Something new! (If you not on a reread :))

Rather than the shared points of view of The Andalite's Gift, we now have the first [[Animorphs Chronicles|chronicle]] book: a book written from a completely alien (heh) point of view to fill in some other part of the universe.

In this case Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul. The one who in a lot of ways started this whole mess. And after reading this book–apparently in more ways than we could believe.

On the plus side, we get a lot of fascinating world building. Learning more about Andelite culture directly, as opposed to via our normal human filters. Learning about Yeerks. Visser Three (before he was Three!). And Taxxons. And Skrit Na.

The Skrit Na ship was round, with tapered sides. It looked like a fat disc. You could hardly even see where the engines were, and the Skrit Na had blinking colored lights all around it. I guess they find that attractive or something.

(it’s a typical saucer shaped UFO)

On the other hand (minor spoilers, but it becomes obvious fairly early), time travel.

We’ve done that already–and not that long ago (The Forgotten). And… while it’s got some interesting points here, it makes things a bit too messy and convenient, at least in my opinion.

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It’s kind of amazing how many different one off plot lines this series introduces and just never (so far as I remember) deals with again.

This time around… being (somehow) allergic to newly acquired DNA!

It’s a neat idea and does enough to support the story by itself…

So of course we have to deal with some random made up teenage heartthrob storyline.

I ignored Marco. I almost always do. Instead I made sure Jake was paying attention, and I said, “Jake, you’re not getting it. About half the girls in our school have a poster of Jeremy Jason McCole in their bedrooms or in their lockers, or both. He is the number one cute guy in the country. He has like twenty Web sites just about him. If he endorses The Sharing, it would be as if . . .” I looked to Cassie for help.

It’s… weird. I get it. They’re teenagers. But it’s still not something I really understood even then.

Such is life.

Onward!

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FLASH.

The one with a big ball of wibbly wobbly… time-y wimey… stuff.

There’s weird tension (did he finally go crazy?) and a neat resolution (possibly, but at least this time around he’s not) that theoretically raises some big interesting world building problems–that we probably won’t ever have to deal with.

It’s a good one.

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My eyes latched onto his black ones, his desiccated lips moving. Shock thrummed through me like the single tone of a large bell, recently struck, vibrating, a pounding pulse of surprise. As the vibrations hit me, I realized that the pulse wasn’t just shock, but was part of the word I’d been hearing. Joses Bar-Judas was speaking that word. That wyrd. A spell of darkness encoded into a single word, the power released when it was spoken.

And so we’re introduced to a really old big bad.

It’s interesting in books like these when you have relatively ’normal’ points of view mixed in with characters that are literally centuries/millennia old.

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The one where Marco gets a haircut.

And we discover yet another random alien species that’s been living among us all along.

It’s an interesting book, digging (if less than it could) into ideas like radical pacifism, free will, and the domestication of modern dogs. All with the trademark Marco snark as the point of view.

“English paper?” Jake asked as he sat down across from me.

“Yeah.”

He laughed. “You’re good for me, Marco. Compared to you, I’m so responsible. You have a topic?”

I looked up at him and thumped my finger down on the paper. “I’ve already written three pages. What do you mean, do I have a topic?”

But Jake knows me. “So,” he said. “Do you have a topic?”

“A topic will . . . emerge. I’m going to just write until I discover a topic. The topic will rise from these pages. It will reveal itself to me. I just have to keep writing.”

He nodded and made a face at the Goo of the Day on his tray. “This food is blue. Food should not be blue. Hey, here’s a topic for you - the use of total bull in the writing of English papers.”

I grinned. “I am the master of bull. Three pages so far and I haven’t actually said a single thing.”

I don’t particular remember if/when we see the Chee (spoilers!) again, but if we do, I’m looking forward to it. There’s a lot left on the floor here.

One of my favorites so far.

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It’s amusing just how much trouble the Animorphs (six kids, remember) cause the Yeerks on Earth (and Visser Three in particular).

So much so that they’re willing to come up with convoluted schemes to get approval to log an entire forest where they suspect those ‘Andelite bandits’ are hiding. (Which, to be fair, they’re not entirely wrong about).

So of course, Cassie gets the point of view and we have to SAVE THE SKUNKS! (it makes more sense than you might think).

A solid entry.

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Elmer is finally home! And now Boris can go home as well.

Only to immediately run into trouble (his family has been trapped!) and fly all the way back to pick up the one friend he has (Elmer. Duh. 😄) and get the help he needs.

It’s a weird premise, but a fun enough book. The mathematical problem solving (and oh so prescient packing) comes to a head here, but it’s just as fun as ever to read in the time.

It’s the weakest of the bunch, but a decent end to the series.

The somewhat sillier (who’d have thought it possible) sequel to My Father's Dragon, wherein Elmer and Boris take an entire book to return home (and all sorts of strange things happen along the way).

It’s really the second half of the book (and if you read it as part of Three Tales of My Father’s Dragon it fits better)–and slightly weaker, especially without the first.

One thing to love about both the first and this book is the weird obsession with ‘inventory tracking’. He picks 38 tangerines. Then eats 15. Then 11 more. It’s a fun way for kids who’s minds work that way to track things, do math, all the while looking for that mistake they know must be there!

It’s also a nice touch that we stick around with the new characters we meet a lot better this time. The entire book is about Elmer, Boris, and the canaries, rather than a new animal puzzle each chapter. I like it.

Onward!

It’s a cute story, good for children.

A story about the narrator’s father’s adventures, gone fantastic. There are talking animals and a dragon and it’s never really clear how much if any of this might have happened… but in the end, does it matter?

It’s cute and teaches kids how to solve problems, make new friends, and rescue dragons. All lessons worth learning.

“You can’t always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need.” A famous human named Rolling Stones said that. I thought it was very wise, for a human.

• From the Earth Diary of Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill

Our first point of view of Ax. Who’s an alien (oh so alien).

“Here, just take the box,” Marco said.

He handed me the box of popcorn. I quickly ate the rest of it.

“Not the box,” Marco wailed. “You don’t eat the box!”

“It tasted of salt and grease,” I pointed out.

It’s a fun look at cultural differences. I generally think that the series badly overdoes how he’s constantly reacting to things like speaking/eating/standing on two legs, but it’s fun to see it from his point of view.

Culturally, we do get a decent bit of interesting story building here. What makes humans interesting in this universe. What Andelite culture is built on. What families are like. Etc.

It’s a neat story.

I’m glad that the core conflict doesn’t (for the most part) get drug beyond one book. That would get tiring.

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