Animorphs - The Entire Series

I like getting the Yeerk POV. I kinda strongly dislike this book with Cassie making this grand bargain for one person's freedom and then... just kinda getting away with not having to pay any of it in the long run with a really absurd excuse for the morphing clock being reset?

Well, in Aftran's defense for thinking she'd be stuck as a caterpillar, she did say she only knew what a small child knew about Earth animals. :P

Be kinda great if the next time we saw Aftran see Cassie she briefly looked incredibly shocked, muttered something under her breath, and then just moved on.

i feel like this is 100% a KA book which means it can be pretty sloppy with the sci-fi aspects like the technological basis of morphing and yeerk logistics, but it's really strong on the themes and emotions. i guess that means that either #18 or #20 is mostly from the pen of michael grant, and i could see either of those being the case. i'm leaning toward #20 since it's a marco book and marco is very much michael's character in the same way that cassie is KA's, but #18 was a big star trek adventure that i could see coming mostly from him, too.

i can forgive a plot hole after so many solid books without any big ones, honestly. they've been going for two years straight at this point doing a book every month and are about six months away from burning out thoroughly enough to turn the bulk of the writing over to ghostwriters, which i don't think either of them really wanted to do.

I'm not sure we can make that assumption. Grant says that out of all possible ways to divide the work (across, I assume, all their series), they've tried them all. "I write a book, you write a book"; "I write the first half, you write the last half"; "I write a chapter, you write a chapter"; "I write descriptions, you write dialog"; whatever. So the chances that any given book will happen to have been 100% the work of him or her seem pretty slim.

i agree in general, but have you ever noticed that cassie and marco books are in the line-up side by side? i suspect that the "i write a book, you write a book" method that he's talking about is referring to the division of cassie and marco between them, while they used other methods for the other characters to give each of them a distinct voice. clearly they did author books separately at some point, why not these books, right now?

anyway i wasn't really asking anybody else to "make that assumption". somebody says that every time i speculate that a particular book might be mostly katherine or michael, as though simply speculating about it is somehow incorrect, and i'm not sure why; this is my opinion and you don't have to share it. to me it feels like KA, to the extent that you can discern their separate authorial voices in this series at all (and i think sometimes it's pretty clear who's doing what, but you might not think so and that's okay!)

Having now read this three times at three very different ages, this is where I've landed on it. Good on you for having a go!


This happens later down the line, and maybe it's why I'm more sympathetic to this book, since the one down the line is the best ticking clock, Animorphs getting picked off one by one, desperate solo mission culmination book in the whole series apart from Ax on planet Leera.


Yeah, I think this series is a pretty classic example (whether it's books or TV or whatever) of runaway success taking the authors by surprise. No way did they think they'd end up writing 50+ books when they sat down at the start of it.

Oh, also: super psyched for the next part of the story which is almost indisputably the peak of the series.

I think part of it with the ending is that Applegate sort of wrote herself into a corner. She needed Cassie to do some sort of major leap of faith to justify peace, she needed Cassie to convince Aftran that Aftran was wrong, and she needed both Cassie and Karen to be alive by the end of it. So....

Aftran could probably be in Karen but not controlling her, getting to experience the world through her eyes but without meaningful agency besides being an advisor.

I am pretty sure Cassie becoming a butterfly is supposed to be symbolic of her being able to empathize with the Yeerks and whatnot.

Seeing as these guys have a literal god who follows them around and makes small changes... eh.

Yeah. It's a fine book that could have been a great book if it didn't have such a weak ending, but I absolutely get how the process led to that ending.

Ok in addition to Karen surviving, I feel like maybe the yeerks would be a little more suspicious of this girl who went missing at the same time as their Rich Guy's Kid and got a sudden blast of media coverage afterwards. Like the non-controller led search parties were looking for both of them. How would no one in the Yeerk empire try to check out either of these girls.

Is there a way this could have been written where it took longer than three days for them to be found, then Aftran is presumed dead and the Yeerks give up on the (pretty bad) plan to get this rich guy through his young daughter? Cassie's plot pretty much would stay the same, but the Yeerks are already well established give-up artists. Even then there would still be scrutiny and an attempt to check out and probably infest Cassie. Especially since her clinic got a huge burst of money from Karen's father.

Plot holes aside, I really love this book. I think it's easy to dismiss Cassie as a moralizing coward and maybe stupid for risking so much, but I think her books really let K.A.'s writing shine, and I always liked the character because I relate to her internal struggle to do the right thing. I loved the last few chapters, from Cassie willingly letting Aftran infest her to the end. It's a little too pat but it's a really interesting bottle episode.

The chekov's leopard, I will say, was the goofiest part to me. She doesn't even acquire it!

Rachel got all that press a few books back between the house and crocodile out. Now her best friend too? I wonder what kids at her school or Chapman think.

That might work. The big problem with that is, if it takes more than three days for them to be found, how do you keep Aftran alive Aftran doesn't have any Kadrona access.

I mean, the thing that makes me go "eh" is that the Yeerks couldn't infest banker dad even after his daughter has been infested. Just have Karen/Aftran put a Yeerk in a jar and drop it on his pillow when he's asleep or something.

Clearly, Visser Three thought this random leopard razor-focused on attacking one of their hosts must be an Andalite Bandit and sent all of his people to track it down to the exclusion of following any of the other leads in the book. :P

That might be what happened to the leopard if there was no mention of it getting captured. Human-Controllers are probably instructed to eliminate any out of place animal they come across.

I guess one way that Karen can be free without drawing attention from the Yeerks is if she's still going to the pool every three days to not seem suspicious. Yeerks somehow know when their host is being dipped into the pool, maybe through sound or smell, so other Yeerks wouldn't go to Karen if Aftran already has dibs. Aftran could pretend to infest Karen though that part is trick as it really depends on how far in hosts are submerged and what the other Controllers on the pier can see.

I mean.... most Yeerks would have zero reason whatsoever to think a host would have their head jammed under and not be infested.

the yeerk pool is described as a dark grey sludge and hork-bajir, the standard escorts, have poor vision. it could work as long as aftran pretends to be somebody else in the pool and karen can sell the "infestation" every time, but karen would still have to pretend to be a controller in order to report on her dad...seems a bit much for someone so young, but maybe.

I really hate the sci-fi argument "heh well humans kill cows so you are just as bad as us mass enslavers/genociders/public toilet despoilers"

Especially because later in the books, they don't shy away from calling out the actual literal Holocaust vis-a-vis the Yeerks in certain capacities.

Keep on mind that's Aftran's argument, which both Cassie and Marco push back against. Aftran is clearly making a false and self-serving argument here.

Is there any reason it couldn't just be a mountain lion?

Leopards are more exciting.

ok but have you considered

aftran is indoctrinated. i get the impression that she's...fairly young? certainly of the generation that has grown up in space, knowing only the empire. "we're no worse than the sapient predator species" is probably something you learn in yeerk kindergarten, on yeerk president's day where all the kids make banners of the emperor and visser three.

this is really what makes the yeerks genuinely morally ambiguous - probably only a few yeerks made it off of their homeworld on the ships they stole from the andalites, and these impatient, arrogant bandits were the ones who declared an empire and molded its ideology. some of those yeerks may still be at the top of the government, and certainly some of them are still around - chapman's yeerk was born on the homeworld, as were visser one and temrash, tom's original yeerk. esplin also, most likely, considering that he was able to accurately envision the yeerk homeworld when he used the time matrix. to what degree can you assign moral responsibility to the average citizen of the yeerk empire? how many yeerks sit on the homeworld in the stone age, blamed for the actions of a few and under eternal blockade?

The other thing about Aftran is, we know from what she's said and done, she has doubts about the war already, before she met Cassie. That's why she took the job Controlling Karen, "so she wouldn't have to kill", and why she was so happy her brother had the job he did as backup security to a sharing meeting. She also at one point throws out as a side comment that the Yeerks have people like Cassie...people opposed to the war and who think it's wrong to take unwilling hosts. She never says how she feels about them, but the fact that she brings them up, and doesn't seem to do so in a bitter or angry sort of way is sort of a suggestion that maybe she isn't entirely unsympathetic to their ideas. She also points out contemptuously that the Vissers spend more time fighting each other than they do the enemies of the Yeerks.

They say sometimes that there's no stronger propagandist than someone with doubts themselves, because they're not just trying to convince you they're right, but also themselves. And I think that might be where Aftran is at the beginning of the book. She's not entirely convinced of the rightness of the Yeerk cause, but she needs to convince herself that it is right. It's easy to do when she thinks she's talking to an Andalite, because she hates them...they've been the enemy for like 30-40 years, but when she discovers Cassie is a human, she has to come face to face with the idea that the people the Yeerks are hurting aren't just the Andalites, but also humans, who are more or less defenseless and victims. So she gets defensive, and she gets really defensive when Cassie suggests that Karen doesn't hate Aftran, but pities Aftran. She can hate an enemy who hates her. It's harder to know how you should feel around somebody like Karen or Cassie, who pities you. She needs the hate of humans to justify what the Yeerk are doing to humans. When Cassie refuses to hate her, and is even willing to sacrifice herself for Karen, and for Aftran herself, it just completely disarms her.

And maybe it's just because Easter was this past Sunday, but I want to point out that Cassie sacrificed herself by hanging off a piece of wood, dying, and then resurrecting three days later to redeem Aftran from her sins, and if that isn't symbolism that hits you in the face with a two-by-four, well....

Well for one thing they're not very far removed from the birth of their first child, which took Applegate out of commission and left Grant as basically the solo writer for several months at least. That happened around Book #13 IIRC.

Also they're not even writing one book a month but one every three weeks. Remember there's the non-series books in there too, which also tend to be 2-3x longer.

Ok, everyone. Strap in. It is time for:

Animorphs-Book 20-The Discovery, Chapter 1


Marco, showing off his typical charm and skill with the ladies. In case you're wondering, Justin Mullins was a kid who wrote K.A. Applegate asking to be a character in one of the books. No idea what the real Justin Mullins is doing nowadays. But if you're on Something Awful, tell us how your brush with fame went.


Uh oh.

Chapter 2


Marco skill at negotiation is almost as advanced as his skill at seduction.


So, yep. This is bad.

It begiiiiiiiiiins.....

Love to fit in at my first week in a new school by carrying a weird blue cube around with me

It's David time!

The moment I've been waiting for

I know I said in the last book about how the best thing would probably be to murder a child but dudes, hear me out here:

They'll cut class to watch Cassie hatch but not to get the blue box?

In their defense, Cassie was alone out in the woods somewhere. David is probably in class themselves, so what are they going to do? Skip their classes, and then shake them down in his class until he turns over the box to them?

Given the importance of it?

Yeah.

In all likelihood, shaking him down in his class, where they don't have a right to be, won't get them the cube, it will just get them in trouble. It will probably also bring the cube to the attention of Mr. Chapman (because it's the object being fought over), who'll recognize it for what it is, or at least recognize the Andalite writing on it, and now the Yeerks have the cube.

Please remain seated, keep your hands and arms inside the vehicle at all times, and no flash photography for the foreseeable future.

cube kid cube kid!!! watch where you're going, cube kid *stuffs ur head in a toilet*

This is like a kid randomly walking around with the nuclear launch code or something, maintaining your cover is no longer a priority.