially Tobias and Jake.
The Comic Relief: For all that Marco quickly calls out the insanity when they’re all in the barn discussing the possibility of some weird conspiracy with The Sharing, he’s also the one to really defend the idea too, nicely highlighting the strengths of Marco’s character: he can say what everyone is thinking, but do it in a way that also highlights the realities of the situation. He has several moments where he shows his smarts, especially when it comes to spying on Tom. While Rachel wants action (any action!), Marco knows that they have to be cautious. He’s the one who warns Jake to look for booby traps that Tom might have set to warn him if anyone snoops around his room. Because of this, Jake is able to see the hair placed in a door to do just that.
It’s also important that Marco spotted his mom in the beginning of this book. We know from what we saw in the beginning of this series that, while smart, Marco is a very pragmatic character and would likely be unmoved to get involved in this whole situation had he not had a good motivation. And now, like then, that motivation comes in the form of his mother. It’s interesting to think, then, that if the only thing that changed was missing that construction site meeting, then there had to have been some Animorphs-related mission in the normal reality that prevented Marco and Rachel from being at that theater and seeing Marco’s mother then, instead of on the ship in book #5.
E.T./Ax Phone Home: It’s great to get some scenes from Ax’s time in the Dome ship in the ocean before the Animorphs would have rescued him. We even get to see how he goes about acquiring the shark, which is a great little tidbit of a scene to throw to fans of the series.
It’s also interesting to see how (and what) he learns about humanity without the Animorphs to help him out. For one, it takes him a bit to even establish which living being he should be when trying to fit in on Earth. In another nice Easter egg, we see that he considered cows at first because of their physical similarities to Andalites before dismissing them as too stupid. He does settle on humans eventually and it’s also no surprise that he would then wind up in a mental hospital. More nice tidbits with references to his eating habits, having managed to once again eat cigarette butts. But this time he fixates on Oreos instead of Cinnabuns.
His plan with the TV studio is also interesting, especially his final broadcast when he transmits the entire plot to the world. It’s hard to know whether this was really a good plan, as it forces the Yeerks� hands into all-out warfare that humanity was clearly not ready for. But Ax is operating alone, and it’s easy to see him deciding to do something like this when he’s alone on a planet and playing any type of long-game would be incredibly difficult, both in actuality and emotionally.
...
(Full review on blog)
August 7, 2014
Buckling under the pressure of leading battle after battle, Jake succumbs to a strange offer from Crayak through the Drode: he can make it so the night at the construction site never happened and they never got the morphing power. As their lives go on in the alternate timeline, Ax's escape from his sunken ship, the Yeerks' invasion, and the Animorphs' friendships play on in different ways, but Cassie feels the strangeness of the whole thing and keeps coming up with inexplicable knowledge of their alternate lives. Eventually, when it becomes known that Earth is under attack, Jake still ends up in a position of power, but at various stages of the battle all of his friends except Ax die. They still come very close to defeating the Yeerks with one of their own weapons, but after dead Animorphs keep reappearing, the Drode and the Ellimist appear, claiming Cassie was an anchor for the timeline because of some anomaly about her. The original timeline is restored, and only Cassie has a slight memory of what could have been.
My favorite lines:
The Drode: "It will happen, Jake. You know that. The cave. The day will come. You know what the cave is, Jake. You know what it means, that dark cave. You know that death is within. When she dies, when Cassie dies, it will be at your word, Jake."
Cassie (about Rachel): I wonder where she gets the indifference. I wonder how she can have every boy in school throwing himself in her path, and be indifferent.
Rachel: "How do you expect to get through life without an appreciation of what goes with what?"
Cassie: "I expect life will just be one long struggle."
Marco: "Great. A meteorite falls out of the sky and totally misses the school. That is so not fair."
Marco: "You know, you should go out with me."
Rachel: "I don't think so."
Marco: "Is it because I'm roughly three feet shorter than you?"
Ax: I had learned one thing: If the rest of Earth's species were anything like this Blue Blade, the Yeerks had picked the wrong planet.
Jake: "I don't know. People start talking about how the individual has to give way to the group, I just, I don't know. I get kind of . . . jumpy. [ . . . ] I don't want to be 'a part.' Maybe it's just me. Maybe it's just my own mental block. But anytime someone starts talking that stuff, I start looking for the exit door."
Dr. Duberstein: "You have to at least give me your name."
Ax: "I am called Hey Moron. Hey! Moron-nuh!"
Ax: "Then I must go elsewhere in search of cookies. The cookies formed by two thin, round, black discs with a layer of adhesive white substance between them are the finest accomplishment of your species!"
Dr. Duberstein: "My species?"
Ax: "I meant our species."
Dr. Duberstein: "You said your species."
Ax: "Evidently I am insane. May I go now?"
Ax: "Are you able to run on those two legs?"
Jake: "Dude, we can fly on these two legs."
My favorite lines:
The Drode: "It will happen, Jake. You know that. The cave. The day will come. You know what the cave is, Jake. You know what it means, that dark cave. You know that death is within. When she dies, when Cassie dies, it will be at your word, Jake."
Cassie (about Rachel): I wonder where she gets the indifference. I wonder how she can have every boy in school throwing himself in her path, and be indifferent.
Rachel: "How do you expect to get through life without an appreciation of what goes with what?"
Cassie: "I expect life will just be one long struggle."
Marco: "Great. A meteorite falls out of the sky and totally misses the school. That is so not fair."
Marco: "You know, you should go out with me."
Rachel: "I don't think so."
Marco: "Is it because I'm roughly three feet shorter than you?"
Ax: I had learned one thing: If the rest of Earth's species were anything like this Blue Blade, the Yeerks had picked the wrong planet.
Jake: "I don't know. People start talking about how the individual has to give way to the group, I just, I don't know. I get kind of . . . jumpy. [ . . . ] I don't want to be 'a part.' Maybe it's just me. Maybe it's just my own mental block. But anytime someone starts talking that stuff, I start looking for the exit door."
Dr. Duberstein: "You have to at least give me your name."
Ax: "I am called Hey Moron. Hey! Moron-nuh!"
Ax: "Then I must go elsewhere in search of cookies. The cookies formed by two thin, round, black discs with a layer of adhesive white substance between them are the finest accomplishment of your species!"
Dr. Duberstein: "My species?"
Ax: "I meant our species."
Dr. Duberstein: "You said your species."
Ax: "Evidently I am insane. May I go now?"
Ax: "Are you able to run on those two legs?"
Jake: "Dude, we can fly on these two legs."
October 30, 2015
JAAAAAAAAAAAKE.
I can't even with this series; it rips me apart as an adult, I can't believe I read this stuff as a kid. Further proof that kids are tougher than we give them credit for.
The alternate timeline of "what if we hadn't" has been working its way into being a possibility for a while now, but I'm glad they finally went ahead and did it. The Animorphs have been fighting and bleeding and crying and barely hanging on for forty books now, running into ever more disappointments about how aliens (adult figures) are not actually going to fix everything and they themselves are becoming totally different people. So when Jake is offered the chance to go back, to undo this, to not have to understand that he leads his friends to Death's open arms, to not have to see the youth none of them are afforded anymore, it is absolutely believable that he takes it. I probably would have, too.
But undoing the Animorphs doesn't undo the Yeerk invasion; that's still happening, only now it's unhampered by these rogue "Andalites." This book has forty other books to draw from in terms of the differences the Animorphs have made with their sacrifices and choices, and it uses quite a lot of that material. We get to see how each person's character makes them something else without this group to form them, and we've been with them long enough that the differences are absolutely believable. Tobias...and Marco...and Ax...ALL THE EMOTIONS, SHEESH.
I didn't quite buy how the timeline got fixed; I mean, I understand the explanation, but it seemed a little too crafted for me. Tobias is already a weird time anomaly; this new character's supposed time-adherence abilities just seemed to come out of nowhere.
But it was so good, man. Sooooo goood. And legit, I just want to hug Jake always and ever because he's trying so damn hard and it's killing him and I JUST WANT HIM TO BE OKAY even though I'm pretty sure he won't be. *tears*
I can't even with this series; it rips me apart as an adult, I can't believe I read this stuff as a kid. Further proof that kids are tougher than we give them credit for.
The alternate timeline of "what if we hadn't" has been working its way into being a possibility for a while now, but I'm glad they finally went ahead and did it. The Animorphs have been fighting and bleeding and crying and barely hanging on for forty books now, running into ever more disappointments about how aliens (adult figures) are not actually going to fix everything and they themselves are becoming totally different people. So when Jake is offered the chance to go back, to undo this, to not have to understand that he leads his friends to Death's open arms, to not have to see the youth none of them are afforded anymore, it is absolutely believable that he takes it. I probably would have, too.
But undoing the Animorphs doesn't undo the Yeerk invasion; that's still happening, only now it's unhampered by these rogue "Andalites." This book has forty other books to draw from in terms of the differences the Animorphs have made with their sacrifices and choices, and it uses quite a lot of that material. We get to see how each person's character makes them something else without this group to form them, and we've been with them long enough that the differences are absolutely believable. Tobias...and Marco...and Ax...ALL THE EMOTIONS, SHEESH.
I didn't quite buy how the timeline got fixed; I mean, I understand the explanation, but it seemed a little too crafted for me. Tobias is already a weird time anomaly; this new character's supposed time-adherence abilities just seemed to come out of nowhere.
But it was so good, man. Sooooo goood. And legit, I just want to hug Jake always and ever because he's trying so damn hard and it's killing him and I JUST WANT HIM TO BE OKAY even though I'm pretty sure he won't be. *tears*
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