Huh, I didn’t know they made these!
Animorphs, but choose your own adventure style.
Neat idea, subpar execution.
Each of the ‘choices’ has only one correct answer. There are no branches and every dead end sees you killed and reset. And even with that, it’s barely 3/4 the length of most of the Animorph books–already short.
So… meh? There are only two. We’ll see if I read the other.
“You ever notice how many different ways there are to say ’throwing up’?” Marco asked as we passed Dunkin’ Donuts, the first in the row of fast food places dotting the main street running through town. “There’s vomiting, of course. Hurling. Tossing your cookies. Puking, a classic. Ralphing.”
I was glad Marco was filling up the silence. Even though I thought he could have come up with a better topic.
“There’s cascading. But I prefer the terms that are more real. Like blowing chunks. Spewing your guts.”
Marco took a deep breath and kept on talking as we made our way past Taco Bell. “Tangoing with the toilet. That’s a good one,” he said reflectively. “Technicolor yawn.”
The one where everyone gets sick (Ax deathly so) and Cassie has to go on a solo rescue mission to the Yeerk pool.
Quite a story and quite a bit more Cassie than we often get. Being the action hero no less!
A solid one.
I am fond of the quote “When you’ve met one Aspergian, you’ve met one Aspergian. We are all unique.” That may be true, but now that I’m meeting other Aspergians, I am finding that some traits I thought were unique to me are actually characteristic of Aspergians.
John Robison–John Elder–grew up with autism (or what would once have been diagnosed as Aspergers before DSM-5). He was always an odd kid and had to grow up quick and come up with all manner of interesting coping mechanisms to survive in a world that wasn’t entirely sure how to deal with him.
It doesn’t help that he had an… interesting home life, also described by his brother in the memoir Running with Scissors–and later planted the seed that grew into Look Me in the Eye.
You should write a memoir. About Asperger’s, about growing up not knowing what you had. A memoir where you tell all your stories. Tell everything.” About five minutes later, he e-mailed me a sample chapter. “Like this?” was the subject line of the e-mail. Yes. Like that. Once again, my brilliant brother had found a way to channel his unstoppable Asperger energy and talent. When he decided to research our family history and create a family tree, the document ended up being more than two thousand pages long. So once the idea of writing a memoir was in his head, he dove in with an intensity that would send most people straight into a psychiatric hospital.
Although found that although people didn’t always do what he expected, electronics most certainly did. This lead to quite the career, building, repairing, and upgrading sound systems, including building a lot of the custom hardware used by the band KISS–and then later also getting into designing the electronics in toys and eventually repairing expensive cars.
Certainly not where I expected his story to go, I’ll say that much, but the way he describes the story, each step just makes so much sense.
Another fascinating half of the book (to me) is hearing John Elder describe the world he lives in. I’ll go into more specifics in a later section, but this was really the part of the book that stood out to me. Like the quote says/implies, every is different–and those with autism are no exception… but that doesn’t mean that people who’s brains tend the same way might just see the world the same way. Some of these things I’ve never seen put into words before. Worth the read just for that.
Overall, I quite enjoyed this book. If you have autism (diagnosed or not)–or if you know someone with autism (and I expect you do, even if you don’t know it), I recommend giving it a read. Perhaps you’ll see something of yourself in it.
The one where Ax watches entirely too much TV.
<Look, Tobias! Victor and Nikki are doing that thing again!> I pointed at the screen.
<Uh-huh.> His hawk eyes were trained on the little screen as Victor tightened his arms around Nikki. <It’s called kissing, Ax-man. Just like yesterday. And the day before. Kissing. Everyone does it. Of course, you need lips.>
<Ah. Well . . .> Tobias rearranged his wings noisily. <It’s definitely got a purpose. By the way, Marco’s heading this way.>
Way too much.
Marco sighed. “Whatever you call it, it basically reeks, you know. I think it’s time I introduced you to some better programming, Ax. Buffy. Party of Five, maybe. Cops. South Park. Something, anything better than this. Although she is hot.”
<Yes, she is hot. This is why she often wears less artificial skin.>
“Yeah, well, I think you may have your cause and effect turned around there. Hey, you know what you need? A TV Guide.”
Entirely too much.
“Nothing but lame sitcom reruns this week,” she said. “You’re not missing anything.”
<There are always These Messages,> I pointed out.
“These what?”
<The shorter shows that are displayed between longer shows. These Messages. They are often my favorites. “Zestfully clean! Zestfully clean! You’re not fully clean unless you’re Zestfully clean!” So much information condensed into so brief a format. So much emotional intensity.>
“You’re starting to scare me, Ax.”
Yes. The entire book is like that.
Oh, there’s also something about a machine to remove free will, which seems to fall into the ‘duh, that’s not possible category’:
“I wanted to tell him. I wanted to say, Look, it can’t be done. You don’t understand! There’s no such thing as a human being without a free will. It’s . . . it’s . . . idiotic! But he’s no scientist, much less a philosopher. You can’t separate a sentient creature from free will. They are free will. Yeerk, Hork-Bajir, human, it doesn’t matter. A sentient species has free will like an object has mass. You can’t separate them! But Visser Three doesn’t listen.”
Which… annoyed me more than it probably should have.
We don’t know what free will is. But you very much can seemingly take away people’s free will. That’s what whole classes of drugs are designed to do.
Onward.
Erek’s glitching.
Which–if the Yeerks find out there have been highly advanced androids infiltrating them for years–could be bad.
“How about his face? A mask?”
Jake ran to snatch up some full-head masks.
“I have Clinton, Gingrich, and a Teletubby. Dipsy, I think.”
“That’s not Dipsy,” Cassie corrected. “That’s Tinky Winky. Dipsy’s green and has the straight up thing. Tinky Winky’s the one with the triangle.”
<Who’s the little red one?> Marco wondered.
“Po,” Cassie said.
<Oh, yeah.>
“No offense,” Erek said, “but how on Earth have you people managed to avoid getting caught for this long?”
I mean, he has a point.
So now the Animorphs have to go somewhere they’ve never gone before–deep, deep in the ocean. The Message was nothing compared to this. They’re going to need all new morphs this time around.
“Calamari,” she said with a grin.
“Snails?” I said, frowning.
<I am not in favor of snails,> Ax said.
“Wait, that’s not-” Cassie said loudly.
<I had the misfortune to inadvertently eat one while feeding,> Ax continued.
“You ate a snail through your hoof?” I asked. That picture temporarily replaced the image of me being squashed to the size of a Barbie doll on the ocean floor.
<Yes, and the meat portion was fine. However, once the snail’s body had been digested, the shell was very difficult to->
“Ooookay, I think that’s probably enough about snails,” Jake said.
(Calamari isn’t snail anyways, as Cassie yells shortly after this section).
It’s an interesting premise and some really weird and wonderful (ymmv) new morphs and a fun (pun intended) look into Pemalite technology and culture.
Onward!
Whelp, it seems The Extreme wasn’t extreme enough. Forget the Arctic, now the Animorphs are going to a world far, far away.
It’s a(nother) precursor to The Ellimist Chronicles, detailing that long, long battle between the Ellimist and Crayak.
“But it wasn’t to be that simple. Approximately a hundred million Earth years ago, we became aware of a new force in the galaxy. Not a species, an individual. He was a fugitive from another galaxy, chased out of that galaxy by a power even greater than he. Greater than me.”
…
<We knew then, Crayak and I, that we could never make war again. Not open war, at least. The conflict would have to be carried on by different means. No longer a savage battle. Now it must be a chess game. There would be rules. Limits.>
This time around, it’s a contest of champions: the Animorphs (plus Erek the Chee) versus Howlers (they killed the Chee’s creators, thus Erek).
It’s quite the weird world. And quite the battle(s). And of course… quite the solution out of left field. Turns out even strengths can be turned into a weakness if you’re … human enough?
An interesting story, if a little weird.
Onward!
I’ve been hurled sixty million years into the past, and been trapped on alien planets, but I’d never felt so far from home.
The Animorphs go to the Arctic1.
The Yeerks have decided enough is enough. They’re sick of those ‘Andalite bandits’ always ruining everything, so for their new secret project… they’re going to build at the North Pole.
Took long enough… Even if they don’t think they’re humans, the Yeerks have the numbers. Spread out and there’s no way that a half dozen guerilla fighters could deal with you any more.
In any case, it’s quite the adventure–and establishes that the Animorphs have a way to handle extended away missions now:
Erek’s solution had been to have himself and three of his Chee friends program their holograms to look like each of us. Little did my dad know that he’d be sharing his cornflakes with an android who’d been on Earth since before the first flake was created.
It… works. And gives a bit more flexibility in what stories they can tell. Man. They’re children. And having to deal with even this now…
A solid story–and more evidence
Side note: This is the first ghostwritten Animorphs book. I’ll be putting the ghostwriters in the author section as well. It’s an interesting practice. Not sure what to think about it.
Fun fact: Arctic literally means ‘with bears’, while Antarctic is ‘without bears’. Which works out great for polar bears! But isn’t actually why they were named as such (and wasn’t known at the time). Instead, it’s because you can see the constellations Ursa Major/Minor in the north but not in the south. 😄 ↩︎
Betrayed!
Of course. It was all going too well. And now we get an entire volume of death and destruction, trying desperately to claw every scrap they can away from being destroyed by Vader and the Empire.
Quite exciting. What’s next?!
(The attached annual, if somewhat shorter, is also a really fun story. Sith artifacts that should have stayed buried and accidental pod racing… oh my.)