Animorphs - The Entire Series

Might be the strongest opening to a chapter yet.

*record scratch*

Yep, that's me. The owl. You're probably wondering how I got in this situation.

Oh. Uh... musket shots were lower velocity and larger than modern bullets, right? And we've established that powder is getting wet and it might not be a full strength firing. Surviving with a heavy concussion and a destroyed face is easier when you can morph-heal. Maybe?

.......no. not at all. They tended to be a lot more destructive because it was more of a blunt force than a piercing, so it did a ton of damage. As in, tearing gigantic holes.

They were both lower velocity and larger, yes. That does not mean they translated to being more survivable.

Oh no!
*checks pile the rest of the series ; there's a lot left, and Jake's face is on the cover of some*
Anyway.

Those are the other kids morphing Jake.

Jack, Jake's heretofore unmentioned twin brother, with a similar leadership style, crush on Cassie, and battle morph preference.

Jack is an asshole

I mean, to be fair to Jack, he really idolized Tom's twin brother Tim, and finding out Tim had a Yeerk inside him crushed him.

Even aside from this, I think this is the inherent problem with any time travel story: there's always a get out of jail free card.

While I tend to agree, this story handles it well and it most certainly is not free.

I mostly remember being puzzled by it because it hinges around changing history so that the host body is never born, rather than Visser Four himself never being born. Unless that guy found the Time Matrix before he was infested?

Is it just me or are these weird megamorph ones hard to get into? They get so kind of out there and wild it's hard for me to feel, invested?

The first one was just an extra-long Animorphs plot but after that they got super-wacky. The second one tempered that wackiness with brutality and the Animorphs ultimately committing (permitting?) genocide. We'll have to see how the third handles it, though Jake just got his head caved in.

Chapter 20
Rachel


I feel like Rachel taking charge is a mistake? Especially a Rachel grieving over her cousin.

Chapter 21
Ax


What I find kind of interesting here is that Ax is having moral and historical qualms about indiscriminate killing, knowing that his natural form is going to demoralize them and should be enough, but that to destroy their discipline, he has to kill their officers. But the thing is, unlike Rachel, he doesn't have vengeance on his mind...for all that his friend and Prince was just killed, he recognizes that these Hessians are just doing their duty and that death is the price of war.

I think part of it is the multiple narrators when you're used to the Animorph books each having a single one. While there are certainly advantages to it....you can show the same event from multiple perspectives, you can split up your characters, and so on, as a reader, you have to stop and say "Wait, what's this character doing?" And it doesn't help when....like in the first Animorphs, Rachel didn't have a lot to do....she gets amnesia, she gets locked up and almost set on fire by a human who's former Yeerk infestation caused serious mental problems, and she gets found by the rest of the Animorphs and gets her memories back. But she was in the story because she was part of the ensemble and a main character.

If I had to pick I would put the line of succession as Jake, Marco, Tobias, Ax, Cassie, Rachel.

While I'd normally agree, in this particular case I find it pretty hard to argue with Rachel.

Usually the squad leader dying forces a Morale check, but if you add a Rachel you automatically pass all Morale and Charge rolls. However you suffer a permanent -2 to Concealment and Order rolls per casualty on your squad.

I'm just saying, when the founder of the nation is on the line, discretion is not the greater part of valour

^^this


Nah, I think in this case it's right and she's right. Marco would be great if the question were, "this battle's lost, how do we regain the advantage for the next one?" Tobias would be fine if they were saying, "this battle's lost, how do we get the rest of us out of here safely?" Neither of those are an option, though. This is "a time-traveling alien is trying to permanently ruin the past to ruin our present." Rachel is right to prioritize attempting to save Washington, and she's right to invoke Jake's death and Marco's danger to get Ax moving.

You once again have to admire the series' commitment to its sound effects, capping off an extremely dark chapter and moral dilemma for Ax with... FWAPPPPP!

Is this the first time any of them have straight up killed a human? Rather than it merely being implied, or a human being caught in the crossfire? (Or, lol, them "knocking out" those Secret Service agents by dropping awls on their heads)

Chapter 22
Cassie


I have a feeling that uncontrolled grief and lack of will are pretty dangerous things in a morph. when the creature you're morphing is right under the surface with its own instincts and needs. At least she wound up in the water.

Chapter 23
Tobias


So I guess the Hessian officer didn't get killed after all? Ax got Time Jumped away in mid-FWAPP? And that dolphin that Tobias is talking to is almost certainly Cassie.

Also, they're at Trafalgar. Three guesses how Visser Four wants to change history.

Plant that tender kiss on a dying Nelson's dying forehead himself

I thought the same thing. How terrible.

Tbh I only know about it at all from the Kate Beaton comic

http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=164

Must be... Kismet

Awfully Anglophilic of Applegate to suggest that a Bonaparte-led Europe will lead to a worse world than a British-led one.

I remember reading that, before Hitler, Napoleon was the go to, all purpose big bad, which absolutely blew my non-anglophone mind.

I mean, he declared himself emperor and tried to conquer Europe. Thats kind of a villain thing to do.

Ehh

It would certainly lead to a different one

Mild spoilers: part of where the book actually goes is that, in a lot of cases, they don't and can't really know what would be "better" or "worse." All they have to go on is "Visser Four thought changing this event would serve his purposes."

Plot twist: Visser Four dives in front of the bullet and saves Nelson's life.

I'm not a Napoleon expert but I'm listening to a podcast about him and so far it sounds like he keeps making peace and then a new coalition forms and attacks France which he then defeats and takes more land. He's definitely expansionist, and he did try to take Egypt without provocation, but he doesn't seem to be uniquely aggressive for the time.

He reinstituted slavery in most of France's colonies which is bad, though his European opponents all permitted slavery in their colonies at the time.

Otherwise yeah, until the Peninsular War almost every conflict Napoleon got into was a defensive one. The Napoleonic Code cleaned up the feudal mess of laws in Europe and promulgated equality under the law and very basic due process principles. His opponents were absolutist monarchs and the Brits, probably the people with the most blood on their hands in human history.

I can't remember what happens in this scene, but I still can't imagine what V4 aims to do here. Nelson dying didn't even change the outcome; the British still won! And this battle was hardly the last nail in Napoleon's coffin, anyway; France remained a naval threat to Britain until Napoleon was defeated on land.

"To be honest, I don't have plan; I'm just a fan of alt history and wanna see what will happen, y'know?"

i'd hazard a guess that british ships blowing up out of nowhere would have an impact on morale, but i don't remember either