The Next Passage

Alternamorphs #2

by K.A. Applegate, Katherine Applegate

In a "choose your own adventure" story, the reader must decide what to do when an alien demands a mysterious blue box in return for not killing the reader's character's father.

Genres: Science Fiction, Young Adult, Fiction, Childrens, Adventure, Fantasy, Aliens

104 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2000

About the author

also published under the name Katherine Applegate

Reviews

[Stephanie · Rating 2 out of 5]

   Taking into consideration what this book attempts to do: this is a vast improvement from Alternamorphs #1 The First Journey. I’d almost give this 3 stars (almost) because it improved on some key points which were pretty big fails in The First Journey:

- Wrong choices did not lead to immediate death (though inevitable death was maybe 2 choices away at most) meaning it was also more “fun”,
- Being much more “canon”-accurate and correct,
- Having a slightly more complex narrative & choice web,
- It was more plausible over all considering the premise of the book to begin with.

   The last part was achieved by having the Ellimist play a key role – and while he seemed a bit off-character, it managed to just sort of work for the purposes of the story. Just don’t inspect it too closely. Oh, and I only made maybe 1 or 2 “wrong” decisions in either narrative track – though this can also be seen as a negative point for the book, as it was pretty abundantly clear (to me, at least, having read the whole series and being an adult) which choices were obviously the wrong ones and which were the right ones. And at least the results of your choices made more sense than in The First Journey.

   Probably my biggest peeve about this book is how “you” acquire the morphing ability – by finding the morphing cube and taking many of the same actions/reactions as the doomed Animorph David - from trying to sell the blue box on the internet, setting a timer so the e-mail won’t go out until you are out of school, there being a battle in your bedroom where your dad is military and has a gun but both parents get taken by the Yeerks anyways… right down to how Marco explains to “you” what is going on and your angry reaction about it all.

   While The First Journey combined books #1 and #11 to make an adventure, this one combines The Attack (Animorphs #26) and In the Time of Dinosaurs (Megamorphs #2) – so we are once again taken completely out of the main storyline of Animorphs and given a different world and a different time to have our “adventure” in. Each story is fun in its own way, with some good side comments to make this adventure seem plausible. Each one also has a “happy” ending, though arguably one of the “happy” endings is considerably “happier” than the other. Though, while reading the narratives, they also seemed to pull not only storyline from the aforementioned installments (fine), but also entire passages from those books and others, slightly modified, to create this book (not so fine). There were definitely some senses of déjà vu going on.

   Overall, if you are going to read one of the Alternamorphs, have it be this one. If you are going to write an Alternamorphs and add another improvement to what this one has done, come up with a brand new adventure, not one the Animorphs have already been on.

Quotes and comments:
From the introduction, narrated by Rachel:
   Each battle changes us. Transforms us on the inside as much as on the outside.
   War is not a video game. In a real war, you make desperate decisions and deal with desperate consequences. You spill blood and your blood gets spilled. You brush up against death. You change. You’re warped until ever being average and ordinary again is an impossible dream. – Can I just say how appropriate and blunt this is? Not to mention ironic, given that it is Rachel narrating – she’s pretty much the expert on how much the battle changes her/the rest of them on the inside and how being normal again is an “impossible dream.” This is, in my opinion, a “good quote” worthy of the series, of the messages the series works to get across.

   The blue box [you found] is available to the highest bidder. – page 3 – Why oh WHY would you have this happen the way David did it?!?

   “What about my mom and dad?” you ask.
   Marco walks over and stands right in front of you. “Your parents have been taken to a secret underground facility called a Yeerk pool. Picture a sludgy, cesspool of a pond the color of molten lead. Hork-Bajir warriors will drag your parents out to the end of a pier. They will –”
   “Marco!” Cassie says angrily.
   […] You stare as Marco drones on. His words stab you in the gut.
   […]An intense anger hits you. A desire to strike back, to send these Yeerks back to wherever they came from. You want to save your parents. You have to. – page 19 – WAY TO CONTINUE making the reader sound like DAVID!! … and we all know how well that turned out…

   Ax turns in a slow circle, tail blade ready. – page 72 – Except, Ax doesn’t NEED to turn around – he has stalk eyes which swivel, remember?

   [You are morphed a cockroach] You catch a flash of blue, green, brown. – page 79 – I didn’t recall cockroaches being able to see color like this…? I could be wrong though…

   I’m glad my legs aren’t as short as Marco’s, you think. – page 88 – Actually, I’m short too, so … But it’s still funny.

[Grapie Deltaco · Rating 1 out of 5]

Crap.

Don’t you dare ever put me in a similar position to David ever again.

Also this was stupid.

CW: violence, death, slight gore, war, slavery

[Wolverinefactor · Rating 1 out of 5]

Okay, hear me out. This book was awful.

It puts you in place as a fake David. It quickly makes you pick option A or B.

Unlike typical choose your own adventures this isn’t a life of death choice, It’s a story choice.

I picked B. I quickly made it through without dying. It’s an okay journey but super easy and ends abruptly.

I went back and just picked random choices for A. I didnt read the chapters themselves because I’m all about sticking with the ending I got.

I had 3 deaths during option A. There’s additional branching choices unlike option B. The ending felt much better than what option B gave.

If you decide to give this ho-hum adventure a shot I say go for option A. It’s a definite step down from the first choose your own adventure.

Oh and each path if starting from page 1. Can be as short as 35 pages.

[Josiah · Rating 1 out of 5]

For whatever ambiguities of continuity and purpose you'll run into in The Next Passage, this has the dry makings of a good book. There's nothing wrong with the writing of K.A. Applegate, which I understand to be a pen name for an author other than Katherine Applegate and/or Michael Grant in the Alternamorphs gamebook series. The story's descriptions are smart and well-crafted, the work of someone who knows what he or she is doing with a narrative. Some of the book's choices are interesting, making one really think what one might do in a deadly situation if given only seconds to decide. The line between life and death is so thin at times in The Next Passage, hinging on a single choice made under extreme duress when you haven't more than a second or two to make up your mind, that it's a wonder the Animorphs in the main series survive as long as they do if they go up against such maelstroms of predatory extraterrestrial activity on a regular basis. Your wits—and a lot of luck—are the only things keeping your heart beating from one minute to the next when you hook up with this preteen team of alien-fighters armed with one special ability: the power to transform into any animal they touch, almost instantly. You, too, will be given this morphing power in The Next Passage. Use it wisely.

"I bet you hate being ordinary. I bet you long for something to make you feel different and special. You're probably just waiting for something exciting to happen to you.
Be careful what you wish for."

—The Next Passage, from the Introduction

Your first day as the new kid in school is forgettable. No one you might like to hang out with gives you more than a passing glance, and the ones who do talk to you aren't your type. Kicking around by yourself after the final bell, you find a blue box inside a concrete block, and decide it could bring a hefty sum of money if sold on the world wide web. Little do you realize your online post seeking an interested buyer will bring forces of alien evil not only to your doorstep, but inside your home. Your mother and father's lives are in danger now because of you, but at least your ill-advised internet sales pitch has also caught the attention of the good guys: Rachel, Cassie, Jake, Marco, and Tobias, the Animorphs. Aliens trafficking in human destruction have met their match in this gang, and in you, too. The blue box you stumbled upon endows you with the same morphing superpower as the Animorphs, and with that power comes the responsibility of helping them defend humanity—including your parents—from two extraterrestrial races bent on destroying mankind.

Pay careful mind to the plot as it moves along, because it can be hard to follow. Rather than unfolding in straightforward fashion, the story apparently hops around into several well-known storylines from the main Animorphs series, enabling you to hang around the periphery and even make some decisions that could derail the narrative of those books. Unlike the first Alternamorphs gamebook, The First Journey, there are multiple legitimate branches to follow in The Next Passage, each branch leading to many bad endings and one that is good. Your primary enemy in either route is the Howler aliens, whose transformation skills are at least as formidable as what the Animorphs possess. Gameplay is simple, with one notable change from the series' opening volume: instead of directing the reader to turn to a certain page with each choice, a chapter is designated as the place to pick up the story, as in, "If you turn over the box, go to chapter 4. If you refuse, go to chapter 5." The inclusion of chapters in the Alternamorphs series is one of its more distinguishing characteristics in comparison to other gamebooks, though the chapters are utilized more effectively in this second book.

I have to admit, a lot of what I read in The Next Passage confused me. Why is your chief adversary the Howlers for most of the book, when it starts out seeming to be the Yeerks and Hork-Bajir? How does the all-powerful Ellimist factor into the plot, and why is it so set on "testing" your reactions to evil beings? What exactly is an Iskoort? Why is Rachel so angry with you—and only you—after something terrible befalls her closest friend, when all of you were fighting the enemy with equal chance to be harmed? Why does she fixate on you as the cause of the tragedy? Looking back through that section of the book, I can't find any way that what happens seems to be especially your fault. Much of my confusion is, I believe, a result of this series being intended for readers already familiar with what occurs in the main books. Without that working knowledge of the regular series, you'll probably struggle with Alternamorphs, as I did. Even with that knowledge you're apt to struggle, since the action bounces so quickly from storyline to storyline without much segue. Your character in The Next Passage is in no obvious way linked to the person you were in The First Journey, and I think this second book takes place chronologically after the first one, as indicated by the status of one particular character. Which reminds me of a warning I feel I should give: There are some spoilers for the main series in the two-book Alternamorphs spinoff, so you may want to consider avoiding it until you've finished the regular series if you don't want to bump into any crucial reveals ahead of time. Despite its shortcomings in regard to logical structure and cohesiveness, I think The Next Passage is a slight improvement on its Alternamorphs predecessor, but I'm just not sure the canonical Animorphs world works as a gamebook series. The storytelling is always done seriously, however, and has merit. Your war against hostile invaders from space is a brutally high-risk one, and The Next Passage doesn't attempt to glamorize it, as evident in the following passage from the Introduction: "War is not a video game. In a real war, you make desperate decisions and deal with desperate consequences. You spill blood and your blood gets spilled. You brush up against death. You change. You're warped until ever being average and ordinary again is an impossible dream." My final verdict on The Next Passage? Animorphs enthusiasts or fans of gamebooks should try it. You might find something here you like.

[Nathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

The second and final "choose your own adventure" story in the Animorphs non-canon companion series is a nice improvement over the first entry, even if the story is still recycled content.

The first Alternamorphs entry was a linear story with 6 branching decisions. This book, while essentially just a mish mash of 3 previous Animorphs books (20, 26, Megamorphs 2), does improve on the reader's level of input.

This entry of Alternamorphs branches off into 2 separate stories with 9 branching decisions collectively. Instead of just "making the right choice or reaching a dead end", it was nice to see at least one branch where both choices led to dead ends, and you had to revert back to a previous choice entirely.

[Hillary · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Animorphs reread comes to an end! I've now made it through all the Animorphs books I have on hand. This one has a cooler choose your own adventure set of options, but had a couple of demerits. One, it features the Ellimist, who is annoying but also makes sense for this kind of story. I guess here can stay. The other demerit is that this one was weirdly unclear when you came to the end of a route successfully - it was the same setup as when you move to there next chapter because it's the next chapter. I did like the wider number of outcomes in this book than the last, though.

[Thomas-James · Rating 2 out of 5]

Honestly these have nothing on the give yourself goosebumps series!

[Julie Decker · Rating 1 out of 5]

THIS IS A CHOOSE-YOUR-OWN-ADVENTURE-STYLE ANIMORPHS BOOK. IT IS NOT PART OF THE CANON (and, as a personal aside, is not recommended by me). The book allows you, the reader, to "become" part of the Animorphs by putting you essentially in the position of the canon character David, then presenting you with a series of decisions (choose-your-own adventure style) to dictate the plot. Story elements of book #20, book #26, and Megamorphs #2 are incorporated, allowing the reader to pick morphs. Despite being "the next passage," you are not the same person that you played in the previous book because you are introduced to the morphing technology in a different way and have no history with the group. One of the plots involves Cassie meeting her death and "you" can end up getting trapped in a fly morph--an action your fellow Animorphs force you into.

This is not a necessary or enjoyable part of the Animorphs series. It's just a cheap tack-on.

[Swankivy · Rating 1 out of 5]

Hey you guys?

Animorphs was not supposed to be "Choose Your Own Adventure."

I'm really glad they didn't make any more of these.

The question for me, now, is why I read this one when the first one was so awful. . . .

Notable:

This book was ghostwritten by Tonya Alicia Martin.

The events of the Alternamorphs books are not written into the canon whatsoever.

[Jay · Rating 2 out of 5]

My son loves the Animorphs books right now. I read this one so I would be more familiar with some of the characters. I probably needed to know more about the series before trying to read one where I choose the directions of parts of the story. I can see why he liked this one, though. He'd probably rate it a 4.

[Jackie Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

I seriously wish they would have made more of these. I loved "Choose your own adventure" style books and since I loved Animorphs so much this was the perfect compliment.

[Joe Kessler · Rating 2 out of 5]

Here is the nicest thing I can say about this second Animorphs choose-your-own-adventure title: it is better than the first one. (It's not a sequel, though: the "you" before was another kid who was wandering through the abandoned construction site of Animorphs #1 The Invasion at the same time as the regular group and also given morphing powers by Elfangor. The "you" here is a David analogue, experiencing the attack on his house from book #20 The Discovery.) Whereas the previous volume had only six actual decision points, each of which led to either immediate death or the tale's intended continuation, this followup has nine, including a genuine fork with each branch continuing through additional nodes to a separate possible conclusion. As an activity, the structure / gameplay is thus notably more complex.

The plot is busier, too. The First Journey covered parts of Animorphs #1 and #11 The Forgotten, jumping over the events in-between, but The Next Passage handles #20, #26 The Attack, and Megamorphs #2 In the Time of Dinosaurs, under the premise that the Ellimist appears once you've joined the team to send you off on one of those last two paths. That's not great writing -- especially since the options are presented as simply "button A" and "button B" on an unlabeled remote control -- but at least it feels like more thought went into the idea than anything in the lazy cash-grab of Alternamorphs #1. Maybe that's why the first ghostwriter remains unknown, while this one has been openly identified as Emily Costello, who would return a few months later for #42 The Journey in the main series.

As for the weaknesses…. It's really not a very well-developed story, nor does it seem all that fun or compelling to play. The angst, wartime trauma, and nuanced coming-of-age themes of the franchise are in short supply, and the heroes regularly act out-of-character, as when they trap you as a fly nothlit in one ending, doomed to die within two weeks because you didn't agree to stay out of their way during future fights. Good luck trying to determine where this alternate universe diverges from the real canon, too -- the Animorphs mention having fought the Howlers on Iskoort already, but they give no indication that the morphing cube's discovery or their prehistoric excursion has likewise happened, even though those adventures came earlier in the proper continuity. There's no internal consistency or apparent point to the Ellimist's challenge either, which altogether adds up for a frustrating and weightless read.

I would imagine the intended appeal of a project like this is to immerse the readers in a beloved media property, letting us literally see ourselves joining the action alongside the familiar characters. But even with a less simple narrative shape in place, that attempt can't possibly succeed in a work that's so hollow and patronizing about what we supposedly like in these books. A publisher's impression of Animorphs may sound wacky, with its garish covers of teens turning into animals, but the novels are generally deadly earnest in a way these spinoffs have never managed. I just can't suspend my disbelief far enough.

[Content warning for body horror, gun violence, and gore.]

This volume: ★★☆☆☆

Overall series: ★☆☆☆☆

Volumes ranked: 2 > 1

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[Justice · Rating 3 out of 5]

I miss being a mountain biking freak :(

Overall, i dont like the character in this book. Like, choosing Cassie over your parents? Not even getting a chance to choose?? And being David in the opening, NOT COOL.

I wish people cared more about the alternamorphs because theyre SUPER FUN and I want more of them!! And Animorphs has the PERFECT setting for a few non-canon adventures that parallel the events of certain books. It's too bad more wasnt done with these, this one v much seems like a half-hearted cash grab, and I wonder if that killed the alternamorphs.

Theres still some pretty good stuff here. Rachel referring to Tobias as "their lost soul" is amazing, she must be 15 at this time, and some of the deaths are bloody.

[Dread · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Solace: Animorphs, but make it a choose-your-own adventure. This was decently entertaining. We re-do two of the previous stories inside this book, with the reader as the Animorph, choosing which morphs at the moment.

The Dread: It lost some of its charm since it's the second Alternamorph.The stories are a bit repetitive. Some don't add too much to the stories we've already read. I wish we got new adventures or even new side quests in some larger stories we visited rather than a re-read. The structure was also not so great at the end, with the last chapter being failed endings, which would be resolved with simple rearranging. And, of course, this is inconsequential to the rest of the world.

Overall, this was just a quick, fun, and fun read.

[Juushika · Rating 2 out of 5]

To take the role of David/parallel universe David is discomforting, so this has a strong initial setup--contrived, funneled too easily into a choose your own adventure, but high-concept and confrontational. The rest is underwhelming. It's refreshing about being able to logic through choices instead picking wildly and dying in unpredictable ways, but that makes things a bit boring, compounded by familiar settings and plots, relative lack of character development, and the dual pathing which effectively divides the book into two smaller narratives. I don't expect a lot from these spin-offs, and don't get much.

[Nicole · Rating 2 out of 5]

In this choose-your-own-adventure you take the place of David in finding the blue box at the construction site and joining the Animorphs.

This one is slightly better than The First Journey because there are two options to pick from in adventures, which I won't spoil, but in doing so the adventures are so short that they were over very quickly.

Overall, very similar thoughts to the first. I'd rather have fewer choices but the choices matter and diverge than only one option is correct and the others kill you.

[Hazel · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one was so much better than the first one. Mostly because the story was better, and it used an existing character instead of creating someone who doesn't exist. There's still only one correct path. Well 2 one for each adventure, but the main adventure is a bit more convoluted than in the first alternamorphs book.

[Liander (The Towering Pile) Lavoie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A step up from the first Alternamorphs in that the choices are a little more complicated; I still came very close to reading it through from cover to cover (because I like to do all the paths) but there were definitely more branches this time.

[Dave Kirschner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Choose your own adventure books feel dated, and this was too short to really offer a lot of choice or narrative.

This did do a great job of showing how often and how narrowly the characters avoid death in the series

[Josh T · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am giving this a modest 3 stars because the endings were kind of mediocre. I did both story lines. I just wanted something easy to read and honestly it was mildly entertaining better than the first one I think.

[Jonathan Grant · Rating 2 out of 5]

First one was stronger. And with that I've finished with the Animorphs (for now).

[Julia · Rating 2 out of 5]

lol the one Animorphs book I didn't feel the need to read. Was more of a bunch of events than a story, but it entertained me. Will have to read again for the second plotline one day.

[Edward Aminov · Rating 1 out of 5]

1.5/5

[Brett Plaxton · Rating 2 out of 5]

Felt like a coulda woulda shoulda for David

[Emily Brockmeier · Rating 3 out of 5]

Same issues as the last book, only slightly better

[Rebekah Gasperoni · Rating 3 out of 5]

Better then the first one by far, prob my fav choose your adventure

[Helen · Rating 1 out of 5]

It was almost better than the first book. Almost.

[Charlotte · Rating 1 out of 5]

These are real books that exist. No bueno

[Mads ✨is balls deep in the Animorphs reread✨ · Rating 2 out of 5]

I HATE the Alternamorphs and I HATE choose your own adventure but I am COMMITTED to the BIT of (re)reading EVERY SINGLE ONE goddammit!!!!!

[Izlinda · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a little worse than the first one. :S At least for one ending, there's a choice.