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Animorphs #54
The Beginning
No one ever thought it would come to this. Jake, Rachel, Tobias, Cassie, Marco, and Ax know that even if they could have warned people in the beginning, no one would have believed their story. A story about an invasion of parasitic aliens. So, for all this time, Jake, the other Animorphs, and Ax have secretly fought a desperate battle. Secretly held the Yeerks at bay.
But those days are over.
It's come down to the final battle between the Yeerks and Animorphs. And no one knows who will win, lose, or live. . . .
But those days are over.
It's come down to the final battle between the Yeerks and Animorphs. And no one knows who will win, lose, or live. . . .
176 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 2001
49 people are currently reading
1164 people want to read
About the author
K.A. Applegate
251 books486 followersalso published under the name Katherine Applegate
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 281 reviews
January 11, 2016
The end is the beginning is the end. When I mention Animorphs to people who never read it, or read part of the series but never finished, one of the first things they ask is "Does it actually have a proper ending?". And my immediate answer is Yes, yes, and how. It does end, as the Ellimist promised them sadly in Megamorphs #4. But are you going to be happy with it? Ah, there's the rub.
KAA received a lot of flak for this ending back in the day; I think largely because her readership were all loyal youths, and we were shocked and horrified and jarred and depressed by it. We've all grown up on neat, happy endings, so this one is unusual, and I hadn't seen anything like it before or since. But revisiting this as an adult, I think it's perfect. The plot careens onwards to its inevitable conclusion, the loose ends are tied up, and most importantly, the painful aftermath is examined. I love The Hunger Games, but I'm going to make the case that as a series, this is a much more sophisticated, mature, painful, and realistic exploration of war. Of course, with 62 books to stretch her legs, Applegate had a much bigger canvas to play around with and develop her characters & themes.
I'm going to split this review into two parts -- first, looking at this book individually, and then trying to do a post-mortem of the series as a whole. And you know what, let's just put this all under a spoiler cut for obvious reasons...
BOOK-SPECIFIC:
---
SERIES-SPECIFIC / AS A WHOLE:
I wholeheartedly, absolutely recommend this series to both old fans wanting to revisit the books, and to new fans even if they've never read Animorphs before. If you can get past the relatively sparse prose, it grows from middle-grade to young adult, and gets more and more sophisticated and complex and heartwrenching as time goes on. The prose isn't flowery, but the content is intense. It's an examination of the horrors and toll of war, child soldiers, PTSD, trauma, ethics & morality, the slippery slope and the hard line, and the lengths you have to go to to win. It's about necessary evils, and yet also the importance of sheer dumb hope and altruism and cooperation, about friendship and family as anchoring tethers (and tethers for sanity, even). It's about not always being able to tell the good guys from the bad. It's about stepping up to do the hard thing, and the right thing, and never giving up. It's about being brave, and strong, and good, even when faced with so much awfulness. It's about enduring, outlasting, and outwaiting the awful.
They're six idiot teenagers with a death wish, and they're funny and brave and charitable and doing their best in a terrible situation, and you can't help but love them, all of them.
Quotes, as always:
KAA received a lot of flak for this ending back in the day; I think largely because her readership were all loyal youths, and we were shocked and horrified and jarred and depressed by it. We've all grown up on neat, happy endings, so this one is unusual, and I hadn't seen anything like it before or since. But revisiting this as an adult, I think it's perfect. The plot careens onwards to its inevitable conclusion, the loose ends are tied up, and most importantly, the painful aftermath is examined. I love The Hunger Games, but I'm going to make the case that as a series, this is a much more sophisticated, mature, painful, and realistic exploration of war. Of course, with 62 books to stretch her legs, Applegate had a much bigger canvas to play around with and develop her characters & themes.
I'm going to split this review into two parts -- first, looking at this book individually, and then trying to do a post-mortem of the series as a whole. And you know what, let's just put this all under a spoiler cut for obvious reasons...
BOOK-SPECIFIC:
---
SERIES-SPECIFIC / AS A WHOLE:
I wholeheartedly, absolutely recommend this series to both old fans wanting to revisit the books, and to new fans even if they've never read Animorphs before. If you can get past the relatively sparse prose, it grows from middle-grade to young adult, and gets more and more sophisticated and complex and heartwrenching as time goes on. The prose isn't flowery, but the content is intense. It's an examination of the horrors and toll of war, child soldiers, PTSD, trauma, ethics & morality, the slippery slope and the hard line, and the lengths you have to go to to win. It's about necessary evils, and yet also the importance of sheer dumb hope and altruism and cooperation, about friendship and family as anchoring tethers (and tethers for sanity, even). It's about not always being able to tell the good guys from the bad. It's about stepping up to do the hard thing, and the right thing, and never giving up. It's about being brave, and strong, and good, even when faced with so much awfulness. It's about enduring, outlasting, and outwaiting the awful.
They're six idiot teenagers with a death wish, and they're funny and brave and charitable and doing their best in a terrible situation, and you can't help but love them, all of them.
Quotes, as always:
February 23, 2022
I’ve read Animorphs #54: The Beginning several times now, and I think I finally feel ready to write up a rational reaction. The first time I read it, my brother had already given me a brief synopsis, so I knew about the ending and the One. (Although his description was more than a bit confusing.) I read it mainly to bring closure to the Animorphs era of my life, and hated it. But, obviously, the Animorphs era of my life didn’t end there. A year or two later, I read it again, and cried through most of it. Rachel’s death was awful, but even worse was what happened to Jake and Tobias, neither of whom could really come back from the war.
Over the next few readings, I slowly came to terms with the book. I hated Ronnie at first, but now I think it’s beautiful the way Cassie’s life went. In reading the book this time through, what really struck me was how he calls Cassie “Cass.” Cassie has moved on with her life. She herself says that she’s not Cassie the Animorph anymore. I would go further to say that she’s now Cass, doing the work she always wanted to do, saving the world through plants and animals. I think Cassie’s ending is beautiful. It shows the resilience of humans—Cassie hated the war more than any of the other Animorphs, and she managed to flourish once she came out of it, maybe because of that hate.
Marco is the other Animorph who really prospered after the war. I’m sure no one would expect anything less of him. He led the life of a star that he’d always talked about and, of course, it was empty. But could it really have gone any other way for Marco? I don’t think so. He’s been headed in this direction from the moment he likened them to superheroes.
Ax, in his own way, does well after the war too, which also only makes sense. Ax was trained to be an Andalite warrior, and after the war, that’s exactly what he gets to do. We don’t see a lot of Ax after the war, but what we do see makes me so proud of him (which is a weird feeling, I know). Ax, explaining to the officers on his ship why he makes certain decisions just shows how much he’s grown. He doesn’t need to posture and play-act at being a prince, he is a prince.
Which brings us to Jake, Ax’s prince. Jake’s story after the war is possibly the most depressing for me. He can’t come back; he can’t move on. He doesn’t even graduate from high school. It makes me mad that he didn’t wake up one day and think, Rachel would have hated this, but I understand why he didn’t. Jake took on so much responsibility for so long that he couldn’t get rid of it, even when he had the chance.
The next thing to be discussed, of course, is the flushing of the Yeerks. I’ve waffled back and forth and tried not to come down on either side, because ultimately I want to trust Jake’s judgment. But now I don’t think it was necessary. That was a huge loss of life, and I’m not sure if the diversion it caused was really helpful at all. I’m not sure if it matters, though, what the right answer is, especially because there really isn’t one. Instead, I’m glad that KA lets the Animorphs, and particularly Jake, deal with it themselves, instead of passing judgment.
And then there’s Tobias. His story after the war is one that I have the most trouble with. I can understand him being angry about Rachel’s death. I can understand him losing his one very strong connection to humans and withdrawing into himself and the hawk. But I can’t understand him withdrawing completely and only talking to Toby and Cassie, and then only rarely. This is because he didn’t lose all of his connections to humanity. His mother is a very big link back, one he risked a lot to gain at all. Yes, it’s true that she can’t remember him, but I also have a lot of trouble with Tobias just leaving her. I’m sure he made sure she was taken care of (at least I assume he did), but it still seems very strange to me.
On that note, the glaring lack of any of the parents gets on my nerves a bit. On one hand, this story is about the Animorphs, and not their parents, but on the other hand, in the past few books, the parents started to play a big part, even if it was just to tell Jake everything he did was wrong. I really wish we knew about Eva, though. Ever since Visser nearly changed my life, she’s been fascinating to me.
Finally, Rachel. Some people are pretty angry that Rachel died, but I think it’s appropriate. Horrible, but appropriate. The conclusion would not have been the same if they had made it through the war with no casualties. (There were the auxiliary Animorphs, whose absence is also troubling. One assumes they all died as well, which is unfortunate. I’d have liked to see what happened to James.) Rachel’s death still really gets to me, though. Maybe the Ellimist’s cameo was supposed to make things better, but the way her narrations cuts off in mid-sentence is so painful…
But I digress. It’s time to discuss the final problem people have with the book—the whole plot concerning the Blade ship, the Kelbrids, and the One. I’m of two minds about the whole thing. I understand the Animorphs going down fighting. I love how creepy Ax’s final moments on the abandoned ship are. I can see him holding up a few polar bear hairs, and it gives me the shivers. I guess what I don’t like is that it’s not a conclusion—there are no answers. Is Ax really dead? Is he now a Borg? What do the Kelbrids have anything to do with this? I can accept this as an end, but not as a conclusion. Every time I read this book, I try to find clues about what really happened. But no, I don’t have any answers. I suppose that’s the point, but that’s also what makes people so unhappy.
But, ultimately, I like the book. I like seeing how all the Animorphs moved on (or didn’t). I like how real that feels. And I like that the moral ambiguity of their actions doesn’t go away—that’s something they each have to deal with, and something that we, as readers, have to deal with as well.
Over the next few readings, I slowly came to terms with the book. I hated Ronnie at first, but now I think it’s beautiful the way Cassie’s life went. In reading the book this time through, what really struck me was how he calls Cassie “Cass.” Cassie has moved on with her life. She herself says that she’s not Cassie the Animorph anymore. I would go further to say that she’s now Cass, doing the work she always wanted to do, saving the world through plants and animals. I think Cassie’s ending is beautiful. It shows the resilience of humans—Cassie hated the war more than any of the other Animorphs, and she managed to flourish once she came out of it, maybe because of that hate.
Marco is the other Animorph who really prospered after the war. I’m sure no one would expect anything less of him. He led the life of a star that he’d always talked about and, of course, it was empty. But could it really have gone any other way for Marco? I don’t think so. He’s been headed in this direction from the moment he likened them to superheroes.
Ax, in his own way, does well after the war too, which also only makes sense. Ax was trained to be an Andalite warrior, and after the war, that’s exactly what he gets to do. We don’t see a lot of Ax after the war, but what we do see makes me so proud of him (which is a weird feeling, I know). Ax, explaining to the officers on his ship why he makes certain decisions just shows how much he’s grown. He doesn’t need to posture and play-act at being a prince, he is a prince.
Which brings us to Jake, Ax’s prince. Jake’s story after the war is possibly the most depressing for me. He can’t come back; he can’t move on. He doesn’t even graduate from high school. It makes me mad that he didn’t wake up one day and think, Rachel would have hated this, but I understand why he didn’t. Jake took on so much responsibility for so long that he couldn’t get rid of it, even when he had the chance.
The next thing to be discussed, of course, is the flushing of the Yeerks. I’ve waffled back and forth and tried not to come down on either side, because ultimately I want to trust Jake’s judgment. But now I don’t think it was necessary. That was a huge loss of life, and I’m not sure if the diversion it caused was really helpful at all. I’m not sure if it matters, though, what the right answer is, especially because there really isn’t one. Instead, I’m glad that KA lets the Animorphs, and particularly Jake, deal with it themselves, instead of passing judgment.
And then there’s Tobias. His story after the war is one that I have the most trouble with. I can understand him being angry about Rachel’s death. I can understand him losing his one very strong connection to humans and withdrawing into himself and the hawk. But I can’t understand him withdrawing completely and only talking to Toby and Cassie, and then only rarely. This is because he didn’t lose all of his connections to humanity. His mother is a very big link back, one he risked a lot to gain at all. Yes, it’s true that she can’t remember him, but I also have a lot of trouble with Tobias just leaving her. I’m sure he made sure she was taken care of (at least I assume he did), but it still seems very strange to me.
On that note, the glaring lack of any of the parents gets on my nerves a bit. On one hand, this story is about the Animorphs, and not their parents, but on the other hand, in the past few books, the parents started to play a big part, even if it was just to tell Jake everything he did was wrong. I really wish we knew about Eva, though. Ever since Visser nearly changed my life, she’s been fascinating to me.
Finally, Rachel. Some people are pretty angry that Rachel died, but I think it’s appropriate. Horrible, but appropriate. The conclusion would not have been the same if they had made it through the war with no casualties. (There were the auxiliary Animorphs, whose absence is also troubling. One assumes they all died as well, which is unfortunate. I’d have liked to see what happened to James.) Rachel’s death still really gets to me, though. Maybe the Ellimist’s cameo was supposed to make things better, but the way her narrations cuts off in mid-sentence is so painful…
But I digress. It’s time to discuss the final problem people have with the book—the whole plot concerning the Blade ship, the Kelbrids, and the One. I’m of two minds about the whole thing. I understand the Animorphs going down fighting. I love how creepy Ax’s final moments on the abandoned ship are. I can see him holding up a few polar bear hairs, and it gives me the shivers. I guess what I don’t like is that it’s not a conclusion—there are no answers. Is Ax really dead? Is he now a Borg? What do the Kelbrids have anything to do with this? I can accept this as an end, but not as a conclusion. Every time I read this book, I try to find clues about what really happened. But no, I don’t have any answers. I suppose that’s the point, but that’s also what makes people so unhappy.
But, ultimately, I like the book. I like seeing how all the Animorphs moved on (or didn’t). I like how real that feels. And I like that the moral ambiguity of their actions doesn’t go away—that’s something they each have to deal with, and something that we, as readers, have to deal with as well.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 10, 2024
Considering this is the final book of a very long series and it follows the cliffhanger of the previous book, I don’t want to say too much about the plot to avoid spoilers. But this finale is very fitting for the series, and it’s actually a good representation of the series as a whole.
Much like the series, this story starts off really hot and absolutely brutal. Something really big and important happens. Then the story loses a bit of steam, making you think that this book will end with a whimper instead of a bang. This reminds me of the many filler stories in the series. But the strong concept and interesting character arcs combined with the occasional flashes of brilliance are enough to keep you hooked. And at the end, I do feel this bumpy ride is still worth it.
This is the end of the series. Not everyone might like it but the plot manages to come to a solid and memorable conclusion. I think some things were foreshadowed quite well and early enough in the series to make it a satisfying conclusion, despite this book having quite a few flaws. The series has at heart been very character-driven with themes like the psychological impact of war and the struggles of leadership for example taking center stage. And what I can say is that the final book fits the series in this regard.
Much like the series, this story starts off really hot and absolutely brutal. Something really big and important happens. Then the story loses a bit of steam, making you think that this book will end with a whimper instead of a bang. This reminds me of the many filler stories in the series. But the strong concept and interesting character arcs combined with the occasional flashes of brilliance are enough to keep you hooked. And at the end, I do feel this bumpy ride is still worth it.
This is the end of the series. Not everyone might like it but the plot manages to come to a solid and memorable conclusion. I think some things were foreshadowed quite well and early enough in the series to make it a satisfying conclusion, despite this book having quite a few flaws. The series has at heart been very character-driven with themes like the psychological impact of war and the struggles of leadership for example taking center stage. And what I can say is that the final book fits the series in this regard.
January 30, 2019
Well, here we are. Almost four years ago I started re-reading Animorphs. I had been wanting to do this for a while, and then my Goodreads friend and occasional Twitter DM enthusiast Julie started her own, finally galvanizing me to just do it, as Shia Le Nike says. (You should also read Julie’s review of #54: The Beginning as well!) It has taken me considerably longer than Julie to finish re-reading this series, but I’ve still enjoyed it very much. Animorphs is a very memorable part of my childhood. I remember obsessively collecting most of the books from #21 or so on, and when I eventually donated them away it was definitely an emotional moment in my life. This series has stuck with me.
Like the rest of my reviews of Animorphs, I’m not really flagging this as having spoilers despite discussing the plot, because I figure that if you’re reading this review of the end of a 50-book series 20 years later, then you probably don’t care that much about spoilers.
And if the only answer you’re looking for in this review is the answer to the question, “Does it hold up?” That answer is yes, unreservedly, and more so than I ever expected.
Certainly this series has its flaws, its problems, and as a book written for middle grade and young adults, there are definitely times I feel like, as an adult, Applegate is not writing for me. I read these books now with a more critical eye than I would when I was younger—and there is nothing wrong with that. Nevertheless, for younger readers—dated ’90s references aside—I think these books would still be just as formative and valuable today. And for those of us reading for nostalgia reasons, these books are no less powerful or remarkable for the story Applegate tells.
The Beginning wraps up the cliffhanger battle from The Answer pretty quickly. Then it jumps forward one year and then another two years so we can see what this hath wrought. And while this series as a whole holds up, this particular book is dissatisfying. It was dissatisfying to me when I was a kid, and it is dissatisfying now.
Note that this is just me being particularly harsh. Endings are hard. Endings for a series are even harder, and truth be told, there are very few series whose endings I have loved. Want to know my most perfect series finale? Orphan Black.
Alas, The Beginning is more Battlestar Galactica—although, to give Applegate credit, I think she managed to tie everything up much more credibly than Moore et al did. (It’s probably closer to Star Trek: Voyager “Endgame” on the finale scale.)
Also, when I say I’m dissatisfied, I’m not talking about that last chapter. I get why Applegate wants Jake to go out with a bang, and why she wanted to leave the fans with something. As a kid, I literally just shrugged and moved on to the next book (such an old man pragmatist even back then). As an adult me, I also kind of shrugged—perhaps more ruefully—and hit up the Internet to read fanfic speculation.
No, what I don’t like about The Beginning is its broad-strokes approach to the character development of our main cast. Everything feels a bit like a stereotype of these characters, from dedicated Cassie to easygoing Marco to depressed Jake. (Marco in particular, with his “all the ladies want me” vibe, really creeped me out). We can wring our hands and talk about how Applegate could only do so much in the space she had (really, I think Scholastic should have sprung for a “Megamorphs” sized finale book). But the truth is that this ending really only offers a shallow snapshot of the Animorphs a couple of years after the war. I’m really disappointed we don’t get more of Tobias’ perspective. We’re supposed to infer that he is just so heartbroken from losing Rachel he wants to go off and live that hawk life. I would have liked to hear that from him, though.
I don’t mind Rachel dying. I think it’s fitting that at least one Animorph lost their life, and Applegate gives Rachel a hero’s death. She would make a great Klingon. She is bold and tough as nails and she wants to make a difference. The first chapter of this book might actually be one of the best chapters in the entire series, because it’s really where it pays off. (That being said, the fact we don’t really get revenge on the Blade ship Yeerks disappoints me too.)
I guess what I’m trying to say is that The Beginning is very uneven. That is probably fitting, considering that this series as a whole is very uneven. I’ve been ruminating lately on how TV seasons have been shrinking in episode number over the past decade, and how sometimes this has resulted in a net increase in average episode quality. When you have a 22 or 26 episode season, it can be tough for every episode to be amazing. The same is true for a long-running series. Animorphs reminds me of a comic book series more than a novel series, in some ways. There have been many instalments that just fall flat and don’t work, not even really as a kid reader. There have been equally as many, if not more, amazing stories that stand well as part of the series or even on their own. (Remember the time Rachel totally definitely killed David? Because she did. Fight me.)
Applegate could have written the ending as literally a single page that reads, “They all die. The Yeerks lose. The end.” And that would not have detracted from the rest of this series.
Animorphs is a titanic achievement, for a writer, and an amazing experience for a young reader. Yes, I read Harry Potter as a kid (or rather, the first six books) and enjoyed that series. But Animorphs was the children’s series that raised me. I read that shit long after I had outpaced that reading level as a precocious child because these characters and these stories spoke to me. I watched every single deliciously flawed episode of the ill-conceived Nickelodeon TV series. I downloaded and played that impossibly frustrating computer game where you have to navigate your Animorph through a maze to collect keys and you can morph but only for like five seconds and whoops now you got spotted by a controller and uggggh it was awful. But I played it, because it was Animorphs. I’m pretty sure if they had launched an Animorphs pay-to-play website or something I would have stolen my parents’ credit card and committed identity theft just to get access. I might never have the ability to morph, but I am certain Animorphs itself is in my DNA at this point.
My reviews of Animorphs:
← #53: The Answer | #1: The Invasion →
Like the rest of my reviews of Animorphs, I’m not really flagging this as having spoilers despite discussing the plot, because I figure that if you’re reading this review of the end of a 50-book series 20 years later, then you probably don’t care that much about spoilers.
And if the only answer you’re looking for in this review is the answer to the question, “Does it hold up?” That answer is yes, unreservedly, and more so than I ever expected.
Certainly this series has its flaws, its problems, and as a book written for middle grade and young adults, there are definitely times I feel like, as an adult, Applegate is not writing for me. I read these books now with a more critical eye than I would when I was younger—and there is nothing wrong with that. Nevertheless, for younger readers—dated ’90s references aside—I think these books would still be just as formative and valuable today. And for those of us reading for nostalgia reasons, these books are no less powerful or remarkable for the story Applegate tells.
The Beginning wraps up the cliffhanger battle from The Answer pretty quickly. Then it jumps forward one year and then another two years so we can see what this hath wrought. And while this series as a whole holds up, this particular book is dissatisfying. It was dissatisfying to me when I was a kid, and it is dissatisfying now.
Note that this is just me being particularly harsh. Endings are hard. Endings for a series are even harder, and truth be told, there are very few series whose endings I have loved. Want to know my most perfect series finale? Orphan Black.
Alas, The Beginning is more Battlestar Galactica—although, to give Applegate credit, I think she managed to tie everything up much more credibly than Moore et al did. (It’s probably closer to Star Trek: Voyager “Endgame” on the finale scale.)
Also, when I say I’m dissatisfied, I’m not talking about that last chapter. I get why Applegate wants Jake to go out with a bang, and why she wanted to leave the fans with something. As a kid, I literally just shrugged and moved on to the next book (such an old man pragmatist even back then). As an adult me, I also kind of shrugged—perhaps more ruefully—and hit up the Internet to read fanfic speculation.
No, what I don’t like about The Beginning is its broad-strokes approach to the character development of our main cast. Everything feels a bit like a stereotype of these characters, from dedicated Cassie to easygoing Marco to depressed Jake. (Marco in particular, with his “all the ladies want me” vibe, really creeped me out). We can wring our hands and talk about how Applegate could only do so much in the space she had (really, I think Scholastic should have sprung for a “Megamorphs” sized finale book). But the truth is that this ending really only offers a shallow snapshot of the Animorphs a couple of years after the war. I’m really disappointed we don’t get more of Tobias’ perspective. We’re supposed to infer that he is just so heartbroken from losing Rachel he wants to go off and live that hawk life. I would have liked to hear that from him, though.
I don’t mind Rachel dying. I think it’s fitting that at least one Animorph lost their life, and Applegate gives Rachel a hero’s death. She would make a great Klingon. She is bold and tough as nails and she wants to make a difference. The first chapter of this book might actually be one of the best chapters in the entire series, because it’s really where it pays off. (That being said, the fact we don’t really get revenge on the Blade ship Yeerks disappoints me too.)
I guess what I’m trying to say is that The Beginning is very uneven. That is probably fitting, considering that this series as a whole is very uneven. I’ve been ruminating lately on how TV seasons have been shrinking in episode number over the past decade, and how sometimes this has resulted in a net increase in average episode quality. When you have a 22 or 26 episode season, it can be tough for every episode to be amazing. The same is true for a long-running series. Animorphs reminds me of a comic book series more than a novel series, in some ways. There have been many instalments that just fall flat and don’t work, not even really as a kid reader. There have been equally as many, if not more, amazing stories that stand well as part of the series or even on their own. (Remember the time Rachel totally definitely killed David? Because she did. Fight me.)
Applegate could have written the ending as literally a single page that reads, “They all die. The Yeerks lose. The end.” And that would not have detracted from the rest of this series.
Animorphs is a titanic achievement, for a writer, and an amazing experience for a young reader. Yes, I read Harry Potter as a kid (or rather, the first six books) and enjoyed that series. But Animorphs was the children’s series that raised me. I read that shit long after I had outpaced that reading level as a precocious child because these characters and these stories spoke to me. I watched every single deliciously flawed episode of the ill-conceived Nickelodeon TV series. I downloaded and played that impossibly frustrating computer game where you have to navigate your Animorph through a maze to collect keys and you can morph but only for like five seconds and whoops now you got spotted by a controller and uggggh it was awful. But I played it, because it was Animorphs. I’m pretty sure if they had launched an Animorphs pay-to-play website or something I would have stolen my parents’ credit card and committed identity theft just to get access. I might never have the ability to morph, but I am certain Animorphs itself is in my DNA at this point.
My reviews of Animorphs:
← #53: The Answer | #1: The Invasion →
July 22, 2010
I had read THE ENTIRE SERIES by the time I was 13 or 14. There's no doubt in my mind that this is as good as kids' literature can get. I've never watched the TV series, and I don't intend to, out of fear of it ruining the intense experience that is the Animorphs books. K.A. Applegate made me laugh, cry and nearly crap my pants more than any other author could back in the day. Hell, she's what got me into reading in the first place.
She crafts an unbelievably creative universe; her characters - human and alien - are all incredibly different but are united in that they are so easy to relate to. The plot is rich yet easy to keep track of. The author managed to write some extraordinary fiction - without sounding preachy or cliche!
The only thing that I dislike about the series is that it's thought of as "kid stuff." I'd recommend it to everyone I know but they wouldn't take me seriously - all they know about Animorphs is that it was a corny TV show on Nickelodeon. Someday I'll ignore the inevitable ridicule and re-re-read every book - because I know that it will be just as intense, beautiful, sad, epic, and mind-blowing as it was when I was a kid. No, this isn't just nostalgia - no matter how old you are, you can appreciate the awesomeness of a lone survivor of an ancient alien civilization's ascent to near-godhood; love that transcends the most inconceivable boundaries; hundreds of moral crises contained within one another; coping with the deaths (or worse) of those close to you; foregoing your identity for the good of your species; being trapped in a universe composed by nothing more than your own memories - I could go on for days.
Many other readers have expressed concern over this being directed at children/early teens, due to how "heavy" it is - it deals with concepts that even grown adults have trouble dealing with - but I think they're being overprotective. I think *everyone* should read the series at some point in their life. Animorphs has showed me the beauty of nature at every scale, the qualities common to all living things, the inevitability of death, and so much more. It has taught me more than any other book from my childhood and played a significant part in making me the person I am now. And believe me, I love who I am now.
Thank you, Katherine Alice Applegate. You have earned all of my respect and admiration. I can only hope to change lives in the same way you have changed mine.
She crafts an unbelievably creative universe; her characters - human and alien - are all incredibly different but are united in that they are so easy to relate to. The plot is rich yet easy to keep track of. The author managed to write some extraordinary fiction - without sounding preachy or cliche!
The only thing that I dislike about the series is that it's thought of as "kid stuff." I'd recommend it to everyone I know but they wouldn't take me seriously - all they know about Animorphs is that it was a corny TV show on Nickelodeon. Someday I'll ignore the inevitable ridicule and re-re-read every book - because I know that it will be just as intense, beautiful, sad, epic, and mind-blowing as it was when I was a kid. No, this isn't just nostalgia - no matter how old you are, you can appreciate the awesomeness of a lone survivor of an ancient alien civilization's ascent to near-godhood; love that transcends the most inconceivable boundaries; hundreds of moral crises contained within one another; coping with the deaths (or worse) of those close to you; foregoing your identity for the good of your species; being trapped in a universe composed by nothing more than your own memories - I could go on for days.
Many other readers have expressed concern over this being directed at children/early teens, due to how "heavy" it is - it deals with concepts that even grown adults have trouble dealing with - but I think they're being overprotective. I think *everyone* should read the series at some point in their life. Animorphs has showed me the beauty of nature at every scale, the qualities common to all living things, the inevitability of death, and so much more. It has taught me more than any other book from my childhood and played a significant part in making me the person I am now. And believe me, I love who I am now.
Thank you, Katherine Alice Applegate. You have earned all of my respect and admiration. I can only hope to change lives in the same way you have changed mine.
May 4, 2023
Wow. It's done.
This is more a series review than The Beginning in particular, as I mainlined them all during this re-read\finally finishing project.
My heart hurts, and yet I feel so fulfilled. K.A. Applegate wrote a series of young people at war in an era just pre-Iraq conflict, and the message that no one truly wins in war hits. Over twenty years later when I finish these (partly glad my pre-teen self never finished, as I was quite emo enough thanks), the messaging is still spot-on. We have normalized concepts like PTSD, the non-physical wounds war leaves, the devastating social effects, the weight of a leader's decisions. The character of David was a vivid reminder of how power corrupts.
Beyond the war messaging, I found so much to appreciate in Animorphs. I've always been an animal lover, and gained so much knowledge through these books. More than one class assignment about wolves or ospreys was born from reading Animorphs. The introduction of Andalites, Hork-Bajr and more taught acceptance of the new, the Other, something that has really hit for me as a queer adult who has seen the harmful and transphobic language other middle grade authors have engaged in.
And then there is the 90s nostalgia. Doritos, the novelty of Cinnabon, Rachel's forays to shop in Express, the mentions of early web usage and IT concepts.
These books have humor, education, and somber social commentary to offer, and I'm so glad they were part of my reading journey even up to this age.
This is more a series review than The Beginning in particular, as I mainlined them all during this re-read\finally finishing project.
My heart hurts, and yet I feel so fulfilled. K.A. Applegate wrote a series of young people at war in an era just pre-Iraq conflict, and the message that no one truly wins in war hits. Over twenty years later when I finish these (partly glad my pre-teen self never finished, as I was quite emo enough thanks), the messaging is still spot-on. We have normalized concepts like PTSD, the non-physical wounds war leaves, the devastating social effects, the weight of a leader's decisions. The character of David was a vivid reminder of how power corrupts.
Beyond the war messaging, I found so much to appreciate in Animorphs. I've always been an animal lover, and gained so much knowledge through these books. More than one class assignment about wolves or ospreys was born from reading Animorphs. The introduction of Andalites, Hork-Bajr and more taught acceptance of the new, the Other, something that has really hit for me as a queer adult who has seen the harmful and transphobic language other middle grade authors have engaged in.
And then there is the 90s nostalgia. Doritos, the novelty of Cinnabon, Rachel's forays to shop in Express, the mentions of early web usage and IT concepts.
These books have humor, education, and somber social commentary to offer, and I'm so glad they were part of my reading journey even up to this age.
December 26, 2013
The Animorphs are in their final battle in the Yeerk war. Rachel is on a suicide mission to eliminate Tom. The others have seized the Pool ship’s bridge and in a strangely out of character moment Visser One surrenders. The war appears to be won. There are only two loose ends left: the Andalite fleet, and Rachel…
Oh god. This book. The feels. You know, growing up, Cassie was my favourite character. I loved her gentleness and her morals and her ability to do the right thing in any situation, even if the right thing was a bad thing (say, blowing up the Yeerk pool). It was Cassie, essentially, who turned the tide of the war by giving the Yeerks a taste of the freedom they craved, and in turn, the Taxxons, leading to the alliance that would shatter the Yeerk military.
But as I grew older, I saw Rachel. My goddess. My hero. My beautiful, reckless, fearless role model.
I wanted to be Rachel. Not for her beauty, though god that could be fun. But for her fearlessness, for her recklessness, for her guts to do and say whatever it took to hurt the bad guys. Hard. See, in real life, I’m a non-confrontationalist. I back down. I let people walk all over me because I don’t have the guts to stand up for myself. Rachel was, quite simply, my idol.
And then she dies. After 53 regular books and 4 Megamorphs of ass-kicking, even when she has no powers, she dies. It hurt me.
Fair enough, someone had to. Someone had to die. It couldn’t be Jakes, because he was Applegate’s favourite. It couldn’t be Marco, her favourite to write, or Cassie, who was most like her, or Tobias, who was hands down the fan favourite. It couldn’t be Ax because he was the minority. It had to be our fearless warrior princess because she couldn’t live without the war. It had to be her, sent on a crazy, suicidal mission only she could pull off. Yes, her death is a completely tragedy, but I’m OK with it. Because in war, people die. Fuck, even in non-wars people die. Last year my grandfather died, for no reason, and he was the most wonderful amazing gentle lovely man on the whole fucking planet. Literary deaths do not need to make sense, because real life deaths do not.
But oh Rachel. I cried. You brave, beautiful thing.
So now that I’ve spoiled the shit out of this, let’s talk about the book. One third of it is dedicated to the surrender and negotiations of the Yeerks after the Blade ship jettisons Rachel and runs away. The Andalites rock up and refuse to play ball. Jake produces his own bats and stares them down. They finally retreat after poking out their tongues and give Ax a ball to play with. This analogy is weird, but just go with it. This is all thanks to Alloran, the host of Visser One, who had been put into an empty briefcase that amusingly, once held some cookies. Alloran had forgotten more about Andalite politics than Ax even knows, but he’s still a prince and even though he’s been a mind-controlled slave for like 30 years or some shit, he still kicks all kinds of ass and forces the Andalites into a uncomfortable retreat. Ax is promoted. No more fried Earth. The Yeerks and Taxxons will be allowed to become nothlits. War over. Now start the Andalite tourism trade.
The Animorphs land in Washington and become not only national heroes but international heroes. Tobias takes Rachel’s urn. Fast forward a year and the Hork-Bajir live in Yellowstone. Marco is a multi-millionaire TV star. Cassie has some government job looking after the Hork-Bajir. Jake is depressed and won’t forgive himself for ordering his cousin to kill is brother then dying. Tobias hasn’t been seen (despite the many ‘Tobias sightings’). At Visser One’s war crimes trial he accuses Jake of being a war criminal because he flushed seventeen thousand unhosted Yeerks into space. Jake gets off. Visser One goes down for a long time. Jake morphs a dolphin an magically becomes un-depressed.
Fast forward two years and Jake is now teaching anti-terrorism. A is exploring space and falls to the mercy of some new alien threat. Jake collects the boys, leaves Cassie to her government job, and goes running off into space to save Ax on a spaceship named after Rachel, only to find themselves outmatched in almost every way more than six months later. Their only hope of killing Rachel’s murderer is to ‘ram the Blade ship.’
So, this book. Worth it? Yes. Painful? God yes. All the feels. Two thirds of it are dedicated to life after war only to find that some people can’t live without conflict and go running back into space the first chance they get. I understand that, it happens in real life. There’s no real anti-war message here, because Jake will always go down fighting, and Marco will always be with him, and Tobias wanted to find Rachel’s murderer. I was only sad that essentially Ax abandons the humans and returns to the Andalites to command his own Dome ship. Understandable, but I always harboured a fantasy he’d live forever on Earth, occasionally morphing to human to eat a cinnamon bun.
The story is told in multiple perspectives, like the Megamorphs. Everyone’s got a part of the story to tell. Technically it should be a Rachel book, and it does open with her, in what is possibly the most moving suicide mission I’ve ever read. It contains my favourite quote from like the ENTIRE series:
“And oh, god, how could so much regret and so much sweetness and so much sadness all be present in that single moment. I was already dead and missing my unlived life. I was already dead and Tobias was mourning. I tried to smile. For him."
- Rachel
It wraps up almost everything and introduces the new conflict to demonstrate how war never really ends, there is always the next one to go to, because the universe is a damn big place. Because what they fight for, basic freedom, is always being threatened. I would have liked to have sees what happened to Alloran – did he go back to his wife? And I would have liked to learn what happened to the Hork-Bajir home world. Last time we saw them we left them with a rebellion and a weapons cache. The free Hork-Bajir made a home on Earth, but what happened to the Controllers? And were the Yeerks on the Yeerk home world doomed to swim forever blind, deaf and mute in dirty pools or were they also allowed the freedom to choose another form forever, to basically eliminate the Yeerk race?
I wish those questions were answered. And the cliffhanger? Utterly brutal. The worst one I’ve ever read. This book is the reason I never complain about character deaths or cliffhangers in other novels, because nothing will ever leave me feeling as much as this ending did. My favourite character gone. Major characters wiped out. Cassie foreveralone. But the cliffhanger served its purpose: it allowed people to think up their own endings. It wasn’t lazy writing or an easy way out – it showed how the conflict will always continue and how Jake wasn’t happy unless he was fighting.
Endings are hard, yo. While you’re in the middle of the story all possible endings are still open. This is why love triangles work so well in books until one lover is chosen, the other jilted, and the story ends. The open-endedness of stories keeps people reading. You don’t know how it’s going to end, and once it does end, you’re either going to like it or not. Endings polarise readers. This ending hurt an entire fandom. Most of them, I think, weren’t okay with it. From what I remember, I was. I’d followed the entire series and owned every single freaking book. There was no way I was investing that much money and time and effort and NOT being satisfied by the conclusion.
I wrote an ending from Cassie’s point of view when I was in high school, the year the series ended, and I chose to write a mammoth project based on the whole thing. (I also wrote an essay on Rachel at University. What can I say? The story stayed with me, which is why I spent 2013 re-reading the books.)
In my story, Cassie falls victim to the Drode posing as the Ellimist and is thrown into different realities trying to save Jake and the others. The Yeerks on the home world were all allowed to become nothlits. There are zombie Hork-Bajir. Then for some reason Jake and the others plus Ax and his crew end up at the Pentagon and everyone’s OK. I guess I wasn’t as cool with the series end back when I was a teen as I am now.
This is the end.
Oh god. This book. The feels. You know, growing up, Cassie was my favourite character. I loved her gentleness and her morals and her ability to do the right thing in any situation, even if the right thing was a bad thing (say, blowing up the Yeerk pool). It was Cassie, essentially, who turned the tide of the war by giving the Yeerks a taste of the freedom they craved, and in turn, the Taxxons, leading to the alliance that would shatter the Yeerk military.
But as I grew older, I saw Rachel. My goddess. My hero. My beautiful, reckless, fearless role model.
I wanted to be Rachel. Not for her beauty, though god that could be fun. But for her fearlessness, for her recklessness, for her guts to do and say whatever it took to hurt the bad guys. Hard. See, in real life, I’m a non-confrontationalist. I back down. I let people walk all over me because I don’t have the guts to stand up for myself. Rachel was, quite simply, my idol.
And then she dies. After 53 regular books and 4 Megamorphs of ass-kicking, even when she has no powers, she dies. It hurt me.
Fair enough, someone had to. Someone had to die. It couldn’t be Jakes, because he was Applegate’s favourite. It couldn’t be Marco, her favourite to write, or Cassie, who was most like her, or Tobias, who was hands down the fan favourite. It couldn’t be Ax because he was the minority. It had to be our fearless warrior princess because she couldn’t live without the war. It had to be her, sent on a crazy, suicidal mission only she could pull off. Yes, her death is a completely tragedy, but I’m OK with it. Because in war, people die. Fuck, even in non-wars people die. Last year my grandfather died, for no reason, and he was the most wonderful amazing gentle lovely man on the whole fucking planet. Literary deaths do not need to make sense, because real life deaths do not.
But oh Rachel. I cried. You brave, beautiful thing.
So now that I’ve spoiled the shit out of this, let’s talk about the book. One third of it is dedicated to the surrender and negotiations of the Yeerks after the Blade ship jettisons Rachel and runs away. The Andalites rock up and refuse to play ball. Jake produces his own bats and stares them down. They finally retreat after poking out their tongues and give Ax a ball to play with. This analogy is weird, but just go with it. This is all thanks to Alloran, the host of Visser One, who had been put into an empty briefcase that amusingly, once held some cookies. Alloran had forgotten more about Andalite politics than Ax even knows, but he’s still a prince and even though he’s been a mind-controlled slave for like 30 years or some shit, he still kicks all kinds of ass and forces the Andalites into a uncomfortable retreat. Ax is promoted. No more fried Earth. The Yeerks and Taxxons will be allowed to become nothlits. War over. Now start the Andalite tourism trade.
The Animorphs land in Washington and become not only national heroes but international heroes. Tobias takes Rachel’s urn. Fast forward a year and the Hork-Bajir live in Yellowstone. Marco is a multi-millionaire TV star. Cassie has some government job looking after the Hork-Bajir. Jake is depressed and won’t forgive himself for ordering his cousin to kill is brother then dying. Tobias hasn’t been seen (despite the many ‘Tobias sightings’). At Visser One’s war crimes trial he accuses Jake of being a war criminal because he flushed seventeen thousand unhosted Yeerks into space. Jake gets off. Visser One goes down for a long time. Jake morphs a dolphin an magically becomes un-depressed.
Fast forward two years and Jake is now teaching anti-terrorism. A is exploring space and falls to the mercy of some new alien threat. Jake collects the boys, leaves Cassie to her government job, and goes running off into space to save Ax on a spaceship named after Rachel, only to find themselves outmatched in almost every way more than six months later. Their only hope of killing Rachel’s murderer is to ‘ram the Blade ship.’
So, this book. Worth it? Yes. Painful? God yes. All the feels. Two thirds of it are dedicated to life after war only to find that some people can’t live without conflict and go running back into space the first chance they get. I understand that, it happens in real life. There’s no real anti-war message here, because Jake will always go down fighting, and Marco will always be with him, and Tobias wanted to find Rachel’s murderer. I was only sad that essentially Ax abandons the humans and returns to the Andalites to command his own Dome ship. Understandable, but I always harboured a fantasy he’d live forever on Earth, occasionally morphing to human to eat a cinnamon bun.
The story is told in multiple perspectives, like the Megamorphs. Everyone’s got a part of the story to tell. Technically it should be a Rachel book, and it does open with her, in what is possibly the most moving suicide mission I’ve ever read. It contains my favourite quote from like the ENTIRE series:
“And oh, god, how could so much regret and so much sweetness and so much sadness all be present in that single moment. I was already dead and missing my unlived life. I was already dead and Tobias was mourning. I tried to smile. For him."
- Rachel
It wraps up almost everything and introduces the new conflict to demonstrate how war never really ends, there is always the next one to go to, because the universe is a damn big place. Because what they fight for, basic freedom, is always being threatened. I would have liked to have sees what happened to Alloran – did he go back to his wife? And I would have liked to learn what happened to the Hork-Bajir home world. Last time we saw them we left them with a rebellion and a weapons cache. The free Hork-Bajir made a home on Earth, but what happened to the Controllers? And were the Yeerks on the Yeerk home world doomed to swim forever blind, deaf and mute in dirty pools or were they also allowed the freedom to choose another form forever, to basically eliminate the Yeerk race?
I wish those questions were answered. And the cliffhanger? Utterly brutal. The worst one I’ve ever read. This book is the reason I never complain about character deaths or cliffhangers in other novels, because nothing will ever leave me feeling as much as this ending did. My favourite character gone. Major characters wiped out. Cassie foreveralone. But the cliffhanger served its purpose: it allowed people to think up their own endings. It wasn’t lazy writing or an easy way out – it showed how the conflict will always continue and how Jake wasn’t happy unless he was fighting.
Endings are hard, yo. While you’re in the middle of the story all possible endings are still open. This is why love triangles work so well in books until one lover is chosen, the other jilted, and the story ends. The open-endedness of stories keeps people reading. You don’t know how it’s going to end, and once it does end, you’re either going to like it or not. Endings polarise readers. This ending hurt an entire fandom. Most of them, I think, weren’t okay with it. From what I remember, I was. I’d followed the entire series and owned every single freaking book. There was no way I was investing that much money and time and effort and NOT being satisfied by the conclusion.
I wrote an ending from Cassie’s point of view when I was in high school, the year the series ended, and I chose to write a mammoth project based on the whole thing. (I also wrote an essay on Rachel at University. What can I say? The story stayed with me, which is why I spent 2013 re-reading the books.)
In my story, Cassie falls victim to the Drode posing as the Ellimist and is thrown into different realities trying to save Jake and the others. The Yeerks on the home world were all allowed to become nothlits. There are zombie Hork-Bajir. Then for some reason Jake and the others plus Ax and his crew end up at the Pentagon and everyone’s OK. I guess I wasn’t as cool with the series end back when I was a teen as I am now.
This is the end.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 7, 2022
Lazy.
Just so fucking lazy. So much left out, so many major characters completely forgotten about by the author, so many storylines that feel wildly incomplete for no logical reason.
This was such a let down.
CW: war, violence, death, grief, slavery, murder, mass murder, genocide, suicide, terrorism
Just so fucking lazy. So much left out, so many major characters completely forgotten about by the author, so many storylines that feel wildly incomplete for no logical reason.
This was such a let down.
CW: war, violence, death, grief, slavery, murder, mass murder, genocide, suicide, terrorism
August 7, 2014
Finally done with Animorphs! REJOICE, and cry!
Believe me, I didn't like that the book ended with such a weird open end, but I do like that the sacrifices made ended up allowing humanity to be human, and then the individual members of the Animorphs team have to go on to be something other than secret soldiers. Each was ruined and strengthened by the war in different ways, and this book shows what became of them. It's REALISTIC that things didn't really turn out happy for any of them. And if there's one thing I respected about this series, it's that it nailed human nature to a T.
Notable moments and inconsistencies:
Jake's morph at the beginning of the book is stated to be a Bengal tiger. The tiger he actually acquired was Siberian; this is a continuity glitch since there was no other tiger acquisition adventure.
A line stating that Tom's Yeerk screamed with Tom's mouth is inaccurate because he does it in thought-speak.
Marco discusses having released a book about his life with the assistance of a ghostwriter. It's notable that Applegate acknowledges ghostwriters here since many of the Animorphs books were written by them.
This book uses thought-speak quoting within thought-speak--as in, a thought-speaking Andalite quotes what another Andalite said in thought-speak, and the same symbols are used--but one of the thought-speak quotes was never closed.
No big reunion drama or really any notes at all were made about the fact that Jake's parents were alive. They have to have been because Jake mentions buying them a house and then moving out. Mostly none of the parents are followed up on. Marco seemed to be very stuck on his parents being back together before the war ended, but he doesn't mention them at all in the post-war story and it's never mentioned what became of his dad's marriage to another woman. It's never mentioned whether Rachel's dad was found or whether he'd been taken during the phase of the war when the Yeerks were trying to seize the Animorphs' families. Her mother cried at her funeral but her dad wasn't mentioned. Cassie's parents aren't discussed. And Tobias, who fought for the chance to get to know his mother, doesn't appear to associate with her at all.
Interesting that Jake calls the male recruit by his last name but the female recruit by her first name.
Believe me, I didn't like that the book ended with such a weird open end, but I do like that the sacrifices made ended up allowing humanity to be human, and then the individual members of the Animorphs team have to go on to be something other than secret soldiers. Each was ruined and strengthened by the war in different ways, and this book shows what became of them. It's REALISTIC that things didn't really turn out happy for any of them. And if there's one thing I respected about this series, it's that it nailed human nature to a T.
Notable moments and inconsistencies:
Jake's morph at the beginning of the book is stated to be a Bengal tiger. The tiger he actually acquired was Siberian; this is a continuity glitch since there was no other tiger acquisition adventure.
A line stating that Tom's Yeerk screamed with Tom's mouth is inaccurate because he does it in thought-speak.
Marco discusses having released a book about his life with the assistance of a ghostwriter. It's notable that Applegate acknowledges ghostwriters here since many of the Animorphs books were written by them.
This book uses thought-speak quoting within thought-speak--as in, a thought-speaking Andalite quotes what another Andalite said in thought-speak, and the same symbols are used--but one of the thought-speak quotes was never closed.
No big reunion drama or really any notes at all were made about the fact that Jake's parents were alive. They have to have been because Jake mentions buying them a house and then moving out. Mostly none of the parents are followed up on. Marco seemed to be very stuck on his parents being back together before the war ended, but he doesn't mention them at all in the post-war story and it's never mentioned what became of his dad's marriage to another woman. It's never mentioned whether Rachel's dad was found or whether he'd been taken during the phase of the war when the Yeerks were trying to seize the Animorphs' families. Her mother cried at her funeral but her dad wasn't mentioned. Cassie's parents aren't discussed. And Tobias, who fought for the chance to get to know his mother, doesn't appear to associate with her at all.
Interesting that Jake calls the male recruit by his last name but the female recruit by her first name.
November 4, 2007
This was so disappointing. After reading this final book of the series, I never want to read another K.A. Applegate book.
May 16, 2023
Suffice to say, I’m wrecked.
Beyond that, though: I’m deeply grateful to have taken the time to revisit Animorphs nearly 30 years since its original publication.
Upon completing the 60+ books of a series dedicated to examining the parts of our humanity that we lose in war, the moral gray areas many of us begrudgingly live our adult lives in, and the sheer and brutal grief of realizing you can never go home again, I can tell you one thing: a whole hell of a lot of this series went over my head when I was 8. (More than anything, that’s probably an indicator of a well-adjusted childhood; I’ll take it!)
These books are more than silly covers and cheesy titles and flipbook animations. (Although they’re also those things, and I love them for that.) Animorphs is a trauma narrative, a coming-of-age story, and a gutting reimagining of World War II and Vietnam and the Cold War, all wrapped into one. I loved the difficult questions this series made me ask myself, and I’ll miss these characters very much.
I’d apologize for spamming everyone’s Goodreads feeds with updates from this series, but truthfully, it wouldn’t be sincere. Thank you KA Applegate, and thank you Animorphs. May the powers at be never try to make a live action Nickelodeon adaption of this series again.
Beyond that, though: I’m deeply grateful to have taken the time to revisit Animorphs nearly 30 years since its original publication.
Upon completing the 60+ books of a series dedicated to examining the parts of our humanity that we lose in war, the moral gray areas many of us begrudgingly live our adult lives in, and the sheer and brutal grief of realizing you can never go home again, I can tell you one thing: a whole hell of a lot of this series went over my head when I was 8. (More than anything, that’s probably an indicator of a well-adjusted childhood; I’ll take it!)
These books are more than silly covers and cheesy titles and flipbook animations. (Although they’re also those things, and I love them for that.) Animorphs is a trauma narrative, a coming-of-age story, and a gutting reimagining of World War II and Vietnam and the Cold War, all wrapped into one. I loved the difficult questions this series made me ask myself, and I’ll miss these characters very much.
I’d apologize for spamming everyone’s Goodreads feeds with updates from this series, but truthfully, it wouldn’t be sincere. Thank you KA Applegate, and thank you Animorphs. May the powers at be never try to make a live action Nickelodeon adaption of this series again.
December 20, 2011
The end of Animorphs. It was great to reread this one ten years later. KA Applegate does a great job showing the realities of life after war. It'd be awesome if all the characters went back to being kids after fighting for three years but sadly that's not the case. All the characters, Ax, Tobias, Marco, Cassie, Jake, and even Rachel get a say in the last installment but Jake's the most fleshed out character and as I mentioned before, my favorite. Something about the quiet, silent, and tragic war hero I guess. Still, I think there could of been more of Tobias because after Jake he's the most complex and interesting. The ending is annoyingly ambiguous but I think that ending how the series began-fighting- is a good way to go. I'd love to see these characters again.
June 8, 2016
Thank you, Ms. Applegate, for doing justice to the Animorphs and your readers, and for impressing us with so much depth and beauty and hardship and reality in their story.
On to the review: everything is under spoilers. Because though this is titled “The Beginning”, it is also “The End.” I should probably put spoilers within the spoiler, but that’s cumbersome. Just know that if you have not read the book, my very first paragraph will spoil things which happen well into this book for you. Enter at your own risk.
You were brave. You were strong. You were good. You mattered.
Quotes and few comments – I know, I know, this is an excessive number of quotes. But there was just so much poignancy, so much emotion, so much truth, that even though I rarely managed to put comments after the quote, you can bet that the reason I marked it noteworthy is for at least one of the reasons above, if not more than one.
This was 11 typed pages, Times New Roman size 11 font. So there is quite a bit more in the comments section, too...
On to the review: everything is under spoilers. Because though this is titled “The Beginning”, it is also “The End.” I should probably put spoilers within the spoiler, but that’s cumbersome. Just know that if you have not read the book, my very first paragraph will spoil things which happen well into this book for you. Enter at your own risk.
You were brave. You were strong. You were good. You mattered.
Quotes and few comments – I know, I know, this is an excessive number of quotes. But there was just so much poignancy, so much emotion, so much truth, that even though I rarely managed to put comments after the quote, you can bet that the reason I marked it noteworthy is for at least one of the reasons above, if not more than one.
This was 11 typed pages, Times New Roman size 11 font. So there is quite a bit more in the comments section, too...
February 16, 2025
*** 4.35 ***
And we made it to the end! It is bittersweet and I feel blue having to say goodbye to all these vibrant characters we got to know and love through the long journey... There were highs, lows, and plateaus, but overall, it was a lovely experience and it was totally worth it!!! I am grateful to my buddies who read the series with me and will miss the time we chatted about the fast steady friendships of Jake, Rachel, Marko, Cassie, Ax and Tobias. They were all so perfect in their imperfections, so human and flawed, so young and full of the insecurities teenagers have, but also so resolute in their desire to be the best versions of themselves they could be! I strongly recommend this series for middle grade readers and everyone young at heart 😃. It doesn't shy away from the difficult topics young people deal with in reality, while being a perfect entry into sci-fi.
Now I wish you all Happy Reading and may you always find what you Need in the pages of a Good Book 📚📖😃👍❤️!
And we made it to the end! It is bittersweet and I feel blue having to say goodbye to all these vibrant characters we got to know and love through the long journey... There were highs, lows, and plateaus, but overall, it was a lovely experience and it was totally worth it!!! I am grateful to my buddies who read the series with me and will miss the time we chatted about the fast steady friendships of Jake, Rachel, Marko, Cassie, Ax and Tobias. They were all so perfect in their imperfections, so human and flawed, so young and full of the insecurities teenagers have, but also so resolute in their desire to be the best versions of themselves they could be! I strongly recommend this series for middle grade readers and everyone young at heart 😃. It doesn't shy away from the difficult topics young people deal with in reality, while being a perfect entry into sci-fi.
Now I wish you all Happy Reading and may you always find what you Need in the pages of a Good Book 📚📖😃👍❤️!
August 15, 2020
I hated this ending for the series. The series balanced out fun with the serious psychological issues up until the last 3-4 books, when it devolved into edgey dourness and none of the character arcs' endings were satisfying. Yes, I get it, War is Hell, I got that in the first ~50 books. At least there was fun, humor, and inspiration during the first 80% of the series. But the ending kept hammering it in that soldiers can't recover after war, if you are an environmentalist then you're perfect and only then do you deserve to be happy, and being codependent and depressed is Romantic. Not to mention my favorite character getting killed off screen by a hastily thrown in rando villain and his "friends" barely seem to care about that. I was really disappointed in the ending.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 16, 2008
Okay I'm fine with the characters who died...it was a war after all and it would not be realistic or believable if everything tied up in a neat little clean bow.
In fact, I really liked this book and the one before it.
However, I don't know what the author was possibly thinking to just leave the book hanging like that. It was dumb. I now feel very unfulfilled and a bit angry.
In fact, I really liked this book and the one before it.
However, I don't know what the author was possibly thinking to just leave the book hanging like that. It was dumb. I now feel very unfulfilled and a bit angry.
June 11, 2024
It’s been 3 years of fight and the war is finally over. Not without its casualties, including Rachel and Jake’s brother Tom. My poor sweet Tobias, to whom Rachel was his everything, just up and left to be alone in life. Jake suffered PTSD for years. Jake and Cassie don’t actually end up together, because of all the trauma and he can’t trust her. Cassie and Marco thrived, becoming an ambassador for aliens and the spokesperson for the animorphs respectively. Ax commanded his own ship, in search of the escaped yeerk forces from Earth.
But of course, war never changes. Ax goes missing, and Jake bring back Marco and Tobias and some new blood to start another war. I was conflicted on this ending, but it fits the message of war leading to war and the aftermath not being some rewarding and refreshing experience. Also leaves room for Applegate to write another and make all my dreams come true
There were 54 main books, 4 megamorphs, and 4 chronicles and I had an absolute blast going through them. I think the characters all complimented each other well and made for interesting interactions. There was drama, horror, trauma, love, and lots and lots of death.
Catch me in my reread in a few years, for now I bid the Animorphs adieu
But of course, war never changes. Ax goes missing, and Jake bring back Marco and Tobias and some new blood to start another war. I was conflicted on this ending, but it fits the message of war leading to war and the aftermath not being some rewarding and refreshing experience. Also leaves room for Applegate to write another and make all my dreams come true
There were 54 main books, 4 megamorphs, and 4 chronicles and I had an absolute blast going through them. I think the characters all complimented each other well and made for interesting interactions. There was drama, horror, trauma, love, and lots and lots of death.
Catch me in my reread in a few years, for now I bid the Animorphs adieu
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 15, 2017
*Gets to the end* *THROWS BOOK ACROSS THE ROOM*
I kind of wish what was needed from this book had been tacked onto the end of the last book (which was FANTASTIC btw) and then we got a small epilogue glimpse of the future at the war crimes trial, which could be enough to engage with the morality issues that would otherwise be left undiscussed, and then called it there because.
ARGH.
I mean, I get it. I get what she wanted to do. But I am the kind of reader/story enjoyer who likes a firm conclusion vs the open-ended YOU GET TO DECIDE WHAT HAPPENS FOR YOURSELF! kind of finish. Like that stupid spinning top in Inception? Get Out. And the ending of Arrival, too, left me pretty ugh. I don't need a HAPPY ending, bittersweet is fine, even sad and tragic I can live with as long as it CONCLUDES. This finish feels like what I end up with when I write past the ending and maybe flailed a little bit and then say OKAY RIGHT I CAN DO THIS OTHER THING! PERFECT! and... it isn't.
I kind of wish what was needed from this book had been tacked onto the end of the last book (which was FANTASTIC btw) and then we got a small epilogue glimpse of the future at the war crimes trial, which could be enough to engage with the morality issues that would otherwise be left undiscussed, and then called it there because.
ARGH.
I mean, I get it. I get what she wanted to do. But I am the kind of reader/story enjoyer who likes a firm conclusion vs the open-ended YOU GET TO DECIDE WHAT HAPPENS FOR YOURSELF! kind of finish. Like that stupid spinning top in Inception? Get Out. And the ending of Arrival, too, left me pretty ugh. I don't need a HAPPY ending, bittersweet is fine, even sad and tragic I can live with as long as it CONCLUDES. This finish feels like what I end up with when I write past the ending and maybe flailed a little bit and then say OKAY RIGHT I CAN DO THIS OTHER THING! PERFECT! and... it isn't.
September 8, 2024
Applegate really is the Brian K. Vaughn of the kid's book world.
This lady can't end a series to save her life; her biggest series is no exception.
For all her talk about how war destroys people and you can't really recover, she couldn’t pull the trigger on her pet environmentalist character.
I've seen these kinds of endings done better in other children's literature, and they tend to be far less tonally jarring than this.
This lady can't end a series to save her life; her biggest series is no exception.
For all her talk about how war destroys people and you can't really recover, she couldn’t pull the trigger on her pet environmentalist character.
I've seen these kinds of endings done better in other children's literature, and they tend to be far less tonally jarring than this.
December 18, 2020
No. Nooooooo no nope. I did not just read 62 books this year for THAT ending. I am disgusted and have already created my headcanon which will be the actual ending in my head.
June 21, 2021
Well, I gone and done it. Yes, this book is listed as #54 in the Animorphs series, but it concludes a whopping 62-expansive set of books (including the Megamorphs, Chronicles, and Alternamorphs series').
I don't write many reviews for the books I read anymore, but feel prompted to do so at the conclusion of this series. First of all, I was an original fan of these books back when the first one released in 1996. I was 11 at the time, and fell right into Applegate's target audience. I was already a sci-fi nerd, with a love for Star Trek and Star Wars. I remember being so excited every month for another Animorphs book to release. I recall spending my hard-earned cash on these inexpensive books and staring admirably at them sitting together on my bookshelf as my collection grew. There were days I would just sit in my room, reading them cover to cover. And then, in 1999, I read book #27, The Exposed, and stopped reading Animorphs books altogether. I remember enjoying the book well enough, but I moved on to other books/series' that grabbed my attention, like Lloyd Alexander's The Chronicles of Prydain. Time moved on, and I kind of just forgot about Animorphs for a while.
Years later, as an adult, I remembered this gem of stories. I wondered about Jake, Marco, Tobias, Cassie, Rachel, and Ax. What happened to them through the series? I considered just hopping online to get a synopsis of the entire series to see how it all ended. But I stopped myself. I couldn't do that. I couldn't betray my 11-15 year-old self like that. So I decided to collect the rest of the books and embark on the adventure of reading the entire series, beginning to end. On March 16th 2020 (the day the USA shut down due to COVID-19), I picked up and reread book #1, The Invasion. Today, June 21st 2021, I completed the final book.
I can't emphasize it enough: I'm so glad I chose to read the series in its entirety.
There was so much that went over my head as a youth reading these books. I mean, they can be enjoyed by just about any readers of any age, but as I'm now a week away from the ripe old age of 36, I have a bit more life-experience to appreciate what goes on in these books. I'm also an author with several published books, and have a different viewpoint on character-building, plots, and story arcs. While not every entry in the Animorphs series blew me out of the water, they each were important stepping stones for this grand finale. I cared about all six of our protagonists. I was rooting for them... still rooting for them.
Apparently there was initial backlash on the ending of the series. I thought Applegate finished this masterfully. It concludes in a similar vein as Lois Lowry's The Giver. It's open to the reader's interpretation. The reader kind of gets to choose the ultimate ending. If you're going into a series about a long drawn out war, you better not be expecting a conclusion full of sunshine and roses. This looks at a very plausible and realistic ending, and anybody expecting something else is probably reading the wrong books.
Lastly, to those who haven't read Animorphs. If you're considering it, there is significant payoff. It's worth it, no matter what your age is. Perhaps you're like me and you read 1/3 of the books when you were younger. Go back and finish them! You won't regret it, and it will be so much more fulfilling completing the series rather than just googling the important events.
Thanks, KA Applegate, for the ride. Sorry it took me this long to finally get back to it. Better late than never, right?
I don't write many reviews for the books I read anymore, but feel prompted to do so at the conclusion of this series. First of all, I was an original fan of these books back when the first one released in 1996. I was 11 at the time, and fell right into Applegate's target audience. I was already a sci-fi nerd, with a love for Star Trek and Star Wars. I remember being so excited every month for another Animorphs book to release. I recall spending my hard-earned cash on these inexpensive books and staring admirably at them sitting together on my bookshelf as my collection grew. There were days I would just sit in my room, reading them cover to cover. And then, in 1999, I read book #27, The Exposed, and stopped reading Animorphs books altogether. I remember enjoying the book well enough, but I moved on to other books/series' that grabbed my attention, like Lloyd Alexander's The Chronicles of Prydain. Time moved on, and I kind of just forgot about Animorphs for a while.
Years later, as an adult, I remembered this gem of stories. I wondered about Jake, Marco, Tobias, Cassie, Rachel, and Ax. What happened to them through the series? I considered just hopping online to get a synopsis of the entire series to see how it all ended. But I stopped myself. I couldn't do that. I couldn't betray my 11-15 year-old self like that. So I decided to collect the rest of the books and embark on the adventure of reading the entire series, beginning to end. On March 16th 2020 (the day the USA shut down due to COVID-19), I picked up and reread book #1, The Invasion. Today, June 21st 2021, I completed the final book.
I can't emphasize it enough: I'm so glad I chose to read the series in its entirety.
There was so much that went over my head as a youth reading these books. I mean, they can be enjoyed by just about any readers of any age, but as I'm now a week away from the ripe old age of 36, I have a bit more life-experience to appreciate what goes on in these books. I'm also an author with several published books, and have a different viewpoint on character-building, plots, and story arcs. While not every entry in the Animorphs series blew me out of the water, they each were important stepping stones for this grand finale. I cared about all six of our protagonists. I was rooting for them... still rooting for them.
Apparently there was initial backlash on the ending of the series. I thought Applegate finished this masterfully. It concludes in a similar vein as Lois Lowry's The Giver. It's open to the reader's interpretation. The reader kind of gets to choose the ultimate ending. If you're going into a series about a long drawn out war, you better not be expecting a conclusion full of sunshine and roses. This looks at a very plausible and realistic ending, and anybody expecting something else is probably reading the wrong books.
Lastly, to those who haven't read Animorphs. If you're considering it, there is significant payoff. It's worth it, no matter what your age is. Perhaps you're like me and you read 1/3 of the books when you were younger. Go back and finish them! You won't regret it, and it will be so much more fulfilling completing the series rather than just googling the important events.
Thanks, KA Applegate, for the ride. Sorry it took me this long to finally get back to it. Better late than never, right?
August 20, 2008
I loved this entire series, but this last book was awful. The writing was good, but what happened to the characters was entirely dissatisfying. Rachel should not have died. She was my favorite character, and she should have been in the last chapter of the book. Cassie should have gone with Jake, Marco, and Tobias in the last chapter, and she should have married Jake. Tobias should have married Rachel, and should have become a human Nothlit of his human self. Ax should have married Estrid. Marco should have married Kelly. They didn't mention James at all, and they should have. Jake shouldnt have backstabbed Erek. The ending to this book was painful to both the readers and the characters.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 19, 2011
The last book killed off the entire series of 54 books, i read them all to the last moment for this ? For my favorite character to die, for cassie to get a super lame bf ? For jake to go emo ? And for tobias to join jake in depression? ...Marco ended up the the way i knew he would but the rest? And WORST of all is the damn ending, we don't even know if the characters survive the battle or not. I wish I never read this book in the first place
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 30, 2022
Well… Here we are. Sixteen months later, I have finally finished my full reread of the complete Animorphs saga, and am ready to review its final volume. Spoilers ahead, obviously.
Thematically as a series, Animorphs has always been focused on the deep trauma of war. On the bloody reality of combat, and the lingering stress that follows in its wake. On gray morality with no easy answers, and living with yourself after making the tough calls; on the loss of innocence, and child soldiers as a metaphor for anyone forced to shoulder adult responsibilities too early. It's no wonder, then, that this last title wraps up its big battle against the Yeerks, the resolution to the cliffhanger of the adrenaline-laced previous installment and basically the plot of the entire franchise, by about 15% of the way through the text. What came before was the winding story of a group of human teens thrust into the role of resisting and defeating those alien invaders. What follows here is the somber fallout.
Some of this is purely logistical: how will the surviving protagonists strike agreeable terms with the Andalite fleet that had been coming to scour the earth, and how will humanity adjust to the knowledge of extraterrestrial life and the existence of new interplanetary trade and tourism partners? What future is there for the Yeerks, Taxxons, and Hork-Bajir left behind on the planet? What will life look like for the Animorphs, now that the whole world knows their names, faces, and accomplishments? What can they possibly do next, given the sheer impracticality of ever resuming the quiet existence they'd had before the war?
The answers to that last question are fun for readers to learn, at least as far as Marco is concerned. He embraces the celebrity of it all, earning millions in brand endorsements, book sales, and movie rights. (His autobiography is called The Gorilla Speaks. I love it.) He dates models, drives sports cars, and lives in a mansion with a butler he calls Wetherbee. Cassie too is energized by the new opportunities available to an Animorph, although in true Cassie fashion she pivots into a quieter government job as Undersecretary of the Interior for Resident Aliens. And back home on the Andalite planet, Ax has been promoted to prince, given a hero's welcome, and made captain of his very own starship! It could all be seen as hokey wish fulfillment and an overly-rosy ending, were it not for how the humans clearly remain haunted by their experiences and worried about their friends who have recovered even less. As Cassie notes a year after the ceasefire, she and Marco are "in some way the only two real survivors."
And that brings us to Rachel. Are we deep enough into the review yet not to accidentally spoil anyone? Rachel's death aboard the stolen Blade ship at the beginning of this novel is absolutely gutting, even on a reread where I knew the entire time through the series where her story was headed. The worst part is that it's a perfect endpoint for her personal arc of discovering within herself a ruthlessness, a passion for bloodshed, and an utter lack of caution that works for her right up until the moment it doesn't. At several points in the previous volumes, she and the others have uneasily wondered how she'd ever adjust to civilian life after the war. It's fitting that we'll never know, and that her execution functions as one last great consequence for the team -- and specifically for their leader Jake, who ordered his cousin onto that ship in private to kill the Yeerk controlling his brother Tom, knowing she was unlikely to survive. It's a terrifically cruel writing choice that she succeeds in her mission -- with the help of Tobias, guiding her from helplessly afar when she's blinded by snake venom -- but is forced to demorph to escape her injuries, and so faces her fate as a human surrounded on all sides by Yeerks in battle morph. So too is her killer's salutation of "You fight well, human" and her short exchange with the Ellimist as already previewed in his Chronicles (without her name attached). I hate this chapter. It's probably one of the strongest and most effective in the entire series.
In the aftermath of losing Rachel, Jake and Tobias are devastated in two very different ways. Tobias retreats into life as a hawk, cutting off all contact with the rest of humanity and trying to forget himself as a simple creature of the woods. Rachel was his primary link to his old identity, and without her or the ability to forgive Jake, he has no wish to function as even remotely human again. Meanwhile Jake carries on in his own depressive funk, making public appearances when he needs to, but feeling empty and shattered by his actions. He never does get back together with Cassie romantically, presumably due to those feelings of guilt and depression, and she eventually moves on to date someone else while he spends his nights in disguise at Rachel's grave. "That's how I felt now, pretty much all the time," the young former general reflects. "Dark. Dull. Slow and stupid. Distracted, but not by anything in particular. Just like there was something else I should be thinking about but I couldn't recall what it was." I don't know if author K. A. Applegate -- aka the married team of Katherine Applegate and Michael Grant, which I guess I should mention for one last time -- has firsthand experience with such mental health struggles, but it's certainly a description that rings true to my own.
Jake is preoccupied with the deaths he orchestrated of Rachel and Tom, but also with his impulsive command to flush seventeen-thousand helpless Yeerks out into the vacuum of space in the penultimate novel. In my previous review, I was blunt in calling that act a mass murder and a war crime. That's an accusation that becomes textual here, and although it comes from the legal team for Visser One, captured and on trial in the Hague for his own foul deeds, it's not one that the teenager can easily shake. His friends may protest that the charge is too harsh, and the series ultimately doesn't come down one way or another on the question, but I appreciate that it's raised and considered at all, and that Jake is troubled by the event and his xenophobic motivations for it regardless. One last ethical conundrum for the group, with perhaps no clear right answer.
Plotwise, all of this is a little thin and oddly structured. We're hopping around from character to character like a Megamorphs in all but name, and there are three big time jumps in the novel -- first one year, then two years, then six months -- meaning that this single book alone spans more time than the previous 53 in the main series combined. Unfortunately, the rush to cover such a long period results in a lack of immersive depth, and the impression that we are just checking in on the Animorphs periodically rather than truly following their adventures anymore. There's not even much morphing of note that goes on after the Yeerk Empire is shattered, although the effort to snap Jake out of his depression by forcing him to morph into a dolphin is nice.
Near the end of the span covered by this story, Prince Aximili is still hunting through space for the lost Blade ship when he encounters a new hostile threat and is taken captive. And our human heroes, now 19 years old and settling into their post-Animorph lives one way or another, must rejoin to stage a rescue attempt (except for Cassie, whom Jake asks to stay behind in recognition of the good she's doing and the reality that she doesn't need a new cause as much as the rest of them). That involves some sharing of feelings and unloading of trauma, but all the getting-the-band-back-together sequence really achieves is sending the male Animorphs off into space alongside two new human helpers and an Andalite nothlit, on a ship they name the Rachel (and a mission that's amusingly and loudly not sanctioned by the Andalite leadership despite plainly having their complete unofficial cooperation). Marco hitting on the sole female crew member is probably the only real sour note in the book for me, but we honestly don't get to know the three newcomers well enough for any of them to particularly register.
Eventually this iteration of the team finds the unsettling gestalt entity that's apparently assimilated Ax, leaving us with one last sight of these figures on the brink of yet another battle. In the closing lines, Jake snaps an order to ram the Blade ship and Marco notes how much he looks like his dead cousin right then. Like the finale to the TV show Angel, the tale ends on a cliffhanger just before the fight begins, forever cementing the outnumbered heroes as valiant warriors in our minds.
A lot of this is great and a fitting conclusion to the epic saga that's preceded it, although everyone's parents are curiously absent throughout. The visser's host body Alloran is freed after decades of infestation! The majority of the defeated Yeerks and Taxxons choose to become nothlits and we ignore the genocidal implications of that and the fact that it negates the Iskoort connection that the Ellimist set up in book #26! Wealthy Andalites visit earth solely to morph human mouths and taste our cuisine! The Hork-Bajir move into Yellowstone National Park with Cassie's assistance! The Chee opt to remain in hiding for some reason! Stephen Spielberg makes an Animorphs movie with Marco as technical advisor!
Still, I'll confess to wanting more closure, more of a throughline to the extended denouement of this novel, and more thrilling heroics before it, not to mention a lengthier lead-up to the mysterious new villain at the end. (The Angel finale has its detractors, but at least it was building off several long-running plot threads. This business with The One truly comes out of nowhere.) In a closing note, Applegate writes, "I figured the Animorphs should go out the same way they came in: Fighting." A subsequent follow-up posted to a fansite (http://www.hiracdelest.com/database/a...) explains in more depth why the ending needed to be complicated and painful, apparently in response to complaints from her unsatisfied young readers: "So, you don't like the way our little fictional war came out? You don't like Rachel dead and Tobias shattered and Jake guilt-ridden? You don't like that one war simply led to another? Fine. Pretty soon you'll all be of voting age, and of draft age. So when someone proposes a war, remember that even the most necessary wars, even the rare wars where the lines of good and evil are clear and clean, end with a lot of people dead, a lot of people crippled, and a lot of orphans, widows and grieving parents." And that's reasonable enough, but I can't help but think that the delivery on the page is a little choppy compared to this series at its absolute best.
[Content warning for body horror, gun violence, and gore.]
★★★★☆
Postscript: Thank you so much for joining me in this reread of a series that meant so much to so many of us in the late 90s / early 2000s! I've really loved revisiting these books and building out a space here to work critically through what has and hasn't succeeded for me as an adult reader, both in my reviews and in the engaging comments that people have often left in the replies below. At a minimum, I appreciate your indulgence in putting up with the clog in your social media feeds as these recap-reviews grew steadily longer the deeper I got into the books.
Ordinarily when I finish a series, I like to rank the different individual volumes, but that seems exceedingly difficult with a franchise this massive. So here's just a recap of my ratings by tier:
★☆☆☆☆
Alternamorphs #1 The First Journey
★★☆☆☆
#28 The Experiment, Alternamorphs #2 The Next Passage, #37 The Weakness, #47 The Resistance
★★★☆☆
#6 The Capture, Megamorphs #1 The Andalite's Gift, #9 The Secret, #11 The Forgotten, #12 The Reaction, #14 The Unknown, #15 The Escape, #17 The Underground, #20 The Discovery, #23 The Pretender, #27 The Exposed, #32 The Separation, #35 The Proposal, #36 The Mutation, #38 The Arrival, #40 The Other, #41 The Familiar, #42 The Journey, #44 The Unexpected, #46 The Deception, #48 The Return
★★★★☆
#2 The Visitor, #3 The Encounter, #5 The Predator, #10 The Android, #13 The Change, #16 The Warning, #18 The Decision, #21 The Threat, #24 The Suspicion, #25 The Extreme, #26 The Attack, #29 The Sickness, Megamorphs #3 Elfangor's Secret, #30 The Reunion, #31 The Conspiracy, #33 The Illusion, #34 The Prophecy, #39 The Hidden, #43 The Test, #45 The Revelation, Chronicles #4 The Ellimist Chronicles, #49 The Diversion, #50 The Ultimate, #51 The Absolute, #54 The Beginning
★★★★★
#1 The Invasion, #4 The Message, #7 The Stranger, #8 The Alien, Chronicles #1 The Andalite Chronicles, Megamorphs #2 In the Time of Dinosaurs, #19 The Departure, #22 The Solution, Chronicles #2 The Hork-Bajir Chronicles, Chronicles #3 Visser, Megamorphs #4 Back to Before, #52 The Sacrifice, #53 The Answer
In terms of books with primary narrators, I guess that means I'd rank them Cassie > Tobias > Ax > Jake > Marco > Rachel on average, although they all have their share of greatness.
Overall rating for the Animorphs series: ★★★★☆
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Thematically as a series, Animorphs has always been focused on the deep trauma of war. On the bloody reality of combat, and the lingering stress that follows in its wake. On gray morality with no easy answers, and living with yourself after making the tough calls; on the loss of innocence, and child soldiers as a metaphor for anyone forced to shoulder adult responsibilities too early. It's no wonder, then, that this last title wraps up its big battle against the Yeerks, the resolution to the cliffhanger of the adrenaline-laced previous installment and basically the plot of the entire franchise, by about 15% of the way through the text. What came before was the winding story of a group of human teens thrust into the role of resisting and defeating those alien invaders. What follows here is the somber fallout.
Some of this is purely logistical: how will the surviving protagonists strike agreeable terms with the Andalite fleet that had been coming to scour the earth, and how will humanity adjust to the knowledge of extraterrestrial life and the existence of new interplanetary trade and tourism partners? What future is there for the Yeerks, Taxxons, and Hork-Bajir left behind on the planet? What will life look like for the Animorphs, now that the whole world knows their names, faces, and accomplishments? What can they possibly do next, given the sheer impracticality of ever resuming the quiet existence they'd had before the war?
The answers to that last question are fun for readers to learn, at least as far as Marco is concerned. He embraces the celebrity of it all, earning millions in brand endorsements, book sales, and movie rights. (His autobiography is called The Gorilla Speaks. I love it.) He dates models, drives sports cars, and lives in a mansion with a butler he calls Wetherbee. Cassie too is energized by the new opportunities available to an Animorph, although in true Cassie fashion she pivots into a quieter government job as Undersecretary of the Interior for Resident Aliens. And back home on the Andalite planet, Ax has been promoted to prince, given a hero's welcome, and made captain of his very own starship! It could all be seen as hokey wish fulfillment and an overly-rosy ending, were it not for how the humans clearly remain haunted by their experiences and worried about their friends who have recovered even less. As Cassie notes a year after the ceasefire, she and Marco are "in some way the only two real survivors."
And that brings us to Rachel. Are we deep enough into the review yet not to accidentally spoil anyone? Rachel's death aboard the stolen Blade ship at the beginning of this novel is absolutely gutting, even on a reread where I knew the entire time through the series where her story was headed. The worst part is that it's a perfect endpoint for her personal arc of discovering within herself a ruthlessness, a passion for bloodshed, and an utter lack of caution that works for her right up until the moment it doesn't. At several points in the previous volumes, she and the others have uneasily wondered how she'd ever adjust to civilian life after the war. It's fitting that we'll never know, and that her execution functions as one last great consequence for the team -- and specifically for their leader Jake, who ordered his cousin onto that ship in private to kill the Yeerk controlling his brother Tom, knowing she was unlikely to survive. It's a terrifically cruel writing choice that she succeeds in her mission -- with the help of Tobias, guiding her from helplessly afar when she's blinded by snake venom -- but is forced to demorph to escape her injuries, and so faces her fate as a human surrounded on all sides by Yeerks in battle morph. So too is her killer's salutation of "You fight well, human" and her short exchange with the Ellimist as already previewed in his Chronicles (without her name attached). I hate this chapter. It's probably one of the strongest and most effective in the entire series.
In the aftermath of losing Rachel, Jake and Tobias are devastated in two very different ways. Tobias retreats into life as a hawk, cutting off all contact with the rest of humanity and trying to forget himself as a simple creature of the woods. Rachel was his primary link to his old identity, and without her or the ability to forgive Jake, he has no wish to function as even remotely human again. Meanwhile Jake carries on in his own depressive funk, making public appearances when he needs to, but feeling empty and shattered by his actions. He never does get back together with Cassie romantically, presumably due to those feelings of guilt and depression, and she eventually moves on to date someone else while he spends his nights in disguise at Rachel's grave. "That's how I felt now, pretty much all the time," the young former general reflects. "Dark. Dull. Slow and stupid. Distracted, but not by anything in particular. Just like there was something else I should be thinking about but I couldn't recall what it was." I don't know if author K. A. Applegate -- aka the married team of Katherine Applegate and Michael Grant, which I guess I should mention for one last time -- has firsthand experience with such mental health struggles, but it's certainly a description that rings true to my own.
Jake is preoccupied with the deaths he orchestrated of Rachel and Tom, but also with his impulsive command to flush seventeen-thousand helpless Yeerks out into the vacuum of space in the penultimate novel. In my previous review, I was blunt in calling that act a mass murder and a war crime. That's an accusation that becomes textual here, and although it comes from the legal team for Visser One, captured and on trial in the Hague for his own foul deeds, it's not one that the teenager can easily shake. His friends may protest that the charge is too harsh, and the series ultimately doesn't come down one way or another on the question, but I appreciate that it's raised and considered at all, and that Jake is troubled by the event and his xenophobic motivations for it regardless. One last ethical conundrum for the group, with perhaps no clear right answer.
Plotwise, all of this is a little thin and oddly structured. We're hopping around from character to character like a Megamorphs in all but name, and there are three big time jumps in the novel -- first one year, then two years, then six months -- meaning that this single book alone spans more time than the previous 53 in the main series combined. Unfortunately, the rush to cover such a long period results in a lack of immersive depth, and the impression that we are just checking in on the Animorphs periodically rather than truly following their adventures anymore. There's not even much morphing of note that goes on after the Yeerk Empire is shattered, although the effort to snap Jake out of his depression by forcing him to morph into a dolphin is nice.
Near the end of the span covered by this story, Prince Aximili is still hunting through space for the lost Blade ship when he encounters a new hostile threat and is taken captive. And our human heroes, now 19 years old and settling into their post-Animorph lives one way or another, must rejoin to stage a rescue attempt (except for Cassie, whom Jake asks to stay behind in recognition of the good she's doing and the reality that she doesn't need a new cause as much as the rest of them). That involves some sharing of feelings and unloading of trauma, but all the getting-the-band-back-together sequence really achieves is sending the male Animorphs off into space alongside two new human helpers and an Andalite nothlit, on a ship they name the Rachel (and a mission that's amusingly and loudly not sanctioned by the Andalite leadership despite plainly having their complete unofficial cooperation). Marco hitting on the sole female crew member is probably the only real sour note in the book for me, but we honestly don't get to know the three newcomers well enough for any of them to particularly register.
Eventually this iteration of the team finds the unsettling gestalt entity that's apparently assimilated Ax, leaving us with one last sight of these figures on the brink of yet another battle. In the closing lines, Jake snaps an order to ram the Blade ship and Marco notes how much he looks like his dead cousin right then. Like the finale to the TV show Angel, the tale ends on a cliffhanger just before the fight begins, forever cementing the outnumbered heroes as valiant warriors in our minds.
A lot of this is great and a fitting conclusion to the epic saga that's preceded it, although everyone's parents are curiously absent throughout. The visser's host body Alloran is freed after decades of infestation! The majority of the defeated Yeerks and Taxxons choose to become nothlits and we ignore the genocidal implications of that and the fact that it negates the Iskoort connection that the Ellimist set up in book #26! Wealthy Andalites visit earth solely to morph human mouths and taste our cuisine! The Hork-Bajir move into Yellowstone National Park with Cassie's assistance! The Chee opt to remain in hiding for some reason! Stephen Spielberg makes an Animorphs movie with Marco as technical advisor!
Still, I'll confess to wanting more closure, more of a throughline to the extended denouement of this novel, and more thrilling heroics before it, not to mention a lengthier lead-up to the mysterious new villain at the end. (The Angel finale has its detractors, but at least it was building off several long-running plot threads. This business with The One truly comes out of nowhere.) In a closing note, Applegate writes, "I figured the Animorphs should go out the same way they came in: Fighting." A subsequent follow-up posted to a fansite (http://www.hiracdelest.com/database/a...) explains in more depth why the ending needed to be complicated and painful, apparently in response to complaints from her unsatisfied young readers: "So, you don't like the way our little fictional war came out? You don't like Rachel dead and Tobias shattered and Jake guilt-ridden? You don't like that one war simply led to another? Fine. Pretty soon you'll all be of voting age, and of draft age. So when someone proposes a war, remember that even the most necessary wars, even the rare wars where the lines of good and evil are clear and clean, end with a lot of people dead, a lot of people crippled, and a lot of orphans, widows and grieving parents." And that's reasonable enough, but I can't help but think that the delivery on the page is a little choppy compared to this series at its absolute best.
[Content warning for body horror, gun violence, and gore.]
★★★★☆
Postscript: Thank you so much for joining me in this reread of a series that meant so much to so many of us in the late 90s / early 2000s! I've really loved revisiting these books and building out a space here to work critically through what has and hasn't succeeded for me as an adult reader, both in my reviews and in the engaging comments that people have often left in the replies below. At a minimum, I appreciate your indulgence in putting up with the clog in your social media feeds as these recap-reviews grew steadily longer the deeper I got into the books.
Ordinarily when I finish a series, I like to rank the different individual volumes, but that seems exceedingly difficult with a franchise this massive. So here's just a recap of my ratings by tier:
★☆☆☆☆
Alternamorphs #1 The First Journey
★★☆☆☆
#28 The Experiment, Alternamorphs #2 The Next Passage, #37 The Weakness, #47 The Resistance
★★★☆☆
#6 The Capture, Megamorphs #1 The Andalite's Gift, #9 The Secret, #11 The Forgotten, #12 The Reaction, #14 The Unknown, #15 The Escape, #17 The Underground, #20 The Discovery, #23 The Pretender, #27 The Exposed, #32 The Separation, #35 The Proposal, #36 The Mutation, #38 The Arrival, #40 The Other, #41 The Familiar, #42 The Journey, #44 The Unexpected, #46 The Deception, #48 The Return
★★★★☆
#2 The Visitor, #3 The Encounter, #5 The Predator, #10 The Android, #13 The Change, #16 The Warning, #18 The Decision, #21 The Threat, #24 The Suspicion, #25 The Extreme, #26 The Attack, #29 The Sickness, Megamorphs #3 Elfangor's Secret, #30 The Reunion, #31 The Conspiracy, #33 The Illusion, #34 The Prophecy, #39 The Hidden, #43 The Test, #45 The Revelation, Chronicles #4 The Ellimist Chronicles, #49 The Diversion, #50 The Ultimate, #51 The Absolute, #54 The Beginning
★★★★★
#1 The Invasion, #4 The Message, #7 The Stranger, #8 The Alien, Chronicles #1 The Andalite Chronicles, Megamorphs #2 In the Time of Dinosaurs, #19 The Departure, #22 The Solution, Chronicles #2 The Hork-Bajir Chronicles, Chronicles #3 Visser, Megamorphs #4 Back to Before, #52 The Sacrifice, #53 The Answer
In terms of books with primary narrators, I guess that means I'd rank them Cassie > Tobias > Ax > Jake > Marco > Rachel on average, although they all have their share of greatness.
Overall rating for the Animorphs series: ★★★★☆
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February 5, 2025
Will I ever recover
January 2, 2024
I am not the same person I was
October 20, 2016
I'm writing this review 10 days after finishing the book. I think I needed the time to mull it over before I was ready to talk about it... I have to say, this book traumatized me. The mixture of sweet nostalgia and stabbing grief did a number on my fragile, nerdy heart.
I still adore the series, but I was disappointed with this ending. Every one of the original Animorphs except Cassie dies. But that isn't what bothered me-- it's the fact that they died so abruptly. Considering this series drives in the themes of the immorality of war and the effects of war on children, I expected a tragic ending, but it felt like there were too many new factors introduced at the last second. The majority of this book is spent explaining the aftereffects of the war, so other than the very moment of their death, I felt that most of the loose ends were tied up nicely. I really shouldn't have expected an ending with much honor and fanfare. War isn't like that. As Applegate writes in Megamorphs #3, Elfangor's Secret, "One second they were scared and brave and alive. The next second they were dead."
I know I shouldn't complain... we did get 54 books plus the Megamorphs, Alternamorphs, Andalite Chronicles, Hork Bajir Chronicles, Ellimist Chronicles, and Visser. However, I feel that the back story is very well fleshed out, but the events leading up to their deaths were not properly explained. The introduction of the Kelbrid race seemed to be conveniently pulled out of a hat, while the fate of Ax made little to no sense. What is The One? How/why did the remaining inhabitants of the Blade ship find The One? Why did it mutate his Andalite body? What's the point of a scary mouth with teeth when thought speech is more effective? What was their goal? Were they trying to destroy the Animorphs all along? Was that why they specifically targeted Ax? That seems the most likely, but... ugh, I wish there were more definite answers. I was absolutely loving this book as I devoured it, laughing lightly at Marco's occasional jokes and the Andalite's adoration for human food and puzzlement at human culture, crying pathetically as characters I loved died, as Jake suffered through it, hating himself for his decisions, as Cassie lost hope, as Marco tried to keep everyone together, as Tobias lost faith in humanity, as Ax questioned the morality of everything he had seen and done. I guess I felt betrayed that their lives were ended so abruptly and that it was done not at the hands of the despicable Visser Three who we had grown to hate and dread throughout the course of the series, but at the hands of a complete alien stranger. It felt anticlimactic, but it was a pretty good twist.
It was wonderfully poetic how they named their ship Rachel... a strong machine that selflessly carries all the Animorphs through the oblivion of space, only to end in a bloody but noble sacrifice. The build up throughout the entire series of the Blade ship being a huge, ominous presence, like a battle ax that is a cold promise of death, was well done. It ends up being the demise of the Animorphs in the end.
This series will always be a favorite of mine. I've said it before and I'll say it again-- this ought to be considered one of the timeless science fiction classics.
I still adore the series, but I was disappointed with this ending. Every one of the original Animorphs except Cassie dies. But that isn't what bothered me-- it's the fact that they died so abruptly. Considering this series drives in the themes of the immorality of war and the effects of war on children, I expected a tragic ending, but it felt like there were too many new factors introduced at the last second. The majority of this book is spent explaining the aftereffects of the war, so other than the very moment of their death, I felt that most of the loose ends were tied up nicely. I really shouldn't have expected an ending with much honor and fanfare. War isn't like that. As Applegate writes in Megamorphs #3, Elfangor's Secret, "One second they were scared and brave and alive. The next second they were dead."
I know I shouldn't complain... we did get 54 books plus the Megamorphs, Alternamorphs, Andalite Chronicles, Hork Bajir Chronicles, Ellimist Chronicles, and Visser. However, I feel that the back story is very well fleshed out, but the events leading up to their deaths were not properly explained. The introduction of the Kelbrid race seemed to be conveniently pulled out of a hat, while the fate of Ax made little to no sense. What is The One? How/why did the remaining inhabitants of the Blade ship find The One? Why did it mutate his Andalite body? What's the point of a scary mouth with teeth when thought speech is more effective? What was their goal? Were they trying to destroy the Animorphs all along? Was that why they specifically targeted Ax? That seems the most likely, but... ugh, I wish there were more definite answers. I was absolutely loving this book as I devoured it, laughing lightly at Marco's occasional jokes and the Andalite's adoration for human food and puzzlement at human culture, crying pathetically as characters I loved died, as Jake suffered through it, hating himself for his decisions, as Cassie lost hope, as Marco tried to keep everyone together, as Tobias lost faith in humanity, as Ax questioned the morality of everything he had seen and done. I guess I felt betrayed that their lives were ended so abruptly and that it was done not at the hands of the despicable Visser Three who we had grown to hate and dread throughout the course of the series, but at the hands of a complete alien stranger. It felt anticlimactic, but it was a pretty good twist.
It was wonderfully poetic how they named their ship Rachel... a strong machine that selflessly carries all the Animorphs through the oblivion of space, only to end in a bloody but noble sacrifice. The build up throughout the entire series of the Blade ship being a huge, ominous presence, like a battle ax that is a cold promise of death, was well done. It ends up being the demise of the Animorphs in the end.
This series will always be a favorite of mine. I've said it before and I'll say it again-- this ought to be considered one of the timeless science fiction classics.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 9, 2015
The conclusion to the series wasn't all that great. It had already been a suspension of disbelief that none of them had died yet, so when one of the characters DOES die, it felt false and just thrown in for emotional manipulation. And then there was a stupid cliffhanger...but oh well. Nice for them not to be hiding anymore.
February 17, 2018
Only the first half was worth reading. There was an obvious ending, but Applegate pushed the story on too long after it should have ended. You are better off putting the book down after getting to the halfway point.
August 15, 2018
THE GREAT ANIMORPHS READ THROUGH (partial re-read) is over...
I can't believe it's all over. Can this really be the end?
Before I spoil everything I'll say that these are some of the greatest books I've read as a 32 year old. They weren't all 5 stars of course. Notably the starfish book (ugh). BUT there are some real gems here. Real gems. When you read this series you come to know the characters as though they are closely acquainted friends. I read books 1-26 in my early teens in the mid to late 1990's and loved them. The only reason I stopped was because, they were all I owned. I'd bought them for $20 or $25 from a friend down the road. I didn't have much money, so couldn't afford to buy the rest of the series.
SPOILERS:
SPOILERS:
SPOILERS:
SPOILERS OF THE ENDING:
Okay, so this was... wow...
I can't believe they end with them planning to ram the blade ship out in space, and presumably all die in the process, except Cassie. Cassie gets to live. The one Animorph I didn't even like... at all... haha wow.
And poor Rachel. I had watery eyes when I read of her dying, even though the Ellimist Chronicles gave it away... I just couldn't believe she died.
And Marco becomes this super famous 19 year old actor with a tv show, chasing girls... cheesy, but it works.
Jake being all detached and distraught also made sense. I felt bad for him. He killed all those Yeerks, unhosted Yeerks. Even the Visser seemed surprised and maybe even disgusted by that move.
I was expecting Visser to actually speak some at the trial, but that didn't happen. Welp.
Tobias. Poor Tobias. Having lost Rachel he snatches away the Urn with her ashes at her funeral. That made me so teary.
Ax man becoming a price was uplifting. I was so proud of him.
Arbron dying to poachers in his Taxxon for was incredibly sad to read, albeit brief.
But... what about Loren... wtf... the book doesn't say anything about her. Applegate has Tobias run away and alone... when he has a mother out there... The series seems to completely forget about Loren. I just did a search for the word "Loren" in my ebook of this, and didn't find a single hit. Shame.
This series has some of the best and some of the worst books I've ever read, but thankfully the good vastly outweighs the few bad. As of this writing I'm 32 years old, and in spite of my age and reading experience, fell in love with these books whose target audience is children, so we're lead to believe. Yet, I find a depth to some of these books, and characters, that seems vastly set apart from what we typically view children's books as. These are a surprisingly mature series of books, when you dig deep into the content matter. I will miss reading them. I'm already longing to re-read some, like the David Trilogy, among my favourite.
I can't believe it's all over. Can this really be the end?
Before I spoil everything I'll say that these are some of the greatest books I've read as a 32 year old. They weren't all 5 stars of course. Notably the starfish book (ugh). BUT there are some real gems here. Real gems. When you read this series you come to know the characters as though they are closely acquainted friends. I read books 1-26 in my early teens in the mid to late 1990's and loved them. The only reason I stopped was because, they were all I owned. I'd bought them for $20 or $25 from a friend down the road. I didn't have much money, so couldn't afford to buy the rest of the series.
SPOILERS:
SPOILERS:
SPOILERS:
SPOILERS OF THE ENDING:
Okay, so this was... wow...
I can't believe they end with them planning to ram the blade ship out in space, and presumably all die in the process, except Cassie. Cassie gets to live. The one Animorph I didn't even like... at all... haha wow.
And poor Rachel. I had watery eyes when I read of her dying, even though the Ellimist Chronicles gave it away... I just couldn't believe she died.
And Marco becomes this super famous 19 year old actor with a tv show, chasing girls... cheesy, but it works.
Jake being all detached and distraught also made sense. I felt bad for him. He killed all those Yeerks, unhosted Yeerks. Even the Visser seemed surprised and maybe even disgusted by that move.
I was expecting Visser to actually speak some at the trial, but that didn't happen. Welp.
Tobias. Poor Tobias. Having lost Rachel he snatches away the Urn with her ashes at her funeral. That made me so teary.
Ax man becoming a price was uplifting. I was so proud of him.
Arbron dying to poachers in his Taxxon for was incredibly sad to read, albeit brief.
But... what about Loren... wtf... the book doesn't say anything about her. Applegate has Tobias run away and alone... when he has a mother out there... The series seems to completely forget about Loren. I just did a search for the word "Loren" in my ebook of this, and didn't find a single hit. Shame.
This series has some of the best and some of the worst books I've ever read, but thankfully the good vastly outweighs the few bad. As of this writing I'm 32 years old, and in spite of my age and reading experience, fell in love with these books whose target audience is children, so we're lead to believe. Yet, I find a depth to some of these books, and characters, that seems vastly set apart from what we typically view children's books as. These are a surprisingly mature series of books, when you dig deep into the content matter. I will miss reading them. I'm already longing to re-read some, like the David Trilogy, among my favourite.
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