Animorphs

Tons of good quotes in this one.

I like that inside cover too, how they can't actually show the guy

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strangling a dog,

even though of course it's described in great detail in the book.

Ax is so funny as a human. When he finds out that Marco's dad is dating, and ax's been getting used to TV, he says <Ah. Perhaps your father is Young and Restless. Those who are Young and Restless frequently change mates.>

Love it.

You know what else is interesting, that both sides in this war look like humans, they look like anybody else, even though both sides can turn into murderers at the drop of a hat. Sure. The aliens look like humans, but the child soldiers who change into animals all the time and kill people also look harmless most of the time.

And Jake has a great line about how they're all different and they have to deal with their trauma in their own way.

And also Jake said I love you to Cassie! Wooo!

Marco has this great quote:

"Self-pity is the easiest thing in the world. Finding the humor, the irony, the slight justification for a skewed, skeptical optimism, that's tough."

I am definitely an unlikely optimist, I wonder if this book had any part to play in that particular personality development.

A great book for Cassie, although her books are always the most difficult because so many of her choices are to go against her nature as a pacifist and make some kind of sacrifice for the greater good. Like literally letting two different aliens control her in different books.

We get to read some impressive morphing showcases here and this inside cover is great.

The gang has a great plan to disrupt a dangerous new weapon and the plan mostly works until

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Tobias is brutally tortured to the brink of death by a sadist voluntary controller.

He and Rachel finally kiss at the end after she saves him and doesn't kill the sadist much to my disappointment. Tobias convinces Rachel that killing his torturer would make them as bad as the torturer, and I do not agree.

Weird skin tones in that double andalite drawing. And a segmented rattlesnake tail, which I don't think we've seen before either and the tail has never been described looking like.

Mean Rachel and nice Rachel! Marco can date nice Rachel and mean Rachel can break his arm!

It's a win-win.

In which the brutality of being child soldiers is explicitly spelled out to dispel any doubt that these kids are not irrevocably traumatized when

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Marco reveals he had a plan to kill tom the whole time in a way nobody would suspect the animorphs of doing it. And obviously in the last book a bunch of them tried to kill Marco's mom, so their moral compasses are pretty much destroyed by having to constantly kill things and make awful no-win decisions result in them hurting people, themselves were being tortured. Oh right, they torture Chapman in this book also.

I like this book because they really let you know that things are not going to be okay and these kids are not going to pull up out of the trauma that's going to shape the rest of their lives. This war has already ruined their morality and ethics and general social interdependency, and things are not going to get better.

This is kind of the book where you know things are not going to get better or get wrapped up neatly, no matter what happens.

Otherwise known as the book that makes everybody cry or throw up

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out of sympathy for Marco's tortured relationship with his mother or because he has to morph into a cockroach.

It's interesting that Rachel has the final sympathetic role in the book, but makes a sort of sense since Cassie, Tobias and Jake conspired to try to kill Marco's mother and he might not feel great about that right now.

Marco gets so hopeful every time he thinks about saving his mother, it's pretty crushing.

But I mean, she falls off a cliff and there's no body, so...t b continued.

The concluding scene in which

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Cassie actually goes through with the surgery at having a bit of a breakdown

was maybe the most stressful thing I had ever read up to that point.

I had read a more dramatic events in other books, but I knew the gang so well that it was extremely harrowing seeing Cassie make this decision.

Hilarious when Marco suggests that ax sees how many cinnabons he can eat before exploding, and ax says, oh yeah no, I already did that.

Also, how weird is this inside cover, why is Cassie giggling and pointing at a cow?

Always makes me shudder, when the gang is inside the ocean acquiring some monster.

Especially giant squid, Reading sphere at 10 years old or however old I was terrified me.

Pretty horrifying when they're all half drowning trying to demotph and remorph in the ocean.

Little too megaman for my preference，but still very impressive work.

I don't even know if I've seen a chee portrait before, let alone one that captures their essence so well.

There are way more mangas where people are fighting tigers than I expected, so I am not able to pin this one down specifically.

Captions by supermegaman

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Creepo lava monster wolverine murder baby

This is probably still my favorite title. We learn more about crayak, the ellimist, see erek in action, are given deep and significant insight into the moral implications of yeerk evolution, it's an absolutely devastating blow to the might and combined strategy of the animorphs, and the ending is devastating and satisfying.

And the design of the howlers is super cool.

And I like The Lion King and it opens with The Lion King play being frozen in time by probably my favorite character the ellimist.

I love this title. This book engaged with every relevant subject in the animorphs in novel and thought-provoking ways while being filled with cool alien fights.

The venber are super cool hammerhead ski alien maybe hybrid cyborg people with laser bazookas, and unrelated

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I really like the part where everyone seems to be asking Cassie's permission to eat the seal and she tells them off.

I think I like this book so much because in hindsight it really marks where everything begins to draw down.

This is a true survival scenario, the animorphs are absolutely miserable for a very long part of the book in stark survival mode, Rachel, sacrifices a foot to save Cassie, Marco keeps them on mission, Cassie is coming to practical terms with the limits of her ethics and a letting the rest of the group know them, or rather the rest of the Animorphs are coming to terms with what Cassie came to terms with books ago that ideals cannot always survive The realities of war, especially when you're a child soldier in that war, there's a lot of group dynamic and ethical complexity going on here that continues to its fruition by the end of the series.

And they also get to morph polar bears and kick ass at the end of the book.

I don't know. Maybe it was because I liked hammerhead sharks so much when I was younger, but these guys are just so weird, and this book is so good.

The helmacrons. So...

I remembered tobias' story with the rabbits and totally forgot about his cousin, but

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I very clearly remember the time first reading this book, I sure thought it was weird that she only appeared for brief moments and then left.

I figured I'd use the inside cover since they're so cool compared to the normal covers, especially after we saw those awesome Thai international covers. Did I say the word covers enough? Did I get that covered?

I think he really looks like a sociopath in this one.

So long, ya rat!

And a bumper from hotpinkcoffee on DA