Animorphs Review

 

Animorphs is a long-running serialized book series aimed at children released in the 1990s and every single thing I just said explains a lot about it. It contains 54 mainline books and 8 longer books (3-4 Chronicles meant to explore the various alien races in the series and 4 Megamorphs which are particularly out there Animorphs adventures narrated by all 6 major characters in turn.) Despite being targeted at children aged 9-12 the series absolutely doesn't feel it, mostly. It's a series about the five human children given the power to turn into animals by a dying alien to fight a guerilla war against another alien race that are subtly controlling humanity, later joined by the first alien's younger brother. While that is the central plotline, the plots would often diverge into various other sci-fi shenanigans. The series is known for its veering into more gruesome imagery, and having a bleaker tone than is typical for works at children, particularly in the final arc. 

I had rather polarizing feelings on Animorphs. Its strong points are absolutely fantastic and truly show me why this series is so highly regarded. The greatest books in the series are truly incredible. The characterization while sometimes a little inconsistent, culminates in some absolutely wonderful moments in the final arc built up over relatively gigantic character arcs. The high points of the series are strong enough that if it weren't for some weaknesses, Animorphs is a series I would consider one of my favorites.

But that's just it. Animorphs' weaknesses are pretty strong for me and what's worse is these weaknesses encompass so much of the series that it would be hard for me to unlink these weaknesses with the series. In many ways, Animorphs is a series of extremes. Animorphs is neither a series I can say I recommend or say I don't recommend. Instead, Animorphs is the type of series I would absolutely recommend to the right kind of person. 

The overall average of the series is good, and there's no one I would suggest shouldn't read it. However, there are definitely some kinds of people I would bet wouldn't like the series. If you are at all interested, I would suggest giving it a try, though I imagine most people who are interested already have.

High Points of the Series:

1: The development of the character arcs. Animorphs has ongoing progression for all 6 regular narrators over its entire runtime, and seeing them develop along with seeing plot elements develop over the course of the series was the real gem of the series. While I definitely don't like the 6 main Animorphs or their character arcs equally, I enjoyed seeing all of them develop over the course of the several-year-long war they had with Yeerks, and the culmination of their arcs was a huge rush.

2: Animorphs is somehow a series of both extremes and nuances. That is to say there's a lot in Animorphs that is over the top in presentation yet there's an equal amount of it that has a lot of different sides to it. This is a series where all the characters start a bit stereotypical and end up extremely fleshed out and well-realized. The morality of the war and various actions within it are also not black and white, and are not even grey and grey, where there's two clear sides. Instead many of the points in the series have numerous perspectives on them, and numerous ones that feel legitimate. 

3: I really enjoyed the themes of Animorphs and how they were presented. Animorphs has a lot of themes and themes that are of special importance and significance to me such as the clash between loyalty and empathy, the desire to help one's own clashing with the need to see things from the perspective of others. Themes like these are everywhere in the series and they're very well integrated with the Animorphs each providing a unique perspective on them.

Low Points of the Series:

1: The ghostwritten books. Of the canonical books of the series about 42% are ghostwritten (26 of the canon 62,) mostly coming from around the time the original author Katherine Applegate was pregnant with her first child. Most people seem to think the ghostwritten books are worse on average than the non-ghostwritten books but will usually think 1 or 2 are up there with the greats. For me the effect is more pronounced. I ranked the books into S, A, B, C, D, E, and F tier and no ghostwritten book is above B Tier. The ghostwritten books have little in common with each other (outside the setting they're writing in) but they are consistently inconsistent, rely on gimmicky premises over substance and sometimes have inconsistent characterization for the Animorphs. This is by far the biggest problem I have with this series. While some of the ghostwritten books are good, and some of KA's books are poor, on average the non-ghostwritten Animorphs books come across as being, for obvious reasons, more consistent, more tied together, and usually more focused on substance.

2: If you've read Scott McCloud's four campfires theory of art, Animorphs is very clearly an Iconoclastic series. It's a series that focuses on realism and truth even if it's ugly and painful. It wants to teach about the more painful realities of war. I am a Classicist by temperament, I enjoy art for the search for beauty, for the eternal and meaningful. I do respect Iconoclast works, probably more than any other group. They are the necessary yin to my yang that keeps Classicism grounded and from completely detaching from reality. That said it leads to a number of things in the story feeling narratively unsatisfying, especially around the ending. What frustrates me is I know if I mention this people will inevitably tell me that I just "don't get" it. This seems an unfair dismissal of critique. Animorphs has a famously controversial ending book and while I enjoy parts of it, I also found parts narratively unsatisfying. Even though I get "why" the author chose to do it, it's not an axiomatic truth that something being realistic makes it better for the narrative. I do "get it", and it's still not really to my taste. 

3 The Villains of the series. Animorphs' villains tend to be rather shallow and contradict the themes of the story. It's a place where the series' nature as children's literature and iconoclastic temperament come into conflict. Visser Three is obviously the main villain of the story and he is almost completely absent of any kind of reasonability being a stereotypical evil bad guy who tortures gleefully and executes subordinates for tiny grievances. Most of the brief other villains are not much better. It's a recurring theme of the series that we need to develop the empathy to the viewpoints of others, this is tied to Cassie's arc over the series.  Yet, so few of the villains have any kind of reasonable position worth empathizing with. The villains aren't just poor for the overall quality of the series, they actively detract from the series messages. 

Favorite Character: 

Jake: Everyone's favorite teenage war criminal, Jake is the epitome of Animorphs. He is the closest to being the central character being the leader of the team, the narrator of the first book in the series and the narrator of the penultimate book (the last book to have only one narrator.) I feel like it's oddly rare to say Jake is one's favorite character but to me Jake is Animorphs. He is the one with the longest character arc over the entire series. His mental condition reflects the state of the series. He is the central psyche that all the other Animorphs act as influencing factors on whether it be Marco's pragmaticism, Cassie's idealism, Rachel's galvanizing spirit etc. And because of this, he has the most agency in the story. The other Animorphs have major agency in the war on a couple of instances but it's Jake who makes the most big decisions by a landslide. Jake's character is inherently sympathetic, easy to relate to yet also distinctive in voice. He and Cassie are also the ones I found myself agreeing with most and the ones who tend to drag the series into having more of a Classicist feel. Unsurprisingly they ended up being two of my three favorite characters. Jake has interesting interactions with every other member of the Animorphs, something that's unique, and is the one who brings their team together. Book 37 - The Weakness is one of the most derided books in the series and you know what the inciting incident is for that one? That Jake leaves town temporarily and it's just the other Animorphs who fall to pieces without him. Jake is somehow the least extreme personality of the ground and yet invisibly is the presence strongest felt. I get that some people think he's boring, but to me he really makes the series what it is, his long-term change in the series being the best-written character arc, more extreme in impact than Marco and Cassie's who remain basically the same after the war, less repetive than Ax's, and not as clearcut negative as Rachel and Tobias'.

Least Favorite Character:

Visser Two: I've mentioned that the villains are one of the weakest parts of Animorphs, but while the villains are generally lacking in complexity, Visser Two has the additional problem of being boring. He only shows up in Book 46 - The Deception and while I liked that book alright overall, Visser Two is the worst part of it. He's just a less over-the-top Esplin. His only real note is being fanatically loyal to Esplin who considering it's ESPLIN is rather bizarre. It's not even that the plan in that book is Visser Two's, it's not, and his host is just a human, granted a high ranking naval officer, but Visser Three had an Andalite host body. Yeerks officers sometimes have really bizarre host bodies like the Garatron. Visser Two is just as shallow as any of the other series villains but is just sorta boring. He doesn't have Visser Three's over-the-top evil or Taylor's insanity or the Drode's reality-warping malevolent corrupting influence. 

I'm also going to give my top and bottom 10 books in the series though because I want to end on a high note, I'm going to start with the bottom 10 working my work from the least bad to the most bad. Also, this is just the canonical books as I didn't want to include Alternamorphs. 

Bottom 10 Books:

10: Book 28-The Experiment

This book does have a pretty good plus in its corner which is that it's funny. It can be really funny at times, mostly because Ax is just such a fun narrator when he's dealing with unfamiliar Earth things. That said this book is kind of infamous for being possibly a tract for veganism. It's the one where the Animorphs visit a slaughterhouse. The Yeerks try to develop a serum to remove the free will from people so they can no longer resist Yeerk control but of course they can't because nothing can take away free will! Yeah, it gets really hoaky and doesn't really fit the Animorphs feel. I'm not a vegan nor did this really do much in the way of convincing me if that was what this book was trying to do and its messages about free will just feel preachy and out of place. Not the worst but far from the series best.

9: Book 25-The Extreme

So it's not that this book has a lot of negatives, it just doesn't have a lot of positives. Outside Derek the Inuit who's pretty cool. That said this book is fairly short even for an Animorphs book and it's not particularly fast-moving. In this book the Yeerks clone an extinct race called the Venber in an arctic base with some plan to turn pools into Yeerk Pools. But the plot doesn't make up most of the book. Most of the book is spent getting to the Arctic Base, with several chapters spent watching the teens trying to not die from the horrific cold. I know that the books want to show the Animorphs acquiring the morphs and they didn't know the base was going to be in the arctic but the Animorphs really didn't acquire any morphs for cold weather just in case? This book really does a good job impressing upon you how horrible living in the arctic would be. Most of this book is the Animorphs just surviving the arctic until they get Arctic morphs. The fact that the Venber melt at room temperature is a pretty horrifying image but it's not... especially meaningful to anything, and other then that the actual scene at the base lacks anything particularly memorable about it. It's just sort of overall forgettable. Derek, an Inuit they meet temporarily is the most memorable part for me.

8: Book 43 - The Test

So this is the second book with the villain Taylor/Sub-Visser 51. I have never really gotten the appeal of Taylor. I think they were trying to make her more sympathetic, but it never really came across right for me. I get Taylor's tragic backstory but I don't understand how the Yeerk controlling her somehow is influenced by Taylor's mind, something I can't really any other instance of in the series. And she acts just as evil as Visser Three but with added insanity for flavor. Regardless in this book Tobias is forced to work with Taylor as Taylor suggests the two work together to take down Visser Three. Of course the thing is the entire time, the entire time, this is obviously a trap. And the Animorphs somehow both know it's a trap yet go along with because it's too valuable an opportunity if it's not a trap, not taking into account the sheer risk it provides if it is one, which it obviously is. This book like pretty much all of Tobias books is another chance to emotionally torture the depressed hawk boy, and a lot of feels hollow to me. The book tries to parallel Tobias with Taylor, that they are both cowards and that Tobias chose to become a hawk nothlit because he hated his old human life. Except Tobias first book in the series involved him being depressed that he's a hawk now and overcoming his feelings of uselessness and cowardice that he can't fight alongside the others. 

7: Book 12 - The Reaction

This is a bizarre book early in the series where Rachel acquires a crocodile yet she's... somehow allergic to the crocodile and this causes her to keep accidentally partially morphing. Meanwhile the Yeerks are trying to use a teen heartthrob to manipulate teen girls into joining the Sharing, the Yeerk organization for infesting humans. Rachel not telling the others she keeps accidentally morphing or that she hasn't yet birthed out the crocodile keeps getting them in trouble. Speaking of the science-fiction in this book is nonsense. Rachel is somehow allergic to the alligator DNA she absorbed and then has to sneeze out the crocodile. Also, Cassie has a rule throughout the series that they don't acquire the DNA of sentient beings without their consent and she acquires Rachel without her consent. That might sound small, but Cassie is the person who keeps bringing up this rule when others tell her it's not a big deal. It also ends bizarrely. Rachel finally gets out the crocodile which is treated like some kind of unstoppable tank only for Ax to decapitate it in one blow. Overall just a really weird book.

6: Megamorphs 1: The Andalite's Gift

The Megamorphs are double-sized books with alternating narrators. While I really enjoyed the other three Animorphs books, the first one I really didn't like. Visser Three apparently got a pet monster called the Veleek. The Veleek is a composite creature made of billions of tiny animals that attack like a living whirlwind and eat through other entities. He got this on Saturn. Not some distant alien star system like every other alien species in this universe. The planet Saturn, in our system. If you know anything about Saturn, you probably know it's a Gas Giant. How? How?! How did this thing survive on a ball of gas as cold as a cryochamber with nothing to eat and with an atmosphere that doesn't block out Solar Radiation? Visser Three trained to the Veleek to go after entities using "morphing energy" and eat them. While all the Megamorphs deal with challenges beyond the usual, the Veleek is some bizarre movie monster. There's also a subplot lasting most of the book where Rachel gets knocked out in bird morph and gets amnesia, wandering around without knowing what's going on and running from the Veleek. Just a problem, why did the morphing not heal her memories? Did she somehow get amnesia in her DNA? Morphing always repairs physical damage. I know something like this happened in Megamorphs 2 as well but at least they acknowledge it as something weird and give a half-hearted explanation. This book just has no coherence with the rest of the series. Near the start of the book Marco is mad he wasn't invited to a pool party so he morphs a mouse to scare them. I know Marco is the least mature of the Animorphs and they sometimes use morphs for personal gain but this is unlikeable and really degrades the importance of the war with the Yeerks and the significance of this big special Megamorphs Book. This is a book that just doesn't make sense and could easily have been a normal-sized book.

5: Book 36 - The Mutation

The Bottom 5 books of Animorphs are definitely the worst to me. The above five mostly were plagued by some logical inconsistencies and lack of positives, these are the five I didn't like, though this is definitely the best of the five if only for audacity. The beginning of this book where the Animorphs find some Hork-Bajir surgically modified to try and make them amphibious and rage at the inhumanity of it all, as well as the part where they have to team up with Visser Three are both quite good. But the central concept of the book is just... this is the book about Atlantis. Like actual underwater fish people. I get that this is science-fiction for children but Animorphs usually plays the science part relatively seriously. And these aren't just any Atlanteans. These are the Nartecs. The book tries to make them more realistic, saying that they mutated rapidly to deal with the sinking underwater business but the radiation has made them insane and genocidal. But that just makes the concept's ridiculousness stand out even more. Radiation can't turn people into fish people that quickly. There are two parts of the book though that really get me. It's mentioned the Nartecs are severely inbred and the Animorphs think they will want them to increase genetic diversity. The other start joking that Marco will finally get a girlfriend and it's like... this is a really serious business. Taking a teenage boy as a sex slave really shouldn't be treated like a joke like that in my humble opinion and narratively it really clashes with the dark subject matter and mood. Also, the ending really annoyed me. The book makes the point that the Nartecs got their weapons from ships sunken in war over the centuries and at the end tries to spin it into a half-hearted anti-war message. It's so barely there and trying too hard to give all this meaning and it almost equivocates between humans and Nartecs. Anti-Humanism is a philosophy I really can't stand and it only shows up a couple places in Animorphs because the rest of the series is almost showing the opposite. Humans are so bad for engaging in war but ant will mercilessly destroy other ant kingdoms, but cats will play with and torture sadistically prey animals, but ape tribes will tear other limb from limb. If we're taking this realistic approach, humans are neither especially good nor especially evil as a species. And we're certainly better than the Nartecs which are a race of genocidal inbred fish people. Equivocating the two is both laughable and insultingly basic. 

4: Book 33 - The Illusion

This is the first of the two Taylor books and is a surprisingly popular one for reasons that escape me. Maybe people just find Taylor more engaging a villain than I do. This book involves the Yeerks creating an anti-morphing ray. In order to sell the illusion it doesn't work Tobias acquires Ax to pretend to be an Andalite and deliberately gets captured. A solid half of this book is just Tobias getting tortured by Taylor. Maybe this would have appealed to me as an edgy adolescent but I found it needless. The only parts of the book I enjoyed was near the start where Tobias does the Morning Rituals, an Andalite custom, along with Ax and the end with Tobias and Rachel's relationship development. Those was nice. But most of this book is just "feel bad for Tobias" the book. I don't have much more to say about it. It introduces some kind of mystical Andalite thing where they can see visions down from DNA which feels bizarrely fantastical for this universe, as well as Taylor who never really clicked with me as a villain. Also Visser Three, the guy who obsessive ego-manaic who needs to oversee everything has one of the "Andalite Bandits" captured and he just leaves it to Taylor and doesn't stay to watch his torture in one of the most shockingly out of character things I've ever seen him do.

3: Book 32 - The Separation

Probably the single most infamous book in the series, the one anyone with passing knowledge of the series knows. Rachel morphs a starfish and then both halves demorph, becoming two Rachels. One Rachel is "Nice Rachel" and one Rachel is "Mean Rachel." Odd goofiness of the premise aside this sounds like maybe a bit of an interesting if far out book, and most of the things in this book are fine. The other Animorphs are in-character. The problem is the book is narrated almost entirely by Nice Rachel and Mean Rachel and both are mildly insufferable characters. Nice Rachel isn't nice, she's a wuss who cries at everything and speaks with an over the top, like, valley girl accent, adding, like, "like" everywhere and turning the end of each sentence into a question? Meanwhile, Mean Rachel isn't mean, she's not even a sociopath, she is a cartoonish caricature of a sociopath. Every other sentence is "I wanna kill him." "I'm gonna kill her." "I'm gonna gut her." She outright tries to murder the others. Maybe this would have worked better if they weren't the narrators but because they are the narrators the entire book is narrated between these two unpleasant styles of narration. I get idea that these are supposed to be the two sides of Rachel but they don't read like the two sides of Rachel. Rachel is supposed to be a cheerful warrior, an optimist who is both a girly fashionista and a natural warrior with a bit of a darker side that enjoys the adrenaline rush of combat and violence. I simply don't buy that these are the two sides of Rachel. And what's most baffling about this book is that this is somehow not one of the ghostwritten ones. KA wrote this. I just, I don't understand. 

2: Book 39 - The Hidden

A quote from Macbeth: "It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." The Hidden is chaotic and full of things just randomly happening. This is one of the shortest books in the series and yet it feels really long despite the fact that so little actually happens. A buffalo acquires the morph and Cassie spends the book trying to protect the Buffalo because she's an animal-lover and because "it has human DNA" whatever that means ethically. The Yeerks intercept them, unusually gorey violent fight scene, they run off, get intercepted again. This happens numerous times in the book. It's just fight scenes and this buffalo that changes back and forth between human. This book is super inconsistent with the morphing ability. You're supposed to think about the animal while touching it to acquire it and then think about it again to morph it. The buffalo acquires it from briefly brushing against Alloran and the blue box somehow. Then somehow an ant gets the power later and half-morphs into Cassie. How? Ants are a hive mind, they're too tiny to see humans. How is it thinking of Cassie? It's just there for body horror as the screaming ant-human thing, half Cassie half-ant experiences sentience and senses and is overwhelmed only for her to get saved by the buffalo. And then the buffalo just explodes from a stray dracon beam? Yeah, that's how it read too. One line Cassie is telling the Buffalo it's good and literally two lines later the buffalo is exploded. Cassie is the Animorph most like me. I love animals. I was not distraught over this like I think I was supposed to be, I was just confused. It was just bizarre and out of nowhere. This book is just confusing and violent and meaningless. I went back and forth on whether this should be second or first worst, but the flaws of this book while significant are at least simple and there are possibly bits of symbolism I think you could take from it. As opposed too...

1: Book 42 - The Journey

It's hard to express the problems with this book because it's not so much one thing as it is all the details that feel wrong. Book 24 introduced the Helmacrons, the main joke villains of the Animorphs universe, a group of tiny aliens with comically oversized egos who want to dominate the universe despite being the size of fleas. I actually didn't mind Book 24, I thought it was humorous enough. But they didn't need to come back. In this book the Helmacrons go inside Marco and the Animorphs have to go after them. It's like any other "Fantastic Journey" type story. So many just random details of the story are off and it in general feels poorly edited. Ax is so smart in this book he can manipulate the Helmacron ship to shrink the Animorphs to go after the Helmacrons yet thinks that trees somehow don't breathe. I don't wanna go into everything in this book but Marco, the ruthless pragmatist of the Animorphs finds out that a kid with a camera caught a picture of the Animrophs morphing, something that could doom the world if the Yeerks found it and the only thing stopping him from breaking in is the kid's pitbull and Marco refuses to do it. Everyone is out of character in this book. The plot is just a standard trope done lazily. There is, as far as I can tell, no deeper meanings. It has no progression plot-wise or character-wise. This is the worst book in the series as far as I can tell.

Top 10 Books:

10: Visser

 Visser is one of the eight specials and takes the part of the Yeerk Chronicles, the Chronicles being a special meant to showcase the viewpoint of one of the species. Visser tells of the military tribunal of Visser One, political enemy of Visser Three, as both try to convince the Council of Thirteen, supreme Yeerk political body that the other is a traitor who should be executed. Edriss 562, or Visser One is one of the most interesting villains the series ever produced. Edriss is the Yeerk who discovered the humans and first infiltrated the human race to learn of them. Her growing infatuation with them, losing herself to humanity is a thought-provoking and emotional exploration of humanity from an alien perspective. The moment Edriss discovers the human brain is divided in two so that a human is capable of warring within itself and marvels at the insanity of the human physiology is a really cool moment. As Edriss and her partner Yeerk lose themselves to their human host we eventually learn what caused such strong emotions that led her to take questionably treacherous actions against the Yeerk Empire, having human children, and experiencing the maternal compassion, a feeling unlike anything the Yeerks naturally feel. The Yeerks consider humans and the other alien races to live in a paradise of the senses unlike the muddy sense-deprived world they live in, and this book shows what it would mean for a Yeerk to be able to live in the world of sensations, the intoxicating beauty of it. It gets a bit deus ex machina-y at parts and the first and last sections aren't as good as the middle section, but this is a really good book.

9: Book 6 - The Capture

This book, I will freely admit, takes a bit to get going. But when it gets going... this book marks arguably the Animorphs' first big victory against the Yeerk Empire as they destroy one of the Yeerk Pools. However that's only the midpoint. In doing so, Jake gets infected after being knocked into the Yeerk Pool. The Animorphs fortunately figure out Jake is infected and hold him in the woods. What follows is Temrash 114 trying to use Jake's morphing abilities to escape back to the Yeerks before he dies from Kandrona starvation in three days. At first he's arrogant in his capability too, and given his ability to morph into anything Jake has acquired it seems like he should easily escape. But the Animorphs all are in top form this book to save their leader, helped by the complexities of Earth. As Temrash comes to slowly realize to his horror, Earth's biosphere isn't a strict hierarchy but a complex web of relations. Every morph, every animal has a counter. All the threats the Animorphs have had to deal with so far come back to torment him. He tries to morph ant and just as in Book 2 he's nearly torn apart by rival ants. He tries to morph wolf, and he's stopped by the wolf pack the Animorphs found in Book 3. Temrash starts from pure arrogant confidence and Jake in hopelessness but as the days go by, Temrash's arrogance is broken and Jake's hope in his friends is restored even as Temrash tries to torment him. This book also provides the first glimpse into the minds of the Yeerks, their different psychology born from being a parasite race, not a predator race like humans. This book is just so cool on so many ways, being a culmination of the books before and subtly previewing things in books to come such as Jake's ultimate moral decision with the Yeerk Pool in Book 53 and Cassie coming to understand the Yeerks.

8: Book 2 - The Visitor

Book 2 mirrors Book 1 in numerous ways. But while Book 1 introduces the world of Animorphs and the scope of the story, Book 2 is a far more personal story and has some huge emotional moments. Rachel has friends with this girl Melissa, daughter of the vice principal Chapman, who happens to be a high-ranking Yeerk. Melissa has grown more depressed over time and in this book Rachel has to get close to her, morphing her pet cat Fluffer McKitty to infiltrate their home to spy on the Vice Principal and get information. The scene it paints is heartbreaking. It turns out that Melissa's parents both willingly became controllers on the provision Melissa would be kept free, a desperate pained decision. But the Yeerks don't care for her and Melissa has seen and felt how her parents have grown colder to her, even as all they probably want in the world is to tell their daughter that they love her. At one point Visser Three orders Chapman's Yeerk to infest Melissa so they don't need to keep up the charade and Melissa's parents actually manage to fight the Yeerks controlling them for long enough that they start trying to choke themselves. Fighting off Yeerk control, even for a tiny moment, is supposed to require an inhuman amount of will, but this is a scene meant to show just how powerful a parent's protective love for their child is. This whole experience shakes Rachel. She cuddles up to Melissa as Flutter McKitty, even though it's risking her staying past the two hour limit and becoming a cat forever because comforting a crying girl who just wants her parents to love her is worth that risk. And afterwards she expresses her pure and utter hatred for the Yeerks, how she wants to kill them all. The Animorphs will slowly learn to empathize with the Yeerks over the series but it's equally important to show the horror the Yeerks represent, the motive for the Animorphs to fight. 

Also there's a pretty cool fight scene at the end against Visser Three as a rock monster. 😋

7: Book 26 - The Attack

Maybe the most popular book in the series, albeit one that feels kinda disconnected from a lot. The Ellimist and Crayak, long story, but basically two godlike aliens, one good and one evil are having a part of their game in a distant region of space. Crayak has created an elite monstrosity called the Howlers. The Howlers have been referenced before this point as ultimate evil monstrosities but The Ellimist offers the Animorphs to fight a squad of equal size of the Howlers to protect the Iskroot on their lego-world. It's a bizarre premise, but unlike a lot of books, it's not a book that rides on its premise. This is a book that slowly circles back to being relevant to the main plotline. SPOILERS but the Iskroot are actually a cousin species of the Yeerks that found a peaceful form of existence with robotic bodies. Crayak wants the Howlers to destroy them so the Yeerks will never discover them and be forced to rethink their current strategy of controlling other species. 

Beyond this all the Animorphs are in top form this book, especially Jake. The Howlers are immense threats, so big the Animorphs can barely stalemate one all at once using their battle morphs. Yet through clever thinking, Jake managed to defeat and acquire a Howler by himself. The revelation of what the Howlers actually are is great and it makes how they are beaten all the more satisfying. This book has the long awaited progression of Jake and Cassie's relationship as the two share their first kiss, which is something that's been building since the start of the series and it naturalistically builds into how the Howlers are beaten in this fantastic way. Seriously, I do see why this is such a popular book.

6: The Ellimist Chronicles

Remember the "long story" I mentioned last section. That's this book. The Ellimist Chronicles is the story chronicling how the Ellimist, and to a lesser extent Crayak, became what they are. It's hard to talk about the Ellimist Chronicles in totality because it's really a series of vignettes chronicling this strange bird alien's slow growth and journey into being the space god known as the Ellimist however some of them such as his defeat of Father are truly beautiful. The book feels the least like Animorphs of any book in the series as it doesn't deal with any of the same characters save Ellimist and Crayak who aren't really the same characters until the end of the book but the journey is great.

Just as there were five books that I considered a tier below everything else, there are five books I consider a tier above everything else. These are the five best books in the series, and the real gems of the series in my opinion.

5: The Hork-Bajir Chronicles

The best of the specials and I don't think that's a controversial opinion. The Hork-Bajir Chronicles tells the story of the Hork-Bajir, the gentle dim tree-herding alien species the Yeerks possessed to use as shock troops. What's woven in is a complex war narrative of the Andalites and Yeerks fighting and the Hork-Bajir drawn into something beyond their comprehension. The main narrators are Aldrea, an Andalite girl part of an investigation team to learn of the Hork-Bajir and Dak Hamee, a Hork-Bajir Seer, a rare Hork-Bajir with higher intelligence whose job is to guide his people into greater understanding. This book highlights the Andalite and Yeerk position through contrast to the Hork-Bajir, honestly better than either the Andalite Chronicles or Visser did. This book has a lot of complex emotions, an interesting plot, and too many memorable moments to count. This includes Aldrea and Dak leading an army of the native monsters of the Hork-Bajir world against the Yeerks, Dak Hamee's anger at Aldrea and himself for teaching his once peaceful people the ways of war, War-Prince Alloran's decision to engineer a disease to wipe out the Hork-Bajir to keep them out of Yeerk hands. The entire thing is framed as a story Tobias is being told by the Free Hork-Bajir on Earth and when Tobias asks what's the of the story in the conclusion, the seemingly simple Hork-Bajir gives a truly profound answer:

" 'Story has no end.' Jara said, laughing like I was some great fool. 'Stories go on.' "

4: Book 22 - The Solution

Books 20-22 of Animorphs form their own small arc, the "David Trilogy" where the Animorphs due to the necessity of circumstance recruit a kid called David to be the Seventh Animorph. David betrays them and turns out sociopathic, attempting to kill Tobias and Jake. This trilogy is very well acclaimed but honestly the first book in the trilogy I didn't like that much. That said the second book was good, and this book is fantastic. More than that it's chilling. This book the Animorphs decide if they have to kill David or not. This is different from killing a Yeerk. This is going on the offense, killing a human because he's a threat. They decide not to kill him. They decide to do something possibly worse. The Animorphs trick David, playing him expertly, and trap him in rat morph, leaving him on a deserted island. What's great about this book is that David has been a sociopath who has arrogantly lorded himself over the others, proclaiming how great he is, and this must be the decisive victory the Animorphs ever get, absolutely playing him for every move. This book is chilling, not just in David's ultimate fate, but in every detail. The way David kills a sick and dying kid with the purposes of morphing him to get a home again and make it so no one suspects him, the way it's Cassie, Cassie the one David trusted most and the nice one that comes up with the plan to stop him, the way David pleads with mercy. In a series meme-d for it's darkness, this is one of the darkest books in the series, and it's not even like it's particularly gory, it's quite a clean book. It's all conceptual. If you can't tell I like when the Animorphs are at their most efficient and competent, and this book has them at some of their most competent and in control, stopping a major Yeerk plot while also dealing with David, not just dealing with him, absolutely humiliating him. 

3: Book 5 - The Predator: 

For the first several books Marco has been trying to get out of being an Animorph. He's not a coward, or at least that's not the only reason. He's pragmatic. His mother disappeared, presumed dead and he knows his dead wouldn't be able to deal with it if something happened to him. So he goes along with one more mission and it couldn't go worse. The Animorphs are captured and brought up to the Yeerk Pool Ship. There they first meet Visser One, and the woman she controls is Marco's mom. This is the beginning of the Yeerk internal political drama as Visser One saves the Animorphs by freeing them to escape so as to discredit her political rival, which is one of the most interesting parts of the Yeerks. This book begins Marco's character arc over the entire series, his pragmatism, his ruthlessness as he sees it, and the difficulty that comes when that crashes with reality. This book is grand in every way. It has a huge fight in the Yeerk Pool Ship. It has great writing, great personal dilemmas, introduces the theme deeper themes of pragmaticism vs idealism as well as personal loyalty vs the bigger picture which will be central to not just Marco but the series as a whole. This is a fantastic book on all metrics.

2: Book 19: The Departure

Cassie is the Animorph most like me and this is the book that made her such an amazing character, almost my favorite, it is a book that shows my ideal of heroism. After a particularly harrowing battle Cassie, being the soft-heart she is, decides she can't do it anymore, she fought and killed and felt nothing and she can't let herself become a feelingless murderer. The other Animorphs are angry at her for shirking the battle at this point and rightfully so. This isn't fun for any of them, and Cassie to them seems to be abandoning their cause for nothing more than her morals. But Cassie gets lost in the woods along with a little girl named Karen, who actually is a controller, controlled by a Yeerk named Aftran 942. The two travel together towards civilization. Aftran is helpless before Cassie and both know it but Cassie refuses to kill her and instead asks and pleads with her to free Karen. The two engage in dialogue. This book is the clearest example of what drives the Yeerks and why they do what they do and for the first time for a villain motivation in the series, it doesn't just ring true, it rings so true that it's hard to argue. Humans are predators, we hunt and kill other species for our meals. Yeerks in their mind are less evil, they are parasites, they let their hosts live. Yeerks in their native state are nothing more than slugs crawling through the mud, barely any senses to speak off. Humans and Hork-Bajir and Andalites and a million species more are born into the paradise world of beauty, of the setting sun, or the songs of birds, of feeling the ground beneath your feet. The Yeerks want that, a piece of that, and those who have it deny to those who don't. It's persuasive and moving and hard to argue. Yet Cassie does just that, she makes sacrifices, risky sacrifices for Aftran. She even lets Aftran possess her, so sure that if she can just connect Aftran mind to mind, heart to heart, she can reach her. This leads into my favorite scene in the series, Aftran gives Cassie a caterpillar. She says that this is what Yeerks are, this what Cassie is asking her to be. To never control another person, she's condemning Aftran to a lifetime of being this. Aftran says she will leave Karen and never control another unwilling host as long as she lives...if Cassie will morph a caterpillar and stay past the time limit, taking the same fate herself.

And Cassie does. After an hour Aftran tries yelling and pleading with her, telling her she doesn't need to do this. But Cassie voluntarily becomes a caterpillar forever. Not to hurt an enemy. Only to free a single young girl. This was something of a religious experience for me. This is what religious messianic figures do. They leave Heaven willingly, take on the pains and sufferings of those in pain to be with them. This is to me the purest an act of heroism can be. Aftran honors her promise and the ramifications of this are huge across the series. Aftran starts the Yeerk Peace Movement, the internal division weakening the Yeerk Empire over the series. This understanding of why Yeerks do what they do is what gives Cassie the foresight on how to bring their empire down from the inside, by willingly giving them the Morphing power, showing them another way. This book foreshadows what the entire series is trying to say, what it means to be an Animorph, to take the forms of others and understand them. 

This book isn't perfect, there's some disconnected parts and the ending where SPOILERS Cassie morphing from caterpillar to butterfly resets the morphing clock is a little bit of a cop out. Still, this book has the highest heights in the entire series.

1: Book 53: The Answer

Book 53 is a book that's impossible to explain the appeal unless you've read the series but basically, this is the penultimate book of the series and it's where everything that's been built up over the course of the series finally comes into play. Every Animorphs book begins with something like "My Name is X. No Last Name. Just X. I can't tell you my last name or where I live. Otherwise they will find us." So when then book opens with "My Name is Jake Berenson." after 52 books it is an insane rush. This book is the culmination of 52 Books of Progression and the true climax of the story. Everything comes into play here. The Yeerk Peace Movement, the Free Hork-Bajir, the Auxiliary Animorphs, the Chee, Jake's progression as a leader, Ax's progression from being strictly loyal to the Andalites and the Warrior Code to his loyalty to the Animorphs and their ideals, Rachel's progression into Jake's perfect weapon, Cassie's progression into understanding the Yeerks and leading them into internal conflict. Everything comes into play here beautifully. This Book is the payoff for reading a series as long as Animorphs and it feels so good throughout. It's triumphant and it's tragic. The Animorphs do great things and horrible things and desperate things in order to finally defeat Visser Three, triple crossing Tom and his renegade group of Yeerks in a brilliant display.

I can't do justice to this book just talking about it because what's great about it is the first High Point of Animorphs, it's the payoff of character and plot arcs spanning the entire series run. 

I also read another book series at the same time as Animorphs. Next Week for Halloween I will be releasing a similar blog for Goosebumps.