It’s possible that the best book I’ve read all year is a thirty year old Animorphs book. This whole batch of books is a lot of fun, but book 19 is next level.
Book 18, The Decision, is an Ax the Andalite book, and it’s quite good. I think I mention this in an earlier review, but one crazy sci-fi element of the Animorphs books comes to morphing animals that are smaller than oneself. If you, as a human, morph into a tiny cockroach (yes, the Animorphs do that on the reg), your excess mass has to go somewhere, and that somewhere is zero space. While you’re romping around earth as a cockroach with a human consciousness, the rest of you is floating around unconscious in zero space, where any spacecraft could demolish you. Chances of that are rare, but not 0%, as the Animorphs find out.
They morph mosquitos to get… it’s a long story, but it involves copying a high-ranking Controller’s DNA for espionage. Unfortunately, their plan is interrupted when their zero-space leftovers are detected by an Andalite ship and brought on board, which causes their minds to snap into their (very much in tact) bodies. They don’t know what to do about this, but since they’re in space, they go on to take down a traitorous Andalite and save the Leerans from Yeerk control. Ax has a great battle of where his loyalties lie when the Andalites and the Animorphs are at odds. By the end, the kids all get snapped back into their mosquito morphs, abandon their initial mission, and go to the mall to recover (being split in two between zero space and earth ain’t nothin an Orange Julius can’t fix).
The 2nd Megamorphs book is In the Time of the Dinosaurs. Long story short, the Animorphs get caught in a nuclear explosion that sends them back in time to the end of the dinosaur period, where they have to survive and try to make it back. They obviously acquire dinosaur morphs, and have an adventure involving aliens that colonized earth alongside dinosaurs that doesn’t move the plot at all forward at all, because all of this went to shit when the comet wiped out everything. The kids even lose their dinosaur morphs once they’re back in their own time, which I hate – though I get it; as dinosaurs, they’d be unstoppable against the Yeerks AND raise a lot of questions among the Humans… but as always with megamorphs, what is the point?! (The point is to sell books and be dinosaurs.)
Book 19, The Departure, is the best book in the series so far. Cassie gets lost in the woods with a young girl named Karen, who is Controlled by a Yeerk. Karen-Yeerk, followed Cassie after Cassie wolf-ed out and killed the Hork-Bajir controlled by Karen-Yeerk’s twin.
The book is part survival story (not only do they have to navigate the wilderness, but a leopard from a private owner is loose). But the real story is the battle of morals that Cassie and the Karen-Yeerk have over the ethics of the Yeerk’s enslavement of other creatures. (PS Karen is played by Parent Trap Lindsey Lohan in my head-cast.) Cassie is already struggling with being a killer in the Yeerk/Andalite War. Karen-Yeerk presents more ethical problems to Cassie. She justifies the Yeerk’s use of humans and other aliens as puppets: Yeerks are parasites, it’s what they do, does Cassie question when fleas bite dogs and humans mass-produce bacon? Plus, Yeerks have gained a quality of life as mobile humans that they don’t get as blind slugs. (I expect there’s some disability ethics to discuss in this plot point, but I need to hear from disabled Animorphs fans before I speak to it).
The other elephant in the room (and I don’t mean Rachel, wokka wokka wokka) is that Cassie references Yeerk slavery multiple times, and Cassie is our one black character. I’m sure you get what I’m putting down. BUT I need to seek out some Black Animorphs fans before I can talk more on that.
Anyway… Karen-Yeerk tells Cassie that she will free Karen-child from bondage (giving up her own Yeerk life in the process) if Cassie agrees to perma-morph into a caterpillar, taking on the blind, vulnerable existence of Yeerkdom. But while Karen’s Yeerk dies, Cassie-caterpillar turns into a butterfly, and that act of insect-morphing resets her Animorph two-hour clock and she is able to return to being human. It was a good twist!
We also learn Cassie is “a little chubby” which is awesome representation – that they should have emphasized sooner.
This book is so good! I expect more in the series will be on parr with this one (I still can’t believe there are forty more books, L M A O). My favorite character used to be Marco (for LOLz) but lately his LOLz have been especially sexist, and after this book, I think I’m more interested in Cassie and Tobias, our most layered characters.
Though nothing will ever beat Rachel birthing a crocodile from her back, I feel confident in that.
Oh, and Holes is the best book of 1998, obv.