Gregor the Overlander
(The Underland Chronicles, Book 1)
Suzanne Collins
Scholastic
Fiction, YA Fiction
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Two years, seven months, and thirteen days ago, Gregor's father disappeared without a trace. In New York City, people vanish all the time, for all sorts of reasons. Some of them fall in with the wrong crowd, or simply don't want to be found. Gregor knows that's not the case. His dad would never leave him, his sisters, his mother, or his grandmother. Sure, they weren't exactly living in a Park Avenue penthouse, but he loved Gregor, and Gregor loved him. As soon as Dad comes home, he'll...
But Gregor won't let himself think about that, won't let himself think of hope or happiness, for fear of jinxing his father's return. In the meantime, all he can do is help out as best he can around the house. With Grandma's senility, Mom struggling to stretch one income over so many mouths to feed, and his two-year-old sister Boots' constant need for supervision and diaper changes, there's more than enough to do to keep his mind occupied. Even doing laundry is a blessing. At least, until Boots worked loose the latch on the grate in the laundry room. As Gregor races to keep her out of the walls, the two fall in... and down.
Suddenly, Gregor and Boots find themselves in a strange, dark world, where giant cockroaches, spiders, rats, and more live in an uneasy truce with humans and bats. The people of the Underland have many prophecies left by their long-lost progenitor - prophecies that may concern Gregor himself. Gregor only wants to return home, where his mother must be frantic... until he learns that he isn't the first human to tumble into the Underland. The last "Overlander" to survive the plunge came through precisely two years, seven months, and thirteen days ago.
Gregor's father. Still alive.
REVIEW: Gregor the Overlander mixes some nicely original "otherland" twists with a strangely bland story. The title character tends to think in obvious blocks of text (annoyingly set off in quote marks), holding the reader's hand as though not trusting them to follow the tale through its darker stretches. As with many "otherland" tales, Gregor's New York City street smarts and ability to comprehend slang terminology gives him an edge on the Underlanders, though they prove quite adept at surviving in their own harsh world, with a matter-of-fact survival instinct that perpetually eludes him. Gregor's adventures in the Underland start out fairly benign, as he is protected from the brutality of Underland survival by having the good fortune to travel with people who do the hard work for him. The fact that he's named in a prophecy only heightens his security. Even when death and destruction come crashing down upon him, I felt oddly detached from the action, with only an occasional emotional connection breaking through. I can't say precisely why; maybe it was the writing style, or the way Gregor tended to explain his thoughts and emotions instead of feeling them. Boots, his traveling companion, actually has a purpose on the journey, though I do
rather wish Collins had aged her a few years: I've never been particularly fond of pushy toddlers. (I'm also not entirely sure that Boots wasn't the reason for my sense of detachment - Gregor spends so much energy protecting her from the hard edges of the Underland that his own experiences seemed equally bubble-wrapped for most of the story.) The author gets marks, however, for using a tantrum as a sonic weapon, perhaps the most unique use of a two-year-old I've ever encountered. Collins also establishes different morality codes for the different species of Underland; one of Gregor's great struggles is how he must come to accept that not everyone here thinks like a human, nor can they be expected to do so. Almost despite itself, Gregor's quest builds to a violent climax, though most of the violence occurs offscreen and is only witnessed in its aftermath. The very end teases of more adventures to come for Gregor and Boots.
In the end, while the book had its moments, I couldn't find the energy or interest to push it to a solid Good rating. I don't expect I'll follow the rest of this series.
Sunday, October 30, 2011
The Familiar (K. A. Applegate)
The Familiar
(The Animorphs series, Book 41)
K. A. Applegate
Scholastic
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: After yet another loss to the Yeerks, the stresses of battle nearly tear the Animorphs apart. Marco nearly got himself killed when Rachel refused the order to retreat. Cassie feels the deaths of the Hork-Bajir-Controllers she took out, innocent creatures enslaved by their Yeerk masters, crushing her soul. Tobias and Ax have their own personal problems, drawing them apart from the group. And Jake... Jake can hardly find the energy to care anymore.
He stumbles home, nearly running into his Yeerk-controlled brother Tom, before crashing in bed. How can he go on like this? His own friends, his warriors, at each others' throats, the Yeerk invasion marching on with nary a stumble for all their efforts, knowing that the Andalite warships that they'd been counting on for relief may not show up for years (if at all)... the war might as well already be over.
Jake wakes up the next morning to find himself in a strange room, wearing strange clothes, in a body that is strange... but familiar. It's his own body, aged maybe ten years. He looks out the window to see the New York City skyline - only radically altered. Yeerk Bug fighters and Andalite warships swoop over the gloomy city streets - but as allies, not enemies.
Is this a dream? Is this the work of the Crayak or the Ellimist? Has Jake finally gone insane? Or did the Yeerks win the galactic war?
REVIEW: The "dream" episode is almost invariably a sign that the writers of a given franchise are running out of ideas... or killing time before sweeps. This book seems to fall in a similar category. The nightmare world Jake wakes into is too riddled with inconsistencies for even him to fully believe, yet he has little choice but to endure it; pain, even in a dream, is still pain, and he's not willing to bet his life that none of it is real. There's enough weirdness and action, and enough personal torment on the part of Jake (who blames himself for this "future" and the fates of his friends and family), to keep turning pages. Still, it's hard to feel much urgency over what is clearly an unreal situation. It ends with what amounts to a cop-out... one with absolutely no follow-through in the rest of the series. That pointless conclusion lopped off the half-star over Okay that it almost earned.
(The Animorphs series, Book 41)
K. A. Applegate
Scholastic
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
*** (Okay)
NOTE: In honor of the re-release of the Animorphs series, I'm finally posting individual reviews of the Animorphs books.
DESCRIPTION: After yet another loss to the Yeerks, the stresses of battle nearly tear the Animorphs apart. Marco nearly got himself killed when Rachel refused the order to retreat. Cassie feels the deaths of the Hork-Bajir-Controllers she took out, innocent creatures enslaved by their Yeerk masters, crushing her soul. Tobias and Ax have their own personal problems, drawing them apart from the group. And Jake... Jake can hardly find the energy to care anymore.
He stumbles home, nearly running into his Yeerk-controlled brother Tom, before crashing in bed. How can he go on like this? His own friends, his warriors, at each others' throats, the Yeerk invasion marching on with nary a stumble for all their efforts, knowing that the Andalite warships that they'd been counting on for relief may not show up for years (if at all)... the war might as well already be over.
Jake wakes up the next morning to find himself in a strange room, wearing strange clothes, in a body that is strange... but familiar. It's his own body, aged maybe ten years. He looks out the window to see the New York City skyline - only radically altered. Yeerk Bug fighters and Andalite warships swoop over the gloomy city streets - but as allies, not enemies.
Is this a dream? Is this the work of the Crayak or the Ellimist? Has Jake finally gone insane? Or did the Yeerks win the galactic war?
REVIEW: The "dream" episode is almost invariably a sign that the writers of a given franchise are running out of ideas... or killing time before sweeps. This book seems to fall in a similar category. The nightmare world Jake wakes into is too riddled with inconsistencies for even him to fully believe, yet he has little choice but to endure it; pain, even in a dream, is still pain, and he's not willing to bet his life that none of it is real. There's enough weirdness and action, and enough personal torment on the part of Jake (who blames himself for this "future" and the fates of his friends and family), to keep turning pages. Still, it's hard to feel much urgency over what is clearly an unreal situation. It ends with what amounts to a cop-out... one with absolutely no follow-through in the rest of the series. That pointless conclusion lopped off the half-star over Okay that it almost earned.
Saturday, October 29, 2011
October Site Update (#2), Reviews Archived
With November and the holidays about to swallow me whole, I figured I might as well post an update now.
The previous 38 reviews have been archived and cross-linked on the main website. (I don't expect I'll manage anything near that many reviews in the coming months... as I said, I have holiday projects that need starting. I'm also hoping for my third successful NaNoWriMo in November. Wish me luck...)
Enjoy!
The previous 38 reviews have been archived and cross-linked on the main website. (I don't expect I'll manage anything near that many reviews in the coming months... as I said, I have holiday projects that need starting. I'm also hoping for my third successful NaNoWriMo in November. Wish me luck...)
Enjoy!
The Other (K. A. Applegate)
The Other
(The Animorphs series, Book 40)
K. A. Applegate
Scholastic
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Marco doesn't get many evenings home by himself, what with being part of the Animorphs and defending the planet from alien parasites and all. After his father remarried, he had even fewer nights alone. But, for once, the Yeerks are quiet and the Animorphs are off-duty. At least, until Marco's channel-surfing thumb leads him to an amateur video on national TV: an unidentified shape in the woods, little more than a four-footed blur. A blue blur.
An Andalite. But not Aximili, or Visser Three.
Investigating, Marco and his friends discover that Ax wasn't the only survivor of the Dome ship that was destroyed over Earth. Two more warriors survived... more or less. One of the pair, Mertil, lost part of his tail - a shameful deformity in Andalite culture. The other, the giant Gafinilan, seems to be Mertil's protector, but there's something very odd about his behavior that sets off Marco's inner alarms. Maybe it's the way he refuses to join in the fight against the Yeerks. Maybe it's his peculiar mood swings. Or maybe it has something to do with why, ever since that video, there's been no trace of Mertil...
REVIEW: Another book in the past-midpoint drift... Since we just had a visit from Andalites two installments ago, it seems a bit soon to play the "More Andalites on Earth" card again. It's also a bit odd that only now, so long after the crash, does anyone seem to notice that Elfangor's ship wasn't the only one to enter Earth's atmosphere intact. But that's as maybe... Some of the paranoia and veiled intentions of previous books returns here, as Marco struggles to figure out Gafinilan's angle: is he a coward, a Yeerk traitor, or something else? The handicap prejudice of the Andalites, as embodied in Ax's categoric dismissal of Mertil, feels more like a political-correctness statement than a natural development. Like the previous book, The Other may not approach the complexity and interest level of the peak of the series, but it nevertheless entertains.
(The Animorphs series, Book 40)
K. A. Applegate
Scholastic
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
***+ (Okay/Good)
NOTE: In honor of the re-release of the series, I'm finally posting individual reviews of the Animorphs books.
DESCRIPTION: Marco doesn't get many evenings home by himself, what with being part of the Animorphs and defending the planet from alien parasites and all. After his father remarried, he had even fewer nights alone. But, for once, the Yeerks are quiet and the Animorphs are off-duty. At least, until Marco's channel-surfing thumb leads him to an amateur video on national TV: an unidentified shape in the woods, little more than a four-footed blur. A blue blur.
An Andalite. But not Aximili, or Visser Three.
Investigating, Marco and his friends discover that Ax wasn't the only survivor of the Dome ship that was destroyed over Earth. Two more warriors survived... more or less. One of the pair, Mertil, lost part of his tail - a shameful deformity in Andalite culture. The other, the giant Gafinilan, seems to be Mertil's protector, but there's something very odd about his behavior that sets off Marco's inner alarms. Maybe it's the way he refuses to join in the fight against the Yeerks. Maybe it's his peculiar mood swings. Or maybe it has something to do with why, ever since that video, there's been no trace of Mertil...
REVIEW: Another book in the past-midpoint drift... Since we just had a visit from Andalites two installments ago, it seems a bit soon to play the "More Andalites on Earth" card again. It's also a bit odd that only now, so long after the crash, does anyone seem to notice that Elfangor's ship wasn't the only one to enter Earth's atmosphere intact. But that's as maybe... Some of the paranoia and veiled intentions of previous books returns here, as Marco struggles to figure out Gafinilan's angle: is he a coward, a Yeerk traitor, or something else? The handicap prejudice of the Andalites, as embodied in Ax's categoric dismissal of Mertil, feels more like a political-correctness statement than a natural development. Like the previous book, The Other may not approach the complexity and interest level of the peak of the series, but it nevertheless entertains.
Thursday, October 27, 2011
The Hidden (K. A. Applegate)
The Hidden
(The Animorphs series, Book 39)
K. A. Applegate
Scholastic
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: The puny Helmacrons left months ago, leaving behind nothing but the wreckage of one of their toy-sized spaceships. Unfortunately, Helmacron technology can detect morphing energy... and, somehow, the Yeerks managed to repair the sensors on their ship. The strongest source of morphing energy on Earth is Elfangor's blue box, the Andalite device that transfers morphing capabilities. And Visser Three will stop at nothing to get his hands on it.
As Cassie and her friends begin a deadly game of hide and seek, the unthinkable happens. An animal - an African Cape buffalo bull - somehow triggers the blue box's powers - and unthinkingly acquires a human morph. Cassie knows it cannot be allowed to live. At best, it's an abomination. At worst, it's a liability; if the Yeerks caught it and infested it, it would reveal the identity of the Animorphs, whom it has seen as both bull and man. But she can't reconcile herself to the bull's destruction, especially as its sometimes-human brain begins learning with unexpected speed. On the loose in the woods, the unnatural mutant seems to think the Animorphs are its herd... and, to a buffalo, a herd is to be defended at all costs. Even against Taxxons, Hork-Bajir, and the ultimate Abomination, Visser Three himself.
REVIEW: Yet another bend-till-it-breaks warping of Animorphs canon forms the backbone of the subplot; the idea of an animal accidentally triggering the blue cube seems on par with an animal accidentally bumping against a computer and coding a website. The general idea of outrunning a morph-seeker hearkens back to the first Megamorphs book, as well. Still, it's not all bad. Cassie wonders whether human DNA can make a subsentient animal into something more, even as she knows that the necessities of war, and not philosophical puzzles or ethics, will determine the bull's fate. I might have considered dropping this a half-star for general lack of originality, but I just read a far more atrocious YA book (Witch & Wizard, by James Patterson); by comparison, I danged near bumped this one clear up to Great. (Check the time stamp on this review versus Patterson's review... yes, I needed a dose of Applegate to counteract that one.)
On a vaguely related note, my copy - with the original "morphing" cover cutout to an internal illustration - demonstrates that this stretch of the series just wasn't getting the oversight it needed. The cutout cuts right through the front-cover "hype" excerpt, leaving word fragments to either side.
(The Animorphs series, Book 39)
K. A. Applegate
Scholastic
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
***+ (Okay/Good)
NOTE: In honor of the re-release of the series, I'm finally posting individual reviews of the Animorphs books.
DESCRIPTION: The puny Helmacrons left months ago, leaving behind nothing but the wreckage of one of their toy-sized spaceships. Unfortunately, Helmacron technology can detect morphing energy... and, somehow, the Yeerks managed to repair the sensors on their ship. The strongest source of morphing energy on Earth is Elfangor's blue box, the Andalite device that transfers morphing capabilities. And Visser Three will stop at nothing to get his hands on it.
As Cassie and her friends begin a deadly game of hide and seek, the unthinkable happens. An animal - an African Cape buffalo bull - somehow triggers the blue box's powers - and unthinkingly acquires a human morph. Cassie knows it cannot be allowed to live. At best, it's an abomination. At worst, it's a liability; if the Yeerks caught it and infested it, it would reveal the identity of the Animorphs, whom it has seen as both bull and man. But she can't reconcile herself to the bull's destruction, especially as its sometimes-human brain begins learning with unexpected speed. On the loose in the woods, the unnatural mutant seems to think the Animorphs are its herd... and, to a buffalo, a herd is to be defended at all costs. Even against Taxxons, Hork-Bajir, and the ultimate Abomination, Visser Three himself.
REVIEW: Yet another bend-till-it-breaks warping of Animorphs canon forms the backbone of the subplot; the idea of an animal accidentally triggering the blue cube seems on par with an animal accidentally bumping against a computer and coding a website. The general idea of outrunning a morph-seeker hearkens back to the first Megamorphs book, as well. Still, it's not all bad. Cassie wonders whether human DNA can make a subsentient animal into something more, even as she knows that the necessities of war, and not philosophical puzzles or ethics, will determine the bull's fate. I might have considered dropping this a half-star for general lack of originality, but I just read a far more atrocious YA book (Witch & Wizard, by James Patterson); by comparison, I danged near bumped this one clear up to Great. (Check the time stamp on this review versus Patterson's review... yes, I needed a dose of Applegate to counteract that one.)
On a vaguely related note, my copy - with the original "morphing" cover cutout to an internal illustration - demonstrates that this stretch of the series just wasn't getting the oversight it needed. The cutout cuts right through the front-cover "hype" excerpt, leaving word fragments to either side.
Witch & Wizard (James Patterson and Gabrielle Charbonnet)
Witch & Wizard
(The Witch & Wizard series, Book 1)
James Patterson and Gabrielle Charbonnet
Little, Brown and Company
Fiction, YA Fantasy
** (Bad)
DESCRIPTION: For decades, the power of the New Order had been growing, but as high schoolers the siblings Whit and Wisty Allgood didn't pay much attention. Politics is for grown-ups and debate club dweebs, not a football star like Whit or a habitual truant like Wisty. Then one morning they woke to hear the sound of boots marching past their suburban home... followed by a commando team breaking down their door. Suddenly hauled away by New Order forces, accused of witchcraft (of which they know nothing) and sentenced to death, Whit and Wisty finally realize that politics does indeed affect them. As harsh as the New Order is on ordinary freedoms, banning books and music and imagination, the all-powerful One Who Is The One seems to have a personal vendetta against the Allgood teens. But why? It's not like they're really a wizard and a witch, with some sort of weird mystical power that could threaten his plan to dominate the world... are they?
REVIEW: I know it's probably not fair, but I cannot help comparing James Patterson to K. A. "Animorph" Applegate. Patterson writes mostly adult thrillers. Applegate writes for kids and young adults. Patterson's a household name. Applegate... very popular, but not quite that big. Patterson pitches this book at the upper age bracket of the Young Adult spectrum, while Applegate generally hits midgrade and younger. Yet, even at its weakest, the Animorphs series runs rings around this book.
Setting aside the grave mistake of naming his protagonists almost identically ("Whit" and Wisty" scan very similarly, and their narrative voices are the same), there are so many problems here I hardly know where to begin. Let's try the beginning, shall we? The book starts with a dramatic public execution in progress before cutting to the backstory of how the Allgoods found themselves before a stadium full of spectators, about to be dropped to their doom by The One Who Is The One. (Brilliantly original name, there... but, then, it fits the one-dimensional villain like a glove. Or rather a mitten - a glove would imply complexity of design. But I digress...) Unfortunately - and this risks a spoiler, but frankly I don't care - this book never catches up to the execution. It just leaves the reader hanging on a "to be continued..." cliffhanger. But, I'd lost faith in the thing long before then. Tissue-thin caricatures of characters, little to no logic to the world's magic, less logic behind the whole New Order, pathetic alternate-world versions of real-world books and bands (The Walking Heads? The Pitcher in the Wheat? Really?), zero plot depth, all written in a tooth-grindingly immature voice... oh, but why go on?
Did Patterson seriously think that teens were this stupid? Was he writing some sort of deadpan parody of teen magial realism series? Are all of his best-selling thrillers this lousy, or does the blame lie on his co-author? Contrast any character or situation in this book with the Animorphs, where middle-schoolers confront death, destruction, paranoia, loss of self, the politics of war, battle trauma, torture, and even the possibility of killing their own family members for the greater good of Earth's liberation, and it's easy to see which author respects their readers, and which is just looking for a quick buck on a popular genre.
(The Witch & Wizard series, Book 1)
James Patterson and Gabrielle Charbonnet
Little, Brown and Company
Fiction, YA Fantasy
** (Bad)
DESCRIPTION: For decades, the power of the New Order had been growing, but as high schoolers the siblings Whit and Wisty Allgood didn't pay much attention. Politics is for grown-ups and debate club dweebs, not a football star like Whit or a habitual truant like Wisty. Then one morning they woke to hear the sound of boots marching past their suburban home... followed by a commando team breaking down their door. Suddenly hauled away by New Order forces, accused of witchcraft (of which they know nothing) and sentenced to death, Whit and Wisty finally realize that politics does indeed affect them. As harsh as the New Order is on ordinary freedoms, banning books and music and imagination, the all-powerful One Who Is The One seems to have a personal vendetta against the Allgood teens. But why? It's not like they're really a wizard and a witch, with some sort of weird mystical power that could threaten his plan to dominate the world... are they?
REVIEW: I know it's probably not fair, but I cannot help comparing James Patterson to K. A. "Animorph" Applegate. Patterson writes mostly adult thrillers. Applegate writes for kids and young adults. Patterson's a household name. Applegate... very popular, but not quite that big. Patterson pitches this book at the upper age bracket of the Young Adult spectrum, while Applegate generally hits midgrade and younger. Yet, even at its weakest, the Animorphs series runs rings around this book.
Setting aside the grave mistake of naming his protagonists almost identically ("Whit" and Wisty" scan very similarly, and their narrative voices are the same), there are so many problems here I hardly know where to begin. Let's try the beginning, shall we? The book starts with a dramatic public execution in progress before cutting to the backstory of how the Allgoods found themselves before a stadium full of spectators, about to be dropped to their doom by The One Who Is The One. (Brilliantly original name, there... but, then, it fits the one-dimensional villain like a glove. Or rather a mitten - a glove would imply complexity of design. But I digress...) Unfortunately - and this risks a spoiler, but frankly I don't care - this book never catches up to the execution. It just leaves the reader hanging on a "to be continued..." cliffhanger. But, I'd lost faith in the thing long before then. Tissue-thin caricatures of characters, little to no logic to the world's magic, less logic behind the whole New Order, pathetic alternate-world versions of real-world books and bands (The Walking Heads? The Pitcher in the Wheat? Really?), zero plot depth, all written in a tooth-grindingly immature voice... oh, but why go on?
Did Patterson seriously think that teens were this stupid? Was he writing some sort of deadpan parody of teen magial realism series? Are all of his best-selling thrillers this lousy, or does the blame lie on his co-author? Contrast any character or situation in this book with the Animorphs, where middle-schoolers confront death, destruction, paranoia, loss of self, the politics of war, battle trauma, torture, and even the possibility of killing their own family members for the greater good of Earth's liberation, and it's easy to see which author respects their readers, and which is just looking for a quick buck on a popular genre.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
The Arrival (K. A. Applegate)
The Arrival
(The Animorphs series, Book 38)
K. A. Applegate
Scholastic
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Ever since Aximili's brother Prince Elfangor gave five human children the power to morph, they pinned their hopes on the eventual arrival of more Andalites. As much as the Animorphs have harrassed the Yeerks, as much of a thorn in the side as they've been to Visser Three, they simply could not win the war to liberate Earth from the invading alien parasites. While rescuing an ally Chee from human-Controllers, Ax suddenly finds himself side-by-side with a female aristh. Andalites - here at last! His hearts rejoice! But Estrid and her companions have their own agenda... and Ax has learned the hard way that his own people can be as cruel and amoral as the Yeerks. Just what has brought this ship to Earth - and why are they taking such pains not to reveal their mission to Ax?
REVIEW: As usual, Ax's story tends to be weaker than the other Animorphs' books. He spends less time wrestling with his loyalty to humans and more time watching his fellow Andalites with a mistrustful eye... a fact that surprises even him. The female Estrid momentarily blurs his thoughts - he is, after all, an adolescent Andalite - but fails to keep him from figuring out the visitors' true mission. The book almost lost half a star towards the end, revealing that key information was deliberately left out of the narrative. In the end, while the Andalite relief fleets are no nearer to Earth, the Animorphs - and Ax - nevertheless prove themselves more than capable of soldiering on. If it wasn't the best in the series, well, I've slogged through worse.
(The Animorphs series, Book 38)
K. A. Applegate
Scholastic
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
**** (Good)
NOTE: In honor of the re-release of the series, I'm finally posting individual reviews of the Animorphs books.
DESCRIPTION: Ever since Aximili's brother Prince Elfangor gave five human children the power to morph, they pinned their hopes on the eventual arrival of more Andalites. As much as the Animorphs have harrassed the Yeerks, as much of a thorn in the side as they've been to Visser Three, they simply could not win the war to liberate Earth from the invading alien parasites. While rescuing an ally Chee from human-Controllers, Ax suddenly finds himself side-by-side with a female aristh. Andalites - here at last! His hearts rejoice! But Estrid and her companions have their own agenda... and Ax has learned the hard way that his own people can be as cruel and amoral as the Yeerks. Just what has brought this ship to Earth - and why are they taking such pains not to reveal their mission to Ax?
REVIEW: As usual, Ax's story tends to be weaker than the other Animorphs' books. He spends less time wrestling with his loyalty to humans and more time watching his fellow Andalites with a mistrustful eye... a fact that surprises even him. The female Estrid momentarily blurs his thoughts - he is, after all, an adolescent Andalite - but fails to keep him from figuring out the visitors' true mission. The book almost lost half a star towards the end, revealing that key information was deliberately left out of the narrative. In the end, while the Andalite relief fleets are no nearer to Earth, the Animorphs - and Ax - nevertheless prove themselves more than capable of soldiering on. If it wasn't the best in the series, well, I've slogged through worse.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
The Weakness (K. A. Applegate)
The Weakness
(The Animorphs series, Book 37)
K. A. Applegate
Scholastic
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: With Jake out of town, the Animorphs figured they'd lay low for a few days. But Tobias has stumbled onto Visser Three's new feeding grounds - the place where he's most vulnerable. Ever since the Animorphs' last strike, the Visser has been very careful to change meadows every few days, so they don't have time to wait for their leader. In cheetah morph, under Rachel's leadership, they go in - and find themselves stymied by a new enemy.
The Councilor has come to monitor Visser Three's progress, and his host body, a Garatron, functions at such a speed he makes cheetahs look like tree sloths. Thwarted, Rachel comes up with a new plan: hammer the Yeerks now, while the Visser's under the microscope, and maybe throw the entire Earth invasion into chaos. After all, Yeerk politics have helped the Animorphs before. But last time, they were under Jake's leadership. Rachel's more direct style could be a change for the better - or the worse. And, considering how many close calls they've had, worse could all too easily be deadly.
REVIEW: Rising back toward their old form like a bald eagle riding a thermal, The Weakness brings back some of the internal struggles - both within the group and within the narrator - that are a trademark of the series. Rachel tries to be as strong a leader as Jake, but her personality doesn't cope as well with the planning and the pressure. Through poor luck and hubris, she nearly dooms them all... but no leader gets to walk away from their own messes, no matter how impossible they look. This one doesn't push the credulity envelope quite as bad as the previous few books, though parts of the story feel like arguments Rachel had with herself (literally, sometimes) in The Separation. Still, a fairly satisfying installment on the whole.
(The Animorphs series, Book 37)
K. A. Applegate
Scholastic
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
**** (Good)
NOTE: In honor of the re-release of the series, I'm finally posting individual reviews of the Animorphs books.
DESCRIPTION: With Jake out of town, the Animorphs figured they'd lay low for a few days. But Tobias has stumbled onto Visser Three's new feeding grounds - the place where he's most vulnerable. Ever since the Animorphs' last strike, the Visser has been very careful to change meadows every few days, so they don't have time to wait for their leader. In cheetah morph, under Rachel's leadership, they go in - and find themselves stymied by a new enemy.
The Councilor has come to monitor Visser Three's progress, and his host body, a Garatron, functions at such a speed he makes cheetahs look like tree sloths. Thwarted, Rachel comes up with a new plan: hammer the Yeerks now, while the Visser's under the microscope, and maybe throw the entire Earth invasion into chaos. After all, Yeerk politics have helped the Animorphs before. But last time, they were under Jake's leadership. Rachel's more direct style could be a change for the better - or the worse. And, considering how many close calls they've had, worse could all too easily be deadly.
REVIEW: Rising back toward their old form like a bald eagle riding a thermal, The Weakness brings back some of the internal struggles - both within the group and within the narrator - that are a trademark of the series. Rachel tries to be as strong a leader as Jake, but her personality doesn't cope as well with the planning and the pressure. Through poor luck and hubris, she nearly dooms them all... but no leader gets to walk away from their own messes, no matter how impossible they look. This one doesn't push the credulity envelope quite as bad as the previous few books, though parts of the story feel like arguments Rachel had with herself (literally, sometimes) in The Separation. Still, a fairly satisfying installment on the whole.
The Mutation (K. A. Applegate)
The Mutation
(The Animorphs series, Book 36)
K. A. Applegate
Scholastic
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
**** (Good))
DESCRIPTION: Ever since losing the Pemalite ship to the "Andalite bandits" (and the interference of Crayak's pet, the devious Drode), Visser Three has become obsessed with recovering it... and, not incidentally, restoring his damaged reputation with the Yeerk High Council. Just how far will he go? Late at night, Jake receives a phone call from a shaken Cassie. The free Hork-Bajir have brought one of their own to her in hopes that she can heal him... and fix the horrible, bungled aquatic mutations the Visser grafted onto his body.
The Chee confirm that Visser Three is planning a deep-sea expedition to locate the Pemalite ship, using a brand-new craft known as the Sea Blade. Jake and the Animorphs race to stop him... only to find themselves facing an even greater danger. For down beneath the ocean lurks a secret nearly as old as human civilization, a lost world scavenging the detritus of humanity's oceanic explorations. The Animorphs would just as soon abandon the Yeerk craft and its crew to these strangers... until they're caught, too.
REVIEW: A marked improvement from the last book, it still has a touch of "gimmick" spray-painted across the plot. (Does everyone need an Atlantis storyline?) The undersea civilization may be a bit of a stretch, but Applegate manages to put an original stamp on a threadbare plot device. The idea of being forced to cooperate with one's enemy to escape a more imminent threat is also old, but the alliance doesn't dominate nearly as much of the book as the cover blurb implies. Not their greatest adventure ever, but a fun and action-packed outing nevertheless... and a hopeful sign that the series hadn't yet jumped the shark.
On another unrelated note, the next phase of the Animorphs Transformers line of toys is advertised in the back of my copy. The action figure of Visser Three looks especially sad...
(The Animorphs series, Book 36)
K. A. Applegate
Scholastic
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
**** (Good))
NOTE: In honor of the re-release of the series, I'm finally posting reviews of the individual Animorph books.
DESCRIPTION: Ever since losing the Pemalite ship to the "Andalite bandits" (and the interference of Crayak's pet, the devious Drode), Visser Three has become obsessed with recovering it... and, not incidentally, restoring his damaged reputation with the Yeerk High Council. Just how far will he go? Late at night, Jake receives a phone call from a shaken Cassie. The free Hork-Bajir have brought one of their own to her in hopes that she can heal him... and fix the horrible, bungled aquatic mutations the Visser grafted onto his body.
The Chee confirm that Visser Three is planning a deep-sea expedition to locate the Pemalite ship, using a brand-new craft known as the Sea Blade. Jake and the Animorphs race to stop him... only to find themselves facing an even greater danger. For down beneath the ocean lurks a secret nearly as old as human civilization, a lost world scavenging the detritus of humanity's oceanic explorations. The Animorphs would just as soon abandon the Yeerk craft and its crew to these strangers... until they're caught, too.
REVIEW: A marked improvement from the last book, it still has a touch of "gimmick" spray-painted across the plot. (Does everyone need an Atlantis storyline?) The undersea civilization may be a bit of a stretch, but Applegate manages to put an original stamp on a threadbare plot device. The idea of being forced to cooperate with one's enemy to escape a more imminent threat is also old, but the alliance doesn't dominate nearly as much of the book as the cover blurb implies. Not their greatest adventure ever, but a fun and action-packed outing nevertheless... and a hopeful sign that the series hadn't yet jumped the shark.
On another unrelated note, the next phase of the Animorphs Transformers line of toys is advertised in the back of my copy. The action figure of Visser Three looks especially sad...
Writing Tools (Roy Peter Clark)
Writing Tools
Roy Peter Clark
Little, Brown and Company
Nonfiction, Writing
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: Everyone knows how to read, but only the gifted few can write. Plucking a golden idea from the aether, they work their literary alchemy to transform it into written words, via publisher or newspaper or Web site. It's not a skill, but a talent, the gift of the muse bestowed upon the lucky.
Or not.
Without knowing how it's done, writing can seem like a conjuring trick, but in reality it's like any other skill. With the right tools and some experience, anyone can build their own book. Published journalist and author Roy Peter Clark gathers years of academic and practical experience, condensing them into 50 "tools" to help writers do what they really want to do: write.
REVIEW: The key to success is self-discipline, at least according to the little key chain I got in ninth grade. The key to self-discipline, I would say, is learning how to do what you want to do, then actually doing it; without knowing how, it's all too easy to let procrastination rob you of whatever self-discipline you may have. With his "toolbox," Clark offers a sound method for creating a story, be it a work of fiction or an informative newspaper article. The process itself remains much the same no matter what genre one wishes to pursue. The tools needn't all be applied to every single project, but by having them on hand, they make getting stuck that much less likely. They can also help figure out where one is spending too much time and effort, and where one isn't spending nearly enough of either. Each "tool" gets its own short section, with a series of exercises and questions at the end to drive home the point. A useful and practical guide, which I expect will be well-thumbed-through in years to come.
Roy Peter Clark
Little, Brown and Company
Nonfiction, Writing
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: Everyone knows how to read, but only the gifted few can write. Plucking a golden idea from the aether, they work their literary alchemy to transform it into written words, via publisher or newspaper or Web site. It's not a skill, but a talent, the gift of the muse bestowed upon the lucky.
Or not.
Without knowing how it's done, writing can seem like a conjuring trick, but in reality it's like any other skill. With the right tools and some experience, anyone can build their own book. Published journalist and author Roy Peter Clark gathers years of academic and practical experience, condensing them into 50 "tools" to help writers do what they really want to do: write.
REVIEW: The key to success is self-discipline, at least according to the little key chain I got in ninth grade. The key to self-discipline, I would say, is learning how to do what you want to do, then actually doing it; without knowing how, it's all too easy to let procrastination rob you of whatever self-discipline you may have. With his "toolbox," Clark offers a sound method for creating a story, be it a work of fiction or an informative newspaper article. The process itself remains much the same no matter what genre one wishes to pursue. The tools needn't all be applied to every single project, but by having them on hand, they make getting stuck that much less likely. They can also help figure out where one is spending too much time and effort, and where one isn't spending nearly enough of either. Each "tool" gets its own short section, with a series of exercises and questions at the end to drive home the point. A useful and practical guide, which I expect will be well-thumbed-through in years to come.
Monday, October 24, 2011
The Proposal (K. A. Applegate)
The Proposal
(The Animorphs series, Book 35)
K. A. Applegate
Scholastic
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: As far as the rest of the world is concerned, Marco's mother died two years ago, drowned in a boating accident. But Marco and the Animorphs know better - enslaved by the Yeerk known as Visser One, she had merely completed her assignment, turning over direct control of the invasion to the Andalite-Controller Visser Three. Since then, he has met his mother in the field of combat, has seen her fall... but no body was ever found, meaning his mother still lives, a slave to an alien parasite.
But Marco's father still thinks she's dead. And that's become a problem, now that he's dating again. Not just casual dating, either; this is serious. Too serious for Marco.
The Animorphs have just learned that William Roger Tennant, a popular self-help guru, is actually a human-Controller, who plans to use his upcoming prime time network debut to lure millions of innocents to The Sharing, the Yeerk front organization. Discrediting his golden-boy image is the only way to stop the plot - but Marco's having trouble with his morphs. The stress of his home life causes him to warp into impossible hybrid beasts. If he can't get himself under control, it won't be Tennant who will be exposed. It'll be Marco and the Animorphs.
REVIEW: A rough redressing of Rachel's DNA allergy from Book 12, the story sputters along on fumes from previous adventures, throwing in some half-hearted efforts at levity with Marco's morph of Euclid, his would-be-stepmother's annoying toy poodle. Granted, I could believe Marco would have some issues dealing with his father's plans for remarriage, but I'd already seen this general story arc in The Reaction, which played more convincingly. Little originality and minimal new developments make it a largely forgettable installment... save the way it ends on a cliffhanger, segueing into the return of Marco's mom/Visser One in Visser (reviewed on my website here.)
(The Animorphs series, Book 35)
K. A. Applegate
Scholastic
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
*** (Okay)
NOTE: In honor of the re-release of the series, I'm finally posting individual reviews of the Animorphs books.
DESCRIPTION: As far as the rest of the world is concerned, Marco's mother died two years ago, drowned in a boating accident. But Marco and the Animorphs know better - enslaved by the Yeerk known as Visser One, she had merely completed her assignment, turning over direct control of the invasion to the Andalite-Controller Visser Three. Since then, he has met his mother in the field of combat, has seen her fall... but no body was ever found, meaning his mother still lives, a slave to an alien parasite.
But Marco's father still thinks she's dead. And that's become a problem, now that he's dating again. Not just casual dating, either; this is serious. Too serious for Marco.
The Animorphs have just learned that William Roger Tennant, a popular self-help guru, is actually a human-Controller, who plans to use his upcoming prime time network debut to lure millions of innocents to The Sharing, the Yeerk front organization. Discrediting his golden-boy image is the only way to stop the plot - but Marco's having trouble with his morphs. The stress of his home life causes him to warp into impossible hybrid beasts. If he can't get himself under control, it won't be Tennant who will be exposed. It'll be Marco and the Animorphs.
REVIEW: A rough redressing of Rachel's DNA allergy from Book 12, the story sputters along on fumes from previous adventures, throwing in some half-hearted efforts at levity with Marco's morph of Euclid, his would-be-stepmother's annoying toy poodle. Granted, I could believe Marco would have some issues dealing with his father's plans for remarriage, but I'd already seen this general story arc in The Reaction, which played more convincingly. Little originality and minimal new developments make it a largely forgettable installment... save the way it ends on a cliffhanger, segueing into the return of Marco's mom/Visser One in Visser (reviewed on my website here.)
The Prophecy (K. A. Applegate)
The Prophecy
(The Animorphs series, Book 34)
K. A. Applegate
Scholastic
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: When Cassie saw the free Hork-Bajir Jara Hamee lurking outside her barn, she knew there was trouble. Summoning the rest of the team, she heads to the hidden valley of the free Hork-Bajir, where a strange alien awaits him. Quafijinivon claims to be the last of the Arn, the highly intelligent race that created the Hork-Bajir... and whose apathy about that race's fate led to his own kind's extermination when the Yeerks and Andalites turned the planet into a war zone. He wants to use the DNA of the free Hork-Bajir to repopulate their home world and form a new resistance - but to do that, the cloned colonists will need weapons. The Andalite-turned-Hork-Bajir Aldrea was supposed to have stolen a large cache of weaponry just before she and her mate, Dak Hamee, were killed, but never relayed that information to anyone else. But all is not lost: the Arn has her "essence," her stored personality and memories, which needs only a host body to waken. If anyone could locate the cache, it would be Aldrea. But she has been dead for many years... when the mission is done, will she readily relinquish her host, or will she fight for this second life as hard as she did when she truly lived?
REVIEW: Mostly an excuse to follow up on The Hork-Bajir Chronicles (reviewed on my website here), the logic and premise - not to mention certain aspects of the mission's execution - twist Animorphs canon to the point of breaking. (If you haven't read the Hork-Bajir Chronicles and attempt this book, you'll definitely be thrown for a loop.) Aldrea works through some identity issues, learning to respect the "inferior" humans (and even come to terms with her Andalite origins), but beyond that the secondary layers that make so many Animorphs books so good just weren't there. Still, it's not as weak as Book 33, and the Animorphs kick some serious Yeerk hindquarters.
(The Animorphs series, Book 34)
K. A. Applegate
Scholastic
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
***+ (Okay/Good)
NOTE: In honor of the re-release of the series, I'm finally posting reviews of the individual Animorphs books.
DESCRIPTION: When Cassie saw the free Hork-Bajir Jara Hamee lurking outside her barn, she knew there was trouble. Summoning the rest of the team, she heads to the hidden valley of the free Hork-Bajir, where a strange alien awaits him. Quafijinivon claims to be the last of the Arn, the highly intelligent race that created the Hork-Bajir... and whose apathy about that race's fate led to his own kind's extermination when the Yeerks and Andalites turned the planet into a war zone. He wants to use the DNA of the free Hork-Bajir to repopulate their home world and form a new resistance - but to do that, the cloned colonists will need weapons. The Andalite-turned-Hork-Bajir Aldrea was supposed to have stolen a large cache of weaponry just before she and her mate, Dak Hamee, were killed, but never relayed that information to anyone else. But all is not lost: the Arn has her "essence," her stored personality and memories, which needs only a host body to waken. If anyone could locate the cache, it would be Aldrea. But she has been dead for many years... when the mission is done, will she readily relinquish her host, or will she fight for this second life as hard as she did when she truly lived?
REVIEW: Mostly an excuse to follow up on The Hork-Bajir Chronicles (reviewed on my website here), the logic and premise - not to mention certain aspects of the mission's execution - twist Animorphs canon to the point of breaking. (If you haven't read the Hork-Bajir Chronicles and attempt this book, you'll definitely be thrown for a loop.) Aldrea works through some identity issues, learning to respect the "inferior" humans (and even come to terms with her Andalite origins), but beyond that the secondary layers that make so many Animorphs books so good just weren't there. Still, it's not as weak as Book 33, and the Animorphs kick some serious Yeerk hindquarters.
The Illusion (K. A. Applegate)
The Illusion
(The Animorphs series, Book 33)
K. A. Applegate
Scholastic
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: Tobias was once an ordinary boy... or so he thought. Then he became trapped in the body of a red-tailed hawk, a predator whose mind became part of his own. Later, he regained the ability to morph: a hawk who could walk as a boy again, but only for two hours at a time. And then he learned that his real father, a man he had never known, was no man at all, but the Andalite Elfangor - who had, for the sake of love, become a nothlit, voluntarily trapping himself in a human body until the Ellimist sent him back to his homeworld.
Boy? Hawk? Animorph? Andalite? Who is Tobias? Even he doesn't know anymore...
The Animorphs set out to destroy the Yeerk's newest weapon: the Anti-Morphing Ray, which - if it works - will force them to demorph in mid-combat. Revealing their human bodies, their true identities. But Jake has a plan to convince the Yeerks that their newest toy is so much scrap metal. See, they can't force an Andalite to demorph if their true body is an animal... a hawk. Tobias knows the plan could be fatal, but for all the confusion about who he is, he knows what he is. A warrior. And no warrior, especially not the son of Prince Elfangor, would hesitate to die for the sake of the greater good.
REVIEW: On the story front, this book felt a bit weak... but, then, the Animorphs series isn't just about fighting aliens and freeing Earth. It's about the characters, about how they grow and change under the strains of war. As a character portrait, exploring perhaps the most complex of the Animorphs, The Illusion succeeds brilliantly. (I suspect this is also the book that launched a thousand fanfics - the sometimes-strained relationship between Rachel and Tobias, which seems even more angst-ridden and doomed than that of Romeo and Juliet, comes to the forefront here, with Rachel showing a rare, tender side of herself that only Tobias gets to see.) It also continues Applegate's trend of showing different faces of the Yeerk enemy, in this case an embittered, voluntary human host who personally handles Tobias's interrogation/torture. The Anti-Morphing Ray itself proves a non-event, but the book really wasn't about it, anyway. After the disappointment of the previous installment, I enjoyed a return to depth here.
(The Animorphs series, Book 33)
K. A. Applegate
Scholastic
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
****+ (Good/Great)
NOTE: In honor of the re-release of the series, I'm finally posting individual reviews of the Animorphs books.
DESCRIPTION: Tobias was once an ordinary boy... or so he thought. Then he became trapped in the body of a red-tailed hawk, a predator whose mind became part of his own. Later, he regained the ability to morph: a hawk who could walk as a boy again, but only for two hours at a time. And then he learned that his real father, a man he had never known, was no man at all, but the Andalite Elfangor - who had, for the sake of love, become a nothlit, voluntarily trapping himself in a human body until the Ellimist sent him back to his homeworld.
Boy? Hawk? Animorph? Andalite? Who is Tobias? Even he doesn't know anymore...
The Animorphs set out to destroy the Yeerk's newest weapon: the Anti-Morphing Ray, which - if it works - will force them to demorph in mid-combat. Revealing their human bodies, their true identities. But Jake has a plan to convince the Yeerks that their newest toy is so much scrap metal. See, they can't force an Andalite to demorph if their true body is an animal... a hawk. Tobias knows the plan could be fatal, but for all the confusion about who he is, he knows what he is. A warrior. And no warrior, especially not the son of Prince Elfangor, would hesitate to die for the sake of the greater good.
REVIEW: On the story front, this book felt a bit weak... but, then, the Animorphs series isn't just about fighting aliens and freeing Earth. It's about the characters, about how they grow and change under the strains of war. As a character portrait, exploring perhaps the most complex of the Animorphs, The Illusion succeeds brilliantly. (I suspect this is also the book that launched a thousand fanfics - the sometimes-strained relationship between Rachel and Tobias, which seems even more angst-ridden and doomed than that of Romeo and Juliet, comes to the forefront here, with Rachel showing a rare, tender side of herself that only Tobias gets to see.) It also continues Applegate's trend of showing different faces of the Yeerk enemy, in this case an embittered, voluntary human host who personally handles Tobias's interrogation/torture. The Anti-Morphing Ray itself proves a non-event, but the book really wasn't about it, anyway. After the disappointment of the previous installment, I enjoyed a return to depth here.
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Frankenstein (Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly)
Frankenstein
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly
Public Domain Books
Fiction, Sci-Fi
**+ (Bad/Okay)
DESCRIPTION: Upon the icy Northern ocean, an English expedition finds a half-mad gentleman among the ice floes. His name is Victor Frankenstein, and the tale he tells of his youthful ambitions, his ultimate triumph over the very source of life, and subsequent torments at the hands of his own diabolical, unnatural creation, will haunt his listeners to the end of their days.
REVIEW: This is a tale of misery and torment. Oh, what miseries Victor suffers... He scarce could stand, for the weight of them must surely crush his legs. Fever madnesses burn his brain, a thousand torments preclude his joys. Page upon page, chapter upon chapter, the sorrows and sins unwind in stiflingly dense prose. He grinds his teeth and tears his hair and faints in fits of unfathomable guilt like a third-rate actor chewing the scenery. The tale of man attempting godhood, of the responsibilities of the creator to his creation, of genius gone astray and love transmuted to bitter hatred, fairly drowns in the sea of tears wept by the doctor. At some point, such paroxysms of utter misery stop being gloomy atmosphere and become smothering smog... but, then, without them this would've been a short story instead of a full-blown novel. The idea may be classic, but the execution nearly had me tearing my hair out like the good doctor - sadly, for entirely different reasons.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly
Public Domain Books
Fiction, Sci-Fi
**+ (Bad/Okay)
DESCRIPTION: Upon the icy Northern ocean, an English expedition finds a half-mad gentleman among the ice floes. His name is Victor Frankenstein, and the tale he tells of his youthful ambitions, his ultimate triumph over the very source of life, and subsequent torments at the hands of his own diabolical, unnatural creation, will haunt his listeners to the end of their days.
REVIEW: This is a tale of misery and torment. Oh, what miseries Victor suffers... He scarce could stand, for the weight of them must surely crush his legs. Fever madnesses burn his brain, a thousand torments preclude his joys. Page upon page, chapter upon chapter, the sorrows and sins unwind in stiflingly dense prose. He grinds his teeth and tears his hair and faints in fits of unfathomable guilt like a third-rate actor chewing the scenery. The tale of man attempting godhood, of the responsibilities of the creator to his creation, of genius gone astray and love transmuted to bitter hatred, fairly drowns in the sea of tears wept by the doctor. At some point, such paroxysms of utter misery stop being gloomy atmosphere and become smothering smog... but, then, without them this would've been a short story instead of a full-blown novel. The idea may be classic, but the execution nearly had me tearing my hair out like the good doctor - sadly, for entirely different reasons.
The Separation (K. A. Applegate)
The Separation
(The Animorphs series, Book 32)
K. A. Applegate
Scholastic
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: Rachel knows she shouldn't use morphing for personal reasons, especially not on a field trip. But the earring that fell into the tide pool was a special gift from her father. Besides, nobody would see her, and it's not like the starfish has a brain that's going to give her trouble. In and out in a couple of minutes, then back to the rest of the class.
Then came the little kid. The one with the sharp little shovel... a shovel just the right size to slice a small starfish in two.
Most animals would've died, but starfish have amazing regenerative powers. When it's time to demorph, suddenly there are two Rachels. But they are hardly identical. One is the soul of compassion, full of fear, while the other embodies the terrible, bloodthirsty rage that lurks deep within her mind. It turns out two aren't always better than one - especially when one of those two wants to kill first and think later and the other is too paralyzed by her own fears to stop her darker half.
REVIEW: I came close to lopping another half-star off the rating, here. One of the weakest books in the series, it takes the "evil twin" chestnut and does precisely nothing original with it... except have the Rachels act so entirely out of character that they danged near blow the Animorphs' cover more times than a starfish has legs. The concept grew stale quickly, the narrated thoughts of both Rachels being too extreme to engender much interest. The solution comes more or less out of nowhere, for the purpose of setting everything right before the next book. About the only mytharc progression is the introduction of the experimental Anti-Morphing Ray, which comes into play in the next installment. Not a stellar book, but at least it reads quickly... a virtue I've come to admire, having struggled through some very tiresome and densely-written tales of late.
(The Animorphs series, Book 32)
K. A. Applegate
Scholastic
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
*** (Okay)
NOTE: In honor of the re-release of the series, I'm finally posting individual reviews of the Animorphs books.
DESCRIPTION: Rachel knows she shouldn't use morphing for personal reasons, especially not on a field trip. But the earring that fell into the tide pool was a special gift from her father. Besides, nobody would see her, and it's not like the starfish has a brain that's going to give her trouble. In and out in a couple of minutes, then back to the rest of the class.
Then came the little kid. The one with the sharp little shovel... a shovel just the right size to slice a small starfish in two.
Most animals would've died, but starfish have amazing regenerative powers. When it's time to demorph, suddenly there are two Rachels. But they are hardly identical. One is the soul of compassion, full of fear, while the other embodies the terrible, bloodthirsty rage that lurks deep within her mind. It turns out two aren't always better than one - especially when one of those two wants to kill first and think later and the other is too paralyzed by her own fears to stop her darker half.
REVIEW: I came close to lopping another half-star off the rating, here. One of the weakest books in the series, it takes the "evil twin" chestnut and does precisely nothing original with it... except have the Rachels act so entirely out of character that they danged near blow the Animorphs' cover more times than a starfish has legs. The concept grew stale quickly, the narrated thoughts of both Rachels being too extreme to engender much interest. The solution comes more or less out of nowhere, for the purpose of setting everything right before the next book. About the only mytharc progression is the introduction of the experimental Anti-Morphing Ray, which comes into play in the next installment. Not a stellar book, but at least it reads quickly... a virtue I've come to admire, having struggled through some very tiresome and densely-written tales of late.
Saturday, October 22, 2011
The Conspiracy (K. A. Applegate)
The Conspiracy
(The Animorphs series, Book 31)
K. A. Applegate
Scholastic
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
***** (Great)
DESCRIPTION: Jake leads a dangerous life. He's the unofficial leader of the Animorphs, pitting himself and his closest friends against Yeerks most nights of the week. At home, he lives under the same roof as a human-Controller. His beloved older brother, Tom, may walk and talk and act like he used to, but an alien slug in his brain is really calling the shots. For the most part, Tom ignores Jake and lives his own life, as older teen brothers are wont to do. So, while Jake still must be on his guard, he's never felt directly threatened under his own roof.
Until now.
His beloved great-grandfather has just died, tossing the family into upheaval. Their parents are taking Jake and Tom out to his cabin for the wake and funeral - a trip of four days at the least. Only the Yeerk in Tom's head needs access to Kandrona rays from the Yeerk pool every three days. Suddenly, there's a new battle line in the Yeerk war... a line straight through the center of Jake's house. A line between Tom and Jake... and Jake's father. Jake doesn't know what Tom's Yeerk means to do, but he knows one thing: he won't let the aliens take his father. No matter what the cost.
REVIEW: This book forms a perfect mirror with Book 30. When Marco had to deal with potentially killing his own mother in The Reunion, Jake kept telling him he was too close to the situation to make the call. Now, the leader of the Animorphs finds his own family turned into sacrificial pieces on the game board... and when his best friend, Marco, tries to tell him (from personal experience) that it's not a battle he's equipped to deal with, Jake doesn't take it well, to say the least. In this book, it becomes abundantly clear how the war is changing the Animorphs team... not for the better. These are not the same five children who wandered through an abandoned construction site at the start of the series. Jake finds himself doing things he never thought himself capable of - and ordering others, his friends and allies, to do things nobody should have to do. On its own, this book might've rated four or four and a half stars, but taken with the book before it, it forms a dark, bleak profile of two lives and one friendship irrevocably changed by the horrors of combat. These insights are truly what lifted the Animorphs series above the average young adult action serial.
(The Animorphs series, Book 31)
K. A. Applegate
Scholastic
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
***** (Great)
NOTE: In honor of the re-release of the series, I'm finally posting individual reviews of the Animorphs books.
DESCRIPTION: Jake leads a dangerous life. He's the unofficial leader of the Animorphs, pitting himself and his closest friends against Yeerks most nights of the week. At home, he lives under the same roof as a human-Controller. His beloved older brother, Tom, may walk and talk and act like he used to, but an alien slug in his brain is really calling the shots. For the most part, Tom ignores Jake and lives his own life, as older teen brothers are wont to do. So, while Jake still must be on his guard, he's never felt directly threatened under his own roof.
Until now.
His beloved great-grandfather has just died, tossing the family into upheaval. Their parents are taking Jake and Tom out to his cabin for the wake and funeral - a trip of four days at the least. Only the Yeerk in Tom's head needs access to Kandrona rays from the Yeerk pool every three days. Suddenly, there's a new battle line in the Yeerk war... a line straight through the center of Jake's house. A line between Tom and Jake... and Jake's father. Jake doesn't know what Tom's Yeerk means to do, but he knows one thing: he won't let the aliens take his father. No matter what the cost.
REVIEW: This book forms a perfect mirror with Book 30. When Marco had to deal with potentially killing his own mother in The Reunion, Jake kept telling him he was too close to the situation to make the call. Now, the leader of the Animorphs finds his own family turned into sacrificial pieces on the game board... and when his best friend, Marco, tries to tell him (from personal experience) that it's not a battle he's equipped to deal with, Jake doesn't take it well, to say the least. In this book, it becomes abundantly clear how the war is changing the Animorphs team... not for the better. These are not the same five children who wandered through an abandoned construction site at the start of the series. Jake finds himself doing things he never thought himself capable of - and ordering others, his friends and allies, to do things nobody should have to do. On its own, this book might've rated four or four and a half stars, but taken with the book before it, it forms a dark, bleak profile of two lives and one friendship irrevocably changed by the horrors of combat. These insights are truly what lifted the Animorphs series above the average young adult action serial.
Peter Pan (James M. Barrie)
Peter Pan
James M. Barrie
Project Gutenberg - Public Domain Books
Fiction, YA Fantasy
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Wendy, John, and Michael Darling knew of Peter Pan long before they saw him. A wisp of dream, a half-forgotten cradle song about a boy who refused to grow up... but those were just stories. The boy who flew through the nursery window, leaving his shadow behind for Mrs. Darling to find, is real. Try as their parents and faithful nanny, the dog Nana, might, Peter won't stay away. Soon, he convinces the Darling children to fly away with him to Neverland, a world forged of adventure and imagination. Pirates and fairies and mermaids and more... every day in Neverland brings a new story to tell. But soon Wendy starts to wonder when - or even if - Peter will let them return home.
REVIEW: This was a free e-book download from Project Gutenberg, which claims to be "created in the United States of America from a comparison of various editions determined by age to be in the Public Domain in the United States." Whatever that means... In any event, I'm acting under the presumption that this is a faithful rendition of the original text. Considering the age, the overall story holds up decently, even if some glaring stereotypes (girls doing nothing but darning socks and wanting babies, "redskin" savages, etc.) and archaic language date it. Peter comes across as far less of a benevolent playmate than an oddly inhuman captor, an immature demigod who proves as much a danger as a protector of the Darlings and the Lost Boys. As sad as it seems to know that children must grow up, Peter himself seems even sadder, forever denied the love of a family by his own nature. His story isn't the only disturbing subtext beneath Neverland; Barrie recognizes the dark side of childhood and imagination at several points. The story moves fairly well, though the characters tend to the exaggerated and goofy, even the pirate crew of Captain Hook. I almost gave this a solid Good rating, if only because the other books I'm currently reading (save the Animorphs reread) have tended toward the dull and dismal. In the end, though, the goofiness and the annoying intrusions of the narrator kept it down.
James M. Barrie
Project Gutenberg - Public Domain Books
Fiction, YA Fantasy
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Wendy, John, and Michael Darling knew of Peter Pan long before they saw him. A wisp of dream, a half-forgotten cradle song about a boy who refused to grow up... but those were just stories. The boy who flew through the nursery window, leaving his shadow behind for Mrs. Darling to find, is real. Try as their parents and faithful nanny, the dog Nana, might, Peter won't stay away. Soon, he convinces the Darling children to fly away with him to Neverland, a world forged of adventure and imagination. Pirates and fairies and mermaids and more... every day in Neverland brings a new story to tell. But soon Wendy starts to wonder when - or even if - Peter will let them return home.
REVIEW: This was a free e-book download from Project Gutenberg, which claims to be "created in the United States of America from a comparison of various editions determined by age to be in the Public Domain in the United States." Whatever that means... In any event, I'm acting under the presumption that this is a faithful rendition of the original text. Considering the age, the overall story holds up decently, even if some glaring stereotypes (girls doing nothing but darning socks and wanting babies, "redskin" savages, etc.) and archaic language date it. Peter comes across as far less of a benevolent playmate than an oddly inhuman captor, an immature demigod who proves as much a danger as a protector of the Darlings and the Lost Boys. As sad as it seems to know that children must grow up, Peter himself seems even sadder, forever denied the love of a family by his own nature. His story isn't the only disturbing subtext beneath Neverland; Barrie recognizes the dark side of childhood and imagination at several points. The story moves fairly well, though the characters tend to the exaggerated and goofy, even the pirate crew of Captain Hook. I almost gave this a solid Good rating, if only because the other books I'm currently reading (save the Animorphs reread) have tended toward the dull and dismal. In the end, though, the goofiness and the annoying intrusions of the narrator kept it down.
The Reunion (K. A. Applegate)
The Reunion
(The Animorphs series, Book 30)
K. A. Applegate
Scholastic
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
****+(Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: Marco meant to go to school that morning. He really did. But, plagued by persistent nightmares of his mother - last seen in a flooding underwater Yeerk facility, with the alien slug Visser One still wrapped tightly around her brain - he just couldn't face another mindless morning of classes, so he took the bus into town. That's when he saw her: his mother, Visser One, back on Earth but in disguise. The disaster off Royan Island cost her her rank, and made her a marked Yeerk - but if she's returned to the territory of her rival, Visser Three, she must have a plan for redemption. Infighting Vissers make a perfect opportunity for the Animorphs to disrupt the Yeerk invasion... and maybe, just maybe, give Marco a chance to save his mom in the chaos.
If they play their cards right, the Animorphs could end them both: Visser Three and Visser One, the leaders of the invasion. It's an opportunity they can't afford to pass up, but one fraught with dangers... and with no room to spare for sentimentality or impossible dreams of rescue. What will Marco sacrifice in the name of victory - and can he be trusted to make that sacrifice, with so much at stake?
REVIEW: On the heels of the war- and death-heavy Megamorphs 3 comes one of the darkest stories the Animorphs have yet told. Marco is torn between heart and head, between his own growing ruthlessness and the frantic dreams of a loving son forced to watch his mother's ongoing captivity in wretched silence. He keeps telling himself that he knows exactly what he's doing, that his sentimentality won't interfere with his judgement, but even immersing himself in an ice-cold mindset can't stop the white-hot pain of his predicament from burning him up inside. His family tragedy at the hands of the Yeerks always made the war more personal for him than the other Animorphs, even more personal than it is for Jake (whose brother, Tom, was the first blood-relative Controller the fledgling Animorphs discovered.) It only lost half a star because the opening feels weak and forced.
(The Animorphs series, Book 30)
K. A. Applegate
Scholastic
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
****+(Good/Great)
NOTE: In honor of the re-release of the series, I'm finally posting individual reviews of the Animorphs books.
DESCRIPTION: Marco meant to go to school that morning. He really did. But, plagued by persistent nightmares of his mother - last seen in a flooding underwater Yeerk facility, with the alien slug Visser One still wrapped tightly around her brain - he just couldn't face another mindless morning of classes, so he took the bus into town. That's when he saw her: his mother, Visser One, back on Earth but in disguise. The disaster off Royan Island cost her her rank, and made her a marked Yeerk - but if she's returned to the territory of her rival, Visser Three, she must have a plan for redemption. Infighting Vissers make a perfect opportunity for the Animorphs to disrupt the Yeerk invasion... and maybe, just maybe, give Marco a chance to save his mom in the chaos.
If they play their cards right, the Animorphs could end them both: Visser Three and Visser One, the leaders of the invasion. It's an opportunity they can't afford to pass up, but one fraught with dangers... and with no room to spare for sentimentality or impossible dreams of rescue. What will Marco sacrifice in the name of victory - and can he be trusted to make that sacrifice, with so much at stake?
REVIEW: On the heels of the war- and death-heavy Megamorphs 3 comes one of the darkest stories the Animorphs have yet told. Marco is torn between heart and head, between his own growing ruthlessness and the frantic dreams of a loving son forced to watch his mother's ongoing captivity in wretched silence. He keeps telling himself that he knows exactly what he's doing, that his sentimentality won't interfere with his judgement, but even immersing himself in an ice-cold mindset can't stop the white-hot pain of his predicament from burning him up inside. His family tragedy at the hands of the Yeerks always made the war more personal for him than the other Animorphs, even more personal than it is for Jake (whose brother, Tom, was the first blood-relative Controller the fledgling Animorphs discovered.) It only lost half a star because the opening feels weak and forced.
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Elfangor's Secret (K. A. Applegate)
Elfangor's Secret
(The Animorphs series, Megamorphs 3)
K. A. Applegate
Scholastic
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: Many years ago, a lost and war-weary young Andalite warrior came to Earth... and stayed. Prince Elfangor brought the Time Matrix, the most powerful piece of technology known in the galaxy, and buried it in an empty field, before morphing to human to live with the one person he truly loved. At least, until the Ellimist intervened, sending Elfangor back to the battle zone. But the Time Matrix remained - and, just before his death at the hands of Visser Three, Elfangor almost retrieved it.
Almost...
Now, Supreme Leader Jake rallies his friends - Marco, Cassie, Melissa, and Tobias - and an upstart alien to defend the Empire from the Yeerk invasion... a matter only slightly more pressing than Cassie's disturbingly rebellious remarks and his own nation's wars against the Primitives of South America. But - no. Something's wrong with time. Terribly wrong. The Yeerk known as Visser Four - smarting from the loss on Leera, a loss caused by the interference of the Animorphs - has located the Time Matrix, using it to manipulate history so that the Yeerks will have a much easier time conquering Earth. For once, the Ellimist and Crayak agree that Visser Four must be stopped... but the Crayak demands a price for giving the Animorphs a chance to set the timeline right. A life must be paid. Against the millions who will die in altered wars throughout history, a negligible cost, but that life will be one of their own.
The Animorphs have never hesitated before. They cannot afford to hesitate now, not when the alternative is to grow up in a slave-based society with a set of morals so twisted they can scarcely contemplate them. Even if one of them may not return from their journey through time...
REVIEW: I came close to clipping this another half-star. The set-up feels rushed; no explanation is given for how Visser Four, alone of all the Yeerks - with access to all that superior Yeerk technology - tracked down the Time Matrix and worked out how to use it, though it's implied that the Crayak himself might have been involved, only to regret it. Once that bump is over, the rest of the story moves quickly, twisting down dark paths through puzzles that strain not only the temporal but the moral fibers of the Animorphs to their utmost. "Right" and "wrong," "good guys" and "bad guys," all labels quickly lose their meaning as battles are lost that should be won, lives that should burn long are snuffed out, and flags that should fly are never sewn to begin with. Thrust into the heart of war after war, the blood toll and body count can't help but be high, and Applegate - as usual - doesn't pull punches. War is Hell, no matter what the reason, the era, or the timeline.
At the end of my copy, as in the previous book, is an ad for the short-lived line of Animorphs transforming action figures. Toy technology just cannot adequately combine a human figure with an animal without making both look very, very screwy...
(The Animorphs series, Megamorphs 3)
K. A. Applegate
Scholastic
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
****+ (Good/Great)
NOTE: In honor of the re-release of the series, I'm finally posting individual reviews of the Animorphs books.
DESCRIPTION: Many years ago, a lost and war-weary young Andalite warrior came to Earth... and stayed. Prince Elfangor brought the Time Matrix, the most powerful piece of technology known in the galaxy, and buried it in an empty field, before morphing to human to live with the one person he truly loved. At least, until the Ellimist intervened, sending Elfangor back to the battle zone. But the Time Matrix remained - and, just before his death at the hands of Visser Three, Elfangor almost retrieved it.
Almost...
Now, Supreme Leader Jake rallies his friends - Marco, Cassie, Melissa, and Tobias - and an upstart alien to defend the Empire from the Yeerk invasion... a matter only slightly more pressing than Cassie's disturbingly rebellious remarks and his own nation's wars against the Primitives of South America. But - no. Something's wrong with time. Terribly wrong. The Yeerk known as Visser Four - smarting from the loss on Leera, a loss caused by the interference of the Animorphs - has located the Time Matrix, using it to manipulate history so that the Yeerks will have a much easier time conquering Earth. For once, the Ellimist and Crayak agree that Visser Four must be stopped... but the Crayak demands a price for giving the Animorphs a chance to set the timeline right. A life must be paid. Against the millions who will die in altered wars throughout history, a negligible cost, but that life will be one of their own.
The Animorphs have never hesitated before. They cannot afford to hesitate now, not when the alternative is to grow up in a slave-based society with a set of morals so twisted they can scarcely contemplate them. Even if one of them may not return from their journey through time...
REVIEW: I came close to clipping this another half-star. The set-up feels rushed; no explanation is given for how Visser Four, alone of all the Yeerks - with access to all that superior Yeerk technology - tracked down the Time Matrix and worked out how to use it, though it's implied that the Crayak himself might have been involved, only to regret it. Once that bump is over, the rest of the story moves quickly, twisting down dark paths through puzzles that strain not only the temporal but the moral fibers of the Animorphs to their utmost. "Right" and "wrong," "good guys" and "bad guys," all labels quickly lose their meaning as battles are lost that should be won, lives that should burn long are snuffed out, and flags that should fly are never sewn to begin with. Thrust into the heart of war after war, the blood toll and body count can't help but be high, and Applegate - as usual - doesn't pull punches. War is Hell, no matter what the reason, the era, or the timeline.
At the end of my copy, as in the previous book, is an ad for the short-lived line of Animorphs transforming action figures. Toy technology just cannot adequately combine a human figure with an animal without making both look very, very screwy...
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
The Sickness (K. A. Applegate)
The Sickness
(The Animorphs series, Book 29)
K. A. Applegate
Scholastic
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
***** (Great)
DESCRIPTION: Cassie and her friends just wanted one ordinary night, a night when they could be regular kids at a school dance. Then Ax, in human morph, grows strangely delirious... the onset of an Andalite glandular illness that might be lethal. In the middle of hustling the erratically-demorphing alien from the school gym, Cassie is confronted by a mild-mannered teacher who seems strangely knowledgeable about her extracurricular alien-fighting activities. Mr. Tidwell and his Yeerk companion are part of the fledgling peace movement, comprised of Yeerks who don't want to be forced upon involuntary hosts, who want to find a better way than continual galactic war. He brings grim news: Aftran, the Yeerk who founded the movement after an eventful meeting with Cassie, has been captured, and Visser Three plans to interrogate her personally. Everything - the peace movement, the Animorphs, the fate of the Earth itself - rests on freeing Aftran from the Yeerk pool. A daunting challenge, even for the Animorphs at full strength. But Ax's disease is catching. One by one, the Animorphs fall ill... leaving Cassie on her own, with a dying Andalite and an impossible mission.
REVIEW: An excellent follow-through on Book 19 once more pits Cassie against herself. Making the choice to let Aftran (and her human host, young Karen) live was one thing: surviving the consequences, including this worst-case scenario, is quite another. In some ways, she's revealed to be the strongest of the Animorphs, sticking to her convictions even when they fly in the face of practical, hard-learned battle instinct. (In light of the series finale, this strength shines even brighter.) The side-story with Ax and the others falling ill adds a nice, if slightly plot-convenient, sense of urgency. And, once more, Erek the Chee comes into play, though for once he's not the reason for their current predicament. Coming as it does in the middle of an overall downgrade in quality, this book serves as a nice reminder of why I became hooked to begin with.
On an unrelated note, the ad campaign for K. A. Applegate's Everworld series (reviewed on my website here) begins here. They were pitched at a distinctly older audience than the Animorphs books; I suspect that Scholastic realized by now that a fair chunk of the readership was over the target age.
And on yet another unrelated note, this book marks the halfway point of Project Animorph; 29 books down, 29 to go...
(The Animorphs series, Book 29)
K. A. Applegate
Scholastic
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
***** (Great)
NOTE: In honor of the re-release of the series, I'm finally posting individual reviews of the Animorphs books.
DESCRIPTION: Cassie and her friends just wanted one ordinary night, a night when they could be regular kids at a school dance. Then Ax, in human morph, grows strangely delirious... the onset of an Andalite glandular illness that might be lethal. In the middle of hustling the erratically-demorphing alien from the school gym, Cassie is confronted by a mild-mannered teacher who seems strangely knowledgeable about her extracurricular alien-fighting activities. Mr. Tidwell and his Yeerk companion are part of the fledgling peace movement, comprised of Yeerks who don't want to be forced upon involuntary hosts, who want to find a better way than continual galactic war. He brings grim news: Aftran, the Yeerk who founded the movement after an eventful meeting with Cassie, has been captured, and Visser Three plans to interrogate her personally. Everything - the peace movement, the Animorphs, the fate of the Earth itself - rests on freeing Aftran from the Yeerk pool. A daunting challenge, even for the Animorphs at full strength. But Ax's disease is catching. One by one, the Animorphs fall ill... leaving Cassie on her own, with a dying Andalite and an impossible mission.
REVIEW: An excellent follow-through on Book 19 once more pits Cassie against herself. Making the choice to let Aftran (and her human host, young Karen) live was one thing: surviving the consequences, including this worst-case scenario, is quite another. In some ways, she's revealed to be the strongest of the Animorphs, sticking to her convictions even when they fly in the face of practical, hard-learned battle instinct. (In light of the series finale, this strength shines even brighter.) The side-story with Ax and the others falling ill adds a nice, if slightly plot-convenient, sense of urgency. And, once more, Erek the Chee comes into play, though for once he's not the reason for their current predicament. Coming as it does in the middle of an overall downgrade in quality, this book serves as a nice reminder of why I became hooked to begin with.
On an unrelated note, the ad campaign for K. A. Applegate's Everworld series (reviewed on my website here) begins here. They were pitched at a distinctly older audience than the Animorphs books; I suspect that Scholastic realized by now that a fair chunk of the readership was over the target age.
And on yet another unrelated note, this book marks the halfway point of Project Animorph; 29 books down, 29 to go...
Imagine a Day (Sarah L. Thomson)
Imagine a Day
Sarah L. Thompson
Athenium
Fiction, YA Picture Book
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: A treehouse large as a manor... a library of doorways to other worlds... The illusionary paintings of Rob Gonsalves feature in a second book of short verse.
REVIEW: Much like Imagine a Night (reviewed on my website here), the paintings boggle the eye and inspire the heart. The verses by Thomson, while fun, are largely incidental. Once in a while, Gonsalves's people appear distorted, but otherwise it's yet another feast for the imagination.
Sarah L. Thompson
Athenium
Fiction, YA Picture Book
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: A treehouse large as a manor... a library of doorways to other worlds... The illusionary paintings of Rob Gonsalves feature in a second book of short verse.
REVIEW: Much like Imagine a Night (reviewed on my website here), the paintings boggle the eye and inspire the heart. The verses by Thomson, while fun, are largely incidental. Once in a while, Gonsalves's people appear distorted, but otherwise it's yet another feast for the imagination.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
The Experiment (K. A. Applegate)
The Experiment
(The Animorphs series, Book 28)
K. A. Applegate
Scholastic
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Aximili has learned much about humans since becoming stranded on Earth, but much about their behavior and culture still confuses him. Even with the help of the wonderfully educational device known as a television, he cannot figure out how one species can be so contradictory, yet still dominate their world. Now, he's about to experience first-hand how hypocritical and brutal humans can be. The Yeerks have acquired an animal-testing facility and a meat-packing plant. Put them together, and it's hardly likely that Visser Three is simply going into the fast-food business. To investigate, Ax and the Animorphs must infiltrate the lab... and witness the horror that is a modern slaughterhouse.
REVIEW: I've said before that Ax's books tend to be weaker than the rest. This is a decent example. Despite his superior intelligence, he remains baffled at simple human concepts, though his commentary on our species makes for more than a few chuckles. This book takes on the subjects of animal testing and modern meat production, but with little of Applegate's usual depth. Add to that the fact that the entire mission is something of a shaggy-dog adventure, and this book settles nicely into the murk of the mid-series slump.
Incidentally, my copy contains "bonus" bookmarks, featuring the cover illustration: Aximili morphing to bovine form. If Ax were to ask just what the purpose was of reproducing such an unremarkable image, when many more dynamic pictures have graced the covers of Animorphs books, I have to admit I wouldn't be able to defend my species very effectively.
(The Animorphs series, Book 28)
K. A. Applegate
Scholastic
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
***+ (Okay/Good)
NOTE: In honor of the re-release of the series, I'm finally posting individual reviews of the Animorphs books.
DESCRIPTION: Aximili has learned much about humans since becoming stranded on Earth, but much about their behavior and culture still confuses him. Even with the help of the wonderfully educational device known as a television, he cannot figure out how one species can be so contradictory, yet still dominate their world. Now, he's about to experience first-hand how hypocritical and brutal humans can be. The Yeerks have acquired an animal-testing facility and a meat-packing plant. Put them together, and it's hardly likely that Visser Three is simply going into the fast-food business. To investigate, Ax and the Animorphs must infiltrate the lab... and witness the horror that is a modern slaughterhouse.
REVIEW: I've said before that Ax's books tend to be weaker than the rest. This is a decent example. Despite his superior intelligence, he remains baffled at simple human concepts, though his commentary on our species makes for more than a few chuckles. This book takes on the subjects of animal testing and modern meat production, but with little of Applegate's usual depth. Add to that the fact that the entire mission is something of a shaggy-dog adventure, and this book settles nicely into the murk of the mid-series slump.
Incidentally, my copy contains "bonus" bookmarks, featuring the cover illustration: Aximili morphing to bovine form. If Ax were to ask just what the purpose was of reproducing such an unremarkable image, when many more dynamic pictures have graced the covers of Animorphs books, I have to admit I wouldn't be able to defend my species very effectively.
Saturday, October 15, 2011
The Exposed (K. A. Applegate)
The Exposed
(The Animorphs series, Book 27)
K. A. Applegate
Scholastic
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Becoming an Animorph meant sacrificing normality, risking life and limb in a fight against nearly-impossible odds, knowing that talking to anyone - a cop, a friend, even her own mother or father - about what she did would land her in a loony bin or - worse - in the Yeerk pool, with an alien slug wrapped around her brain. But, terrible as war is, Rachel still feels a thrill of excitement when she rips into an enemy with the claws of a grizzly bear, or tramples them under an elephant's feet. Sometimes, she's so into the battle that she scares her fellow Animorphs.
She scares herself, too.
Much as Rachel tries to fight it, something deep within her longs for blood and danger. But even that part of her quails at the latest challenge. Something has gone wrong with their allies, the Chee. The holograms that enable the alien androids to pass as human are on the blink, as is their ability to move. Soon, they'll be immobile and utterly exposed... and if the Yeerks got their hands on the advanced Pemalite technology within the Chee, there would be no stopping them, on Earth or elsewhere in the galaxy. But the Pemalite ship that regulates the Chee lies hidden three miles beneath the ocean, down where the water pressure would destroy every animal in the Animorphs' DNA arsenal. And one thing that Rachel has always feared is crushing, smothering darkness...
REVIEW: Had this not come right on the heels of the previous book, it probably would've earned an extra half-star. The series returns to its strong suits, as Rachel wrestles with her changing life and the black monster within. But they just worked with Erek the Chee in the previous installment; that, plus another plot twist (which might constitute a spoiler, so I won't go into specifics here) feel like too much of a similar note struck too close together. That problem aside, it's a fairly good entry in a series that, more often than not, rose well above average.
(The Animorphs series, Book 27)
K. A. Applegate
Scholastic
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
**** (Good)
NOTE: In honor of the re-release of the series, I'm finally posting individual reviews of the Animorphs books.
DESCRIPTION: Becoming an Animorph meant sacrificing normality, risking life and limb in a fight against nearly-impossible odds, knowing that talking to anyone - a cop, a friend, even her own mother or father - about what she did would land her in a loony bin or - worse - in the Yeerk pool, with an alien slug wrapped around her brain. But, terrible as war is, Rachel still feels a thrill of excitement when she rips into an enemy with the claws of a grizzly bear, or tramples them under an elephant's feet. Sometimes, she's so into the battle that she scares her fellow Animorphs.
She scares herself, too.
Much as Rachel tries to fight it, something deep within her longs for blood and danger. But even that part of her quails at the latest challenge. Something has gone wrong with their allies, the Chee. The holograms that enable the alien androids to pass as human are on the blink, as is their ability to move. Soon, they'll be immobile and utterly exposed... and if the Yeerks got their hands on the advanced Pemalite technology within the Chee, there would be no stopping them, on Earth or elsewhere in the galaxy. But the Pemalite ship that regulates the Chee lies hidden three miles beneath the ocean, down where the water pressure would destroy every animal in the Animorphs' DNA arsenal. And one thing that Rachel has always feared is crushing, smothering darkness...
REVIEW: Had this not come right on the heels of the previous book, it probably would've earned an extra half-star. The series returns to its strong suits, as Rachel wrestles with her changing life and the black monster within. But they just worked with Erek the Chee in the previous installment; that, plus another plot twist (which might constitute a spoiler, so I won't go into specifics here) feel like too much of a similar note struck too close together. That problem aside, it's a fairly good entry in a series that, more often than not, rose well above average.
Friday, October 14, 2011
The Attack (K. A. Applegate)
The Attack
(The Animorphs series, Book 26)
K. A. Applegate
Scholastic
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: Jake and his friends thought they had enough on their plates, fighting the Yeerk invasions and the devious Visser Three. Then, the Ellimist returned. Capable of folding space and time on a whim, his seemingly omnipotent powers bound by rules no human mind can comprehend, he has helped in the past... but never as expected. Now, they learn that the Ellimist has an enemy, the entity known as the Crayak. The entire war with the Yeerks, it seems, is but a small skirmish in the eons-long, galaxy-wide conflict between two forces so powerful that open conflict would tear the space-time continuum itself apart. Thus, their habit of fighting through proxies: whole species, like the Yeerks, or even individuals, like the Animorphs. The Ellimist needs seven champions to fight against soldiers of the Crayak, to determine the fate of an entire alien species light-centuries removed from Earth. On his side will stand the five human Animorphs, Aximili the Andalite, and Erek the Chee. The Crayak sends seven members of a species whose names the Animorphs already know, the species that slaughtered the Chee's creators: the Howlers. Winning will hurt the Crayak, and (it is implied) the Yeerks. Lose, and the Animorphs will never have existed...
REVIEW: This brings the series back up to (nearly) its top level. Jake finds himself risking his life and the lives of his friends for aliens who utterly repulse him, fighting an enemy that has never lost a battle in thousands upon thousands of years, and all on the vague promise of the Ellimist that a victory will, somehow, help weaken, if not defeat, the Yeerks. He also must deal with Erek, whose programming prevents him from harming even the murderous Howlers, and Ax, whose momentary breakdown in bravery leads to reckless behavior. Jake resents being treated like a piece on the Ellimist's and Crayak's gameboard, but all he can hope to do is avoid becoming a sacrificial pawn. A small yet glaring error - confusing falcon talons for fingers during a morph - hints that this might be a ghostwriter's work, but it's far closer to Applegate's standard than the last two installments. Still, it's nice to see the series back in fighting shape, so to speak... and I've had a run of bad luck with my other reading, as you can tell from the ratings here.
On an unrelated note, my first-run version of this book features a large cover sticker proclaiming the "new" timeslot of the Animorphs TV series. I remember it airing all of two times at the advertised time; I gave up chasing it around Nickelodeon's schedule after that.
(The Animorphs series, Book 26)
K. A. Applegate
Scholastic
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
****+ (Good/Great)
NOTE: In honor of the recent re-release, I'm finally posting individual reviews of the Animorphs books.
DESCRIPTION: Jake and his friends thought they had enough on their plates, fighting the Yeerk invasions and the devious Visser Three. Then, the Ellimist returned. Capable of folding space and time on a whim, his seemingly omnipotent powers bound by rules no human mind can comprehend, he has helped in the past... but never as expected. Now, they learn that the Ellimist has an enemy, the entity known as the Crayak. The entire war with the Yeerks, it seems, is but a small skirmish in the eons-long, galaxy-wide conflict between two forces so powerful that open conflict would tear the space-time continuum itself apart. Thus, their habit of fighting through proxies: whole species, like the Yeerks, or even individuals, like the Animorphs. The Ellimist needs seven champions to fight against soldiers of the Crayak, to determine the fate of an entire alien species light-centuries removed from Earth. On his side will stand the five human Animorphs, Aximili the Andalite, and Erek the Chee. The Crayak sends seven members of a species whose names the Animorphs already know, the species that slaughtered the Chee's creators: the Howlers. Winning will hurt the Crayak, and (it is implied) the Yeerks. Lose, and the Animorphs will never have existed...
REVIEW: This brings the series back up to (nearly) its top level. Jake finds himself risking his life and the lives of his friends for aliens who utterly repulse him, fighting an enemy that has never lost a battle in thousands upon thousands of years, and all on the vague promise of the Ellimist that a victory will, somehow, help weaken, if not defeat, the Yeerks. He also must deal with Erek, whose programming prevents him from harming even the murderous Howlers, and Ax, whose momentary breakdown in bravery leads to reckless behavior. Jake resents being treated like a piece on the Ellimist's and Crayak's gameboard, but all he can hope to do is avoid becoming a sacrificial pawn. A small yet glaring error - confusing falcon talons for fingers during a morph - hints that this might be a ghostwriter's work, but it's far closer to Applegate's standard than the last two installments. Still, it's nice to see the series back in fighting shape, so to speak... and I've had a run of bad luck with my other reading, as you can tell from the ratings here.
On an unrelated note, my first-run version of this book features a large cover sticker proclaiming the "new" timeslot of the Animorphs TV series. I remember it airing all of two times at the advertised time; I gave up chasing it around Nickelodeon's schedule after that.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
The Frog Princess (E. D. Baker)
The Frog Princess
(The Tales of the Frog Princess series, Book 1)
E. D. Baker
Bloomsbury
Fiction, YA Fantasy
**+ (Bad/Okay)
DESCRIPTION: Princess Esmerelda's life is nothing but a disappointment. She comes from a line of witches, but can't cast a spell without horrific consequences. She's of royal blood, yet laughs like a donkey and trips over her own feet. Her own mother can scarcely look at her without a sneer of disdain... but that doesn't stop her from using Emma to buy a politically advantageous engagement to a neighboring kingdom. The princess flees to the swamp, the only place where she feels free to be herself - but this time, she meets a talking frog. Eadric claims he used to be a prince, and only needs her kiss to restore his humanity, but Emma knows enough to be skeptical; after all, with magic leaking out of the castle, any animal might start talking, and just because a person's been hit with a frog spell doesn't mean they wore a crown. But he's persistent, and she finally gives in... only something goes terribly wrong. Instead of turning Eadric into a prince, the kiss turned Emma into a frog! The two set off on a dangerous quest to find the witch who cursed Eadric, while Emma gets a crash-course in amphibious survival.
And she still doesn't know if he's really a prince or not...
REVIEW: To be perfectly honest, if the premise of a later book in the series hadn't intrigued me, I probably wouldn't have tried this one. But I hate coming in partway through a series, so I gave it a try. The story sounds superficial and trite, but I've read many Young Adult books that rise above seemingly-simple stories. Sadly, this isn't one of them. Characters bend and twist their personalities to fit the scene, having to tell the reader what they're feeling instead of being able to show it through consistent actions. Everyone tends to be pleasant when approached in the right manner, except for a few not-nice people who are suitably punished for being unkind to the heroes. The world and the magic system are paper-thin and about as deep. Conflicts and resolutions, much like personality traits and half the conversations, pop up out of thin air, and tend to the obvious - not unlike Baker's shallow stabs at humor. If I were a young girl just starting to read longer books without pictures, I might have liked it, but this book holds absolutely nothing to interest anyone else. I actually thought about dropping this to a solid Bad, but it's just too simple of a story to care that much about it.
(The Tales of the Frog Princess series, Book 1)
E. D. Baker
Bloomsbury
Fiction, YA Fantasy
**+ (Bad/Okay)
DESCRIPTION: Princess Esmerelda's life is nothing but a disappointment. She comes from a line of witches, but can't cast a spell without horrific consequences. She's of royal blood, yet laughs like a donkey and trips over her own feet. Her own mother can scarcely look at her without a sneer of disdain... but that doesn't stop her from using Emma to buy a politically advantageous engagement to a neighboring kingdom. The princess flees to the swamp, the only place where she feels free to be herself - but this time, she meets a talking frog. Eadric claims he used to be a prince, and only needs her kiss to restore his humanity, but Emma knows enough to be skeptical; after all, with magic leaking out of the castle, any animal might start talking, and just because a person's been hit with a frog spell doesn't mean they wore a crown. But he's persistent, and she finally gives in... only something goes terribly wrong. Instead of turning Eadric into a prince, the kiss turned Emma into a frog! The two set off on a dangerous quest to find the witch who cursed Eadric, while Emma gets a crash-course in amphibious survival.
And she still doesn't know if he's really a prince or not...
REVIEW: To be perfectly honest, if the premise of a later book in the series hadn't intrigued me, I probably wouldn't have tried this one. But I hate coming in partway through a series, so I gave it a try. The story sounds superficial and trite, but I've read many Young Adult books that rise above seemingly-simple stories. Sadly, this isn't one of them. Characters bend and twist their personalities to fit the scene, having to tell the reader what they're feeling instead of being able to show it through consistent actions. Everyone tends to be pleasant when approached in the right manner, except for a few not-nice people who are suitably punished for being unkind to the heroes. The world and the magic system are paper-thin and about as deep. Conflicts and resolutions, much like personality traits and half the conversations, pop up out of thin air, and tend to the obvious - not unlike Baker's shallow stabs at humor. If I were a young girl just starting to read longer books without pictures, I might have liked it, but this book holds absolutely nothing to interest anyone else. I actually thought about dropping this to a solid Bad, but it's just too simple of a story to care that much about it.
The Extreme (K. A. Applegate)
The Extreme
(The Animorphs series, Book 25)
K. A. Applegate
Scholastic
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Marco thought his week was going bad when he totally blew a date with Marian, one of the cutest girls in school. (But, really, a Beethoven concert? How was he supposed to stay awake?) Then Erek the Chee turned up with news that makes things even worse: the Yeerks are working on a way to remote-beam Kandrona rays via satellite relays. If they can pull it off, then their greatest weakness - the need to leave their hosts every three days to visit the underground Yeerk pool - will be history. The Animorphs have to crash that party... only Erek doesn't know where it is, or what defenses the Yeerks have waiting for them. All they know is that it's somewhere remote... very remote, where alien ships won't be noticed.
Which explains how the Animorphs find themselves on the ice-blasted shores of the Arctic Ocean. It doesn't explain how they're supposed to survive, when the weather alone is nearly as deadly as their alien enemies...
REVIEW: Not quite as silly and pointless as Book 24, it nevertheless continues an aimless coast in the series. Like the previous book, it's more about the "wow" gimmick - in this case, the "field trip" to the Arctic Circle - than about character growth, or even the fight against the Yeerks. I've heard rumors that ghostwriters were responsible for a good chunk of the series, especially this middle stretch; that might explain the autopilot overtones, but it's not really an excuse, as I'm sure there are decent ghostwriters out there who could've managed to pep up even a canned plot like this one. Still, it's not outright embarrassing, even if there's a slight continuity hiccup.
On an unrelated note, this book features an ad for the late, lamented Watchers series by Peter Lerangis (reviewed on my website here), which was axed by Scholastic after six books and never had a chance to develop as it should have. There's a certain irony in its appearance in a book that's essentially series-padding.
(The Animorphs series, Book 25)
K. A. Applegate
Scholastic
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
***+ (Okay/Good)
NOTE: In honor of the re-release of the series, I'm finally posting individual reviews of the Animorphs books.
DESCRIPTION: Marco thought his week was going bad when he totally blew a date with Marian, one of the cutest girls in school. (But, really, a Beethoven concert? How was he supposed to stay awake?) Then Erek the Chee turned up with news that makes things even worse: the Yeerks are working on a way to remote-beam Kandrona rays via satellite relays. If they can pull it off, then their greatest weakness - the need to leave their hosts every three days to visit the underground Yeerk pool - will be history. The Animorphs have to crash that party... only Erek doesn't know where it is, or what defenses the Yeerks have waiting for them. All they know is that it's somewhere remote... very remote, where alien ships won't be noticed.
Which explains how the Animorphs find themselves on the ice-blasted shores of the Arctic Ocean. It doesn't explain how they're supposed to survive, when the weather alone is nearly as deadly as their alien enemies...
REVIEW: Not quite as silly and pointless as Book 24, it nevertheless continues an aimless coast in the series. Like the previous book, it's more about the "wow" gimmick - in this case, the "field trip" to the Arctic Circle - than about character growth, or even the fight against the Yeerks. I've heard rumors that ghostwriters were responsible for a good chunk of the series, especially this middle stretch; that might explain the autopilot overtones, but it's not really an excuse, as I'm sure there are decent ghostwriters out there who could've managed to pep up even a canned plot like this one. Still, it's not outright embarrassing, even if there's a slight continuity hiccup.
On an unrelated note, this book features an ad for the late, lamented Watchers series by Peter Lerangis (reviewed on my website here), which was axed by Scholastic after six books and never had a chance to develop as it should have. There's a certain irony in its appearance in a book that's essentially series-padding.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
King Solomon's Mines (H. Rider Haggard)
King Solomon's Mines
H. Rider Haggard
Public Domain Books
Fiction, Adventure
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Allan Quartermain, an aging English-born elephant hunter in the wilds of colonial Africa, faces danger on a daily basis, yet somehow has managed to outlive most every other white hunter on the continent. During a trip to his home in Durban, he meets a pair of countrymen on a quest to the legendary mines of King Solomon, rumored to lie in an unexplored mountain range beyond a lethal desert. None who have sought the mines ever returned alive, and only madmen's ravings speak of the dangerous route. With the promise of diamonds and wealth unimaginable - tempting prizes for a man nearing his twilight years, with a son to support no less - Quartermain joins the expedition, a journey that will prove more perilous than any maddened bull elephant, hunting lion, or bloodthirsty native.
REVIEW: One of the classic adventure stories, it remains a readable tale even today, with plenty of adventure amid exotic locales and warring natives. The Victorian attitude - with the White Man entitled to ownership of the world and its bounty, and all other races "knowing their place" beneath British rule - shines through loud and clear, but this was the mindset to which Haggard and his audience were no doubt accustomed. (I cannot help thinking, reading this book, just how shocking it must have been to them when the native peoples of the world rose up in anger against British rule; they would probably have understood their own dogs rising up better than the notion of non-white bipeds possessing feelings and intellects on par with their own. They also would've been flabbergasted at the idea of Earth's endless bounty teetering on the edge of oblivion... but, then, I'm a modern human and I can scarcely comprehend what my species has done to its only known habitat in the Universe.) Looking past the dated attitudes, Haggard crafts a story so filled with dangers and treacheries and ancient wonders that it comes close to parodying itself. The story isn't without a certain sense of humor, though, so perhaps Haggard knew exactly what he was doing. Even the manner in which Quartermain and his fellow Englishmen dupe the natives of the lost valley into thinking them visitors from the Stars has a tongue-in-cheek air... or maybe that's just a modern mind reading into a scenario that has become a chestnut by now. It's been said that Allan Quartermain was one of the chief inspirations for the character of Indiana Jones, and I can certainly see hints of Jones here; Quartermain makes no pretense to bravery for bravery's sake, yet somehow keeps ending up in dire predicaments where cowardice would be lethal. All told, I can see why this is still considered a classic adventure tale, and if it isn't quite my cup of cocoa, I'm still glad that I finally read it.
H. Rider Haggard
Public Domain Books
Fiction, Adventure
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Allan Quartermain, an aging English-born elephant hunter in the wilds of colonial Africa, faces danger on a daily basis, yet somehow has managed to outlive most every other white hunter on the continent. During a trip to his home in Durban, he meets a pair of countrymen on a quest to the legendary mines of King Solomon, rumored to lie in an unexplored mountain range beyond a lethal desert. None who have sought the mines ever returned alive, and only madmen's ravings speak of the dangerous route. With the promise of diamonds and wealth unimaginable - tempting prizes for a man nearing his twilight years, with a son to support no less - Quartermain joins the expedition, a journey that will prove more perilous than any maddened bull elephant, hunting lion, or bloodthirsty native.
REVIEW: One of the classic adventure stories, it remains a readable tale even today, with plenty of adventure amid exotic locales and warring natives. The Victorian attitude - with the White Man entitled to ownership of the world and its bounty, and all other races "knowing their place" beneath British rule - shines through loud and clear, but this was the mindset to which Haggard and his audience were no doubt accustomed. (I cannot help thinking, reading this book, just how shocking it must have been to them when the native peoples of the world rose up in anger against British rule; they would probably have understood their own dogs rising up better than the notion of non-white bipeds possessing feelings and intellects on par with their own. They also would've been flabbergasted at the idea of Earth's endless bounty teetering on the edge of oblivion... but, then, I'm a modern human and I can scarcely comprehend what my species has done to its only known habitat in the Universe.) Looking past the dated attitudes, Haggard crafts a story so filled with dangers and treacheries and ancient wonders that it comes close to parodying itself. The story isn't without a certain sense of humor, though, so perhaps Haggard knew exactly what he was doing. Even the manner in which Quartermain and his fellow Englishmen dupe the natives of the lost valley into thinking them visitors from the Stars has a tongue-in-cheek air... or maybe that's just a modern mind reading into a scenario that has become a chestnut by now. It's been said that Allan Quartermain was one of the chief inspirations for the character of Indiana Jones, and I can certainly see hints of Jones here; Quartermain makes no pretense to bravery for bravery's sake, yet somehow keeps ending up in dire predicaments where cowardice would be lethal. All told, I can see why this is still considered a classic adventure tale, and if it isn't quite my cup of cocoa, I'm still glad that I finally read it.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Larklight (Philip Reeve)
Larklight
Philip Reeve
Bloomsbury
Fiction, YA Fantasy
**+ (Bad/Okay)
DESCRIPTION: Ever since Sir Isaac Newton's remarkable discoveries, the British Empire has dominated the spaceways with its monopoly on aethership travel, with Her Majesty's Realm extending from its Earthly holdings to the moons of Jupiter. Even in the great, dark reaches of space, however, the orbital manor house of Larklight is a quaint backwater, the sort of out-of-the-way place where nothing ever happens. Here, Art and Myrtle Mumby live with their father, a grief-stricken man who buries himself in studies of icthyoform animals that swim in the aether of space. Myrtle yearns to visit London, to learn to be a proper lady, while Art secretly longs for the kinds of adventures he reads about.
Then, one morning, Art woke to find the house blanketed in spiderwebs, with a bloated arachnid calling itself Mr Webster knocking on Larklight's door. With their father captured, Art and Myrtle escape, but their adventures are only just beginning. Before they're through, the Mumby children will have survived the horrors of the lunar Potter Moth, endured captivity among space pirates, visited the deserts of Mars and the storms of Jupiter, and peered into the mysteries of the Cosmos while fighting enemies older than the Earth itself.
And all without a decent spot of tea...
REVIEW: I read glowing reviews on Amazon, and the premise looked intriguing. The first chapter establishes a marvelously inventive universe, with Victorian ideas of the nature of space (as a life-filled "aether" between the stars) and such. Ink illustrations by David Wyatt add a certain old-school charm. Unfortunately, in Chapter 2, invention began giving way to silliness, and I started growing weary of the protagonists. Art and Myrtle epitomize the principles of the Victorian Englishman and -woman, stuffed to the gills with pompous superiority and little but disdain for any class, nation, race, or species other than their own. Throughout their many adventures, they remain firmly mired in their British mindset, with only the smallest hint of softening in their stiff upper lips and ramrod spines - not even when aliens save their worthless little tails time and again. I understand that Reeves was writing a parody of Victorian adventure tales, that the over-the-top Britishness of Art and Myrtle (and other characters) played into that. It didn't make it any easier to suffer through the story with them. Meanwhile, the plot quickly devolves into bluster and noise, full of silly details and even more silly alien life-forms that dance and caper across the pages with the simple lines and levity of a cartoon. Nobody good (or even neutral) actually dies, for all the danger and gunfire; in a universe where taking a stroll in outer space won't kill you, I suppose not much will. This pulled the teeth from the tension, not to mention its attempts to build a sympathetic past for its persecuted pirate crew.
In the end, while I can appreciate the wild imagination and the attempts at humor, Larklight overstays its welcome with unsympathetic characters and a plot that simply won't let the good guys fail.
Philip Reeve
Bloomsbury
Fiction, YA Fantasy
**+ (Bad/Okay)
DESCRIPTION: Ever since Sir Isaac Newton's remarkable discoveries, the British Empire has dominated the spaceways with its monopoly on aethership travel, with Her Majesty's Realm extending from its Earthly holdings to the moons of Jupiter. Even in the great, dark reaches of space, however, the orbital manor house of Larklight is a quaint backwater, the sort of out-of-the-way place where nothing ever happens. Here, Art and Myrtle Mumby live with their father, a grief-stricken man who buries himself in studies of icthyoform animals that swim in the aether of space. Myrtle yearns to visit London, to learn to be a proper lady, while Art secretly longs for the kinds of adventures he reads about.
Then, one morning, Art woke to find the house blanketed in spiderwebs, with a bloated arachnid calling itself Mr Webster knocking on Larklight's door. With their father captured, Art and Myrtle escape, but their adventures are only just beginning. Before they're through, the Mumby children will have survived the horrors of the lunar Potter Moth, endured captivity among space pirates, visited the deserts of Mars and the storms of Jupiter, and peered into the mysteries of the Cosmos while fighting enemies older than the Earth itself.
And all without a decent spot of tea...
REVIEW: I read glowing reviews on Amazon, and the premise looked intriguing. The first chapter establishes a marvelously inventive universe, with Victorian ideas of the nature of space (as a life-filled "aether" between the stars) and such. Ink illustrations by David Wyatt add a certain old-school charm. Unfortunately, in Chapter 2, invention began giving way to silliness, and I started growing weary of the protagonists. Art and Myrtle epitomize the principles of the Victorian Englishman and -woman, stuffed to the gills with pompous superiority and little but disdain for any class, nation, race, or species other than their own. Throughout their many adventures, they remain firmly mired in their British mindset, with only the smallest hint of softening in their stiff upper lips and ramrod spines - not even when aliens save their worthless little tails time and again. I understand that Reeves was writing a parody of Victorian adventure tales, that the over-the-top Britishness of Art and Myrtle (and other characters) played into that. It didn't make it any easier to suffer through the story with them. Meanwhile, the plot quickly devolves into bluster and noise, full of silly details and even more silly alien life-forms that dance and caper across the pages with the simple lines and levity of a cartoon. Nobody good (or even neutral) actually dies, for all the danger and gunfire; in a universe where taking a stroll in outer space won't kill you, I suppose not much will. This pulled the teeth from the tension, not to mention its attempts to build a sympathetic past for its persecuted pirate crew.
In the end, while I can appreciate the wild imagination and the attempts at humor, Larklight overstays its welcome with unsympathetic characters and a plot that simply won't let the good guys fail.
Monday, October 10, 2011
The Suspicion (K. A. Applegate)
The Suspicion
(The Animorphs series, Book 24)
K. A. Applegate
Scholastic
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: When Cassie saw the tiny spaceship stuck to the old water pump, she didn't know what to think of it. The pump was where she'd hidden the Andalite blue box, but surely nobody could know it was there - and a ship the size of a child's toy could hardly be a threat, anyway. But the Helmacrons, petty-minded beings bent on galactic conquest, have a few tricks up their little sleeves. For one thing, their ships can detect the "transformational energy" of a person in morph. For another, their shrink rays pack quite a whallop. Cassie, Marco, and Tobias learn that the hard way. But being reduced to the size of an insect doesn't excuse one from stopping alien invaders, be they parasitic Yeerks or pint-sized Helmacrons.
REVIEW: Here, the series hits what can properly be termed a "lull." This book reads like a filler episode, full of superficial silliness and Mexican standoffs and half-funny jokes. Cassie's usually the introspective one, searching for the moral options, but here she's just another Animorph, caught up in a goofy misadventure that doesn't advance the mytharc or the characters in any significant fashion. While nothing outright embarrassing happens here, nothing particularly great does, either.
(The Animorphs series, Book 24)
K. A. Applegate
Scholastic
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
*** (Okay)
NOTE: In honor of the re-release of the series, I'm finally posting individual reviews of the Animorphs books.
DESCRIPTION: When Cassie saw the tiny spaceship stuck to the old water pump, she didn't know what to think of it. The pump was where she'd hidden the Andalite blue box, but surely nobody could know it was there - and a ship the size of a child's toy could hardly be a threat, anyway. But the Helmacrons, petty-minded beings bent on galactic conquest, have a few tricks up their little sleeves. For one thing, their ships can detect the "transformational energy" of a person in morph. For another, their shrink rays pack quite a whallop. Cassie, Marco, and Tobias learn that the hard way. But being reduced to the size of an insect doesn't excuse one from stopping alien invaders, be they parasitic Yeerks or pint-sized Helmacrons.
REVIEW: Here, the series hits what can properly be termed a "lull." This book reads like a filler episode, full of superficial silliness and Mexican standoffs and half-funny jokes. Cassie's usually the introspective one, searching for the moral options, but here she's just another Animorph, caught up in a goofy misadventure that doesn't advance the mytharc or the characters in any significant fashion. While nothing outright embarrassing happens here, nothing particularly great does, either.
Sunday, October 9, 2011
The Pretender (K. A. Applegate)
The Pretender
(The Animorphs series, Book 23)
K. A. Applegate
Scholastic
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: When Tobias became trapped in a red-tailed hawk morph, nobody seemed to notice. His father dead, his mother vanished, Tobias had been bounced back and forth between indifferent relatives who hardly cared about him when he was around. That's part of the reason why, when the Ellimist restored his ability to morph, Tobias remained a hawk; even though he could morph to his old body, regaining his humanity at the cost of his wings, he had nowhere to go, nobody who wanted him.
Now someone's been asking about him at school. Some woman named Aria claims to be his cousin, and a lawyer says he has documents pertaining to Tobias's real father... who may not be the man he thought he was. This comes just as his life in the wild takes a turn for the worse, with a rival red-tail encroaching on his meadow and prey growing scarce. Tobias loves his wings, and doesn't want to sacrifice his ability to morph, to help fight the Yeerks, but somewhere deep inside his human self he yearns for a family he never had. Risk death and starvation as a hawk, or risk his heart as a human - which will Tobias choose?
REVIEW: This book seems to mostly be an excuse to relate information to Tobias that readers learned in The Andalite Chronicles, concerning his unusual parentage. It starts a downslope in the series, with some elements feeling forced: his sudden, crippling empathy for his prey, for instance, reads like a plot device, not a natural outgrowth of the character. Still, Tobias has always been a tragic character, the first casualty of the Yeerk war, so seeing him forced to suffer again isn't entirely unexpected. On the whole, it's fun enough, but not quite at the level of the previous books. (Then again, the David trilogy's a hard act to follow.)
(The Animorphs series, Book 23)
K. A. Applegate
Scholastic
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
**** (Good)
NOTE: In honor of the re-release of the series, I'm finally posting individual reviews of the Animorphs books.
DESCRIPTION: When Tobias became trapped in a red-tailed hawk morph, nobody seemed to notice. His father dead, his mother vanished, Tobias had been bounced back and forth between indifferent relatives who hardly cared about him when he was around. That's part of the reason why, when the Ellimist restored his ability to morph, Tobias remained a hawk; even though he could morph to his old body, regaining his humanity at the cost of his wings, he had nowhere to go, nobody who wanted him.
Now someone's been asking about him at school. Some woman named Aria claims to be his cousin, and a lawyer says he has documents pertaining to Tobias's real father... who may not be the man he thought he was. This comes just as his life in the wild takes a turn for the worse, with a rival red-tail encroaching on his meadow and prey growing scarce. Tobias loves his wings, and doesn't want to sacrifice his ability to morph, to help fight the Yeerks, but somewhere deep inside his human self he yearns for a family he never had. Risk death and starvation as a hawk, or risk his heart as a human - which will Tobias choose?
REVIEW: This book seems to mostly be an excuse to relate information to Tobias that readers learned in The Andalite Chronicles, concerning his unusual parentage. It starts a downslope in the series, with some elements feeling forced: his sudden, crippling empathy for his prey, for instance, reads like a plot device, not a natural outgrowth of the character. Still, Tobias has always been a tragic character, the first casualty of the Yeerk war, so seeing him forced to suffer again isn't entirely unexpected. On the whole, it's fun enough, but not quite at the level of the previous books. (Then again, the David trilogy's a hard act to follow.)
Goliath (Scott Westerfield)
Goliath
(The Leviathan trilogy, Book 3)
Scott Westerfield
Simon Pulse
Fiction, YA Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: During their weeks together on the living airship Leviathan, weeks that have seen everything from Clanker airship attacks to the culmination of a revolution in the neutral Ottoman Empire, Midshipman "Dylan" Sharp and Prince Aleksander have grown into fast friends and allies. Deryn still must hide her gender, for fear of losing her place in the British air service, but the secret grows harder to keep in close quarters, with her own heart complicating the matter. Fortunately, there's plenty to distract them. They've just been ordered to a remote patch of Siberia to retrieve a scientist: none other than Nikola Tesla, the Clanker inventor who famously switched sides to the Darwinist nations. The man claims to have invented a weapon so powerful that its mere existence can end war forever - and, as he's found in the middle of a vast swath of blast-flattened trees, the seemingly-mad claim bears grim weight. Alek, with his Clanker belief in machinery and his conviction that he can somehow end the global war, embraces the possibility, but others - including Deryn, the Darwinist scientist Dr. Barlowe, and even Alek's chief advisor Count Volger - grow suspicious of Tesla's increasingly grandiose claims and insistence on mass publicity. As the Leviathan heads to New York City, where the Goliath tower stands, Deryn and Alek find themselves surrounded by conflicting secrets, hidden dangers, and unlikely allies. Can the Goliath truly end all war, or is the cost of placing so much power in one man's hands simply too great?
REVIEW: In the trilogy's final chapter, Goliath brings the airship Leviathan across the Pacific to the fractured realm of America, where the rise of Clanker and Darwinist ideals, not to mention the lingering loyalties of its immigrant populace, have perpetuated Civil War schisms. Westerfield continues populating his alternate Earth with wonders both living and mechanical, creating a world that could easily stand up to more volumes, regardless of their connection to the first World War. Many more real-life figures appear, including the famed newsman William Randolf Hearst, the Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa (who, as in real life, actually struck a movie deal with Hearst to help fund his revolution), the gutsy reporter Adela Rogers, and more. An epilogue at the end explains the real-world influences, which proved a more interesting history lesson than twelve years of public education ever provided. In the middle of the vast sweep of events, Deryn's secret comes out, leaving Alek to ponder whether he will stay true to his title or repeat his assassinated father's mistake of choosing his heart over his duty. Once more, between the high-flying imagination, the quick pace, and the wonderfully detailed illustrations by Keith Thompson, Goliath hearkens back to the best of old-school adventure tales. It lost a star to occasional wandering, and the subplot about Deryn's secret coming out felt a little off, with just a few too many people working it out to make its exclusion from the grapevine plausible. Overall, it's a fine conclusion to a memorable series.
(The Leviathan trilogy, Book 3)
Scott Westerfield
Simon Pulse
Fiction, YA Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: During their weeks together on the living airship Leviathan, weeks that have seen everything from Clanker airship attacks to the culmination of a revolution in the neutral Ottoman Empire, Midshipman "Dylan" Sharp and Prince Aleksander have grown into fast friends and allies. Deryn still must hide her gender, for fear of losing her place in the British air service, but the secret grows harder to keep in close quarters, with her own heart complicating the matter. Fortunately, there's plenty to distract them. They've just been ordered to a remote patch of Siberia to retrieve a scientist: none other than Nikola Tesla, the Clanker inventor who famously switched sides to the Darwinist nations. The man claims to have invented a weapon so powerful that its mere existence can end war forever - and, as he's found in the middle of a vast swath of blast-flattened trees, the seemingly-mad claim bears grim weight. Alek, with his Clanker belief in machinery and his conviction that he can somehow end the global war, embraces the possibility, but others - including Deryn, the Darwinist scientist Dr. Barlowe, and even Alek's chief advisor Count Volger - grow suspicious of Tesla's increasingly grandiose claims and insistence on mass publicity. As the Leviathan heads to New York City, where the Goliath tower stands, Deryn and Alek find themselves surrounded by conflicting secrets, hidden dangers, and unlikely allies. Can the Goliath truly end all war, or is the cost of placing so much power in one man's hands simply too great?
REVIEW: In the trilogy's final chapter, Goliath brings the airship Leviathan across the Pacific to the fractured realm of America, where the rise of Clanker and Darwinist ideals, not to mention the lingering loyalties of its immigrant populace, have perpetuated Civil War schisms. Westerfield continues populating his alternate Earth with wonders both living and mechanical, creating a world that could easily stand up to more volumes, regardless of their connection to the first World War. Many more real-life figures appear, including the famed newsman William Randolf Hearst, the Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa (who, as in real life, actually struck a movie deal with Hearst to help fund his revolution), the gutsy reporter Adela Rogers, and more. An epilogue at the end explains the real-world influences, which proved a more interesting history lesson than twelve years of public education ever provided. In the middle of the vast sweep of events, Deryn's secret comes out, leaving Alek to ponder whether he will stay true to his title or repeat his assassinated father's mistake of choosing his heart over his duty. Once more, between the high-flying imagination, the quick pace, and the wonderfully detailed illustrations by Keith Thompson, Goliath hearkens back to the best of old-school adventure tales. It lost a star to occasional wandering, and the subplot about Deryn's secret coming out felt a little off, with just a few too many people working it out to make its exclusion from the grapevine plausible. Overall, it's a fine conclusion to a memorable series.
Friday, October 7, 2011
The Solution (K. A. Applegate)
The Solution
(The Animorphs series, Book 22)
K. A. Applegate
Scholastic
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
***** (Great)
DESCRIPTION: They thought they were doing the right thing. They thought they were giving a scared, lost boy a chance to fight back. They took a leap of faith... and were betrayed. David, the newest Animorph, turned on the very hands that tried to help him. Now, with Tobias gone and Jake bleeding to death after a run-in with David's lion morph, Rachel snaps. She's already lost her normal life to the Yeerk war. If this snot-nosed, arrogant punk thinks he can take away her friends, her comrades-in-arms... he'll pay in blood. But there's one problem with her plans for vengeance. Visser Three, with powerful alien technology and hordes of Controllers at his disposal, has spent months hunting for the Animorphs without success. How are five kids going to stop someone with their own power to morph - someone who, unlike them, isn't afraid to kill?
REVIEW: The David trilogy wraps up with Rachel's tale. Even as the hate boils up inside her, she finds herself standing back and seeing just what the war has done to her, the girl whose greatest thrill in life used to be a perfect gymnastics routine or a weekend sale at The Gap... and what the war has done to her friends. None of them are the people they used to be, and it's unlikely they'll ever go back to their old selves. A subplot about a critically-injured relative throws these changes into stark relief, as the cousins Jake and Rachel find themselves surrounded by "normal" people reacting to tragedy in a normal way. In light of the series finale, there's some very strong foreshadowing here of the lives that await them when the battle's done. Despite her own horror at the thoughts she's capable of, Rachel has to make peace with herself. With David, however, no peace or compromise is possible. I've always considered the David trilogy to be the highlight of the series, and rereading it hasn't diminished my opinion.
After this book, in the original run, came The Hork-Bajir Chronicles (reviewed on my website here); again, while it's not necessary to do so, I'd strongly suggest reading the books in the order of their original release, for continuity reasons.
(The Animorphs series, Book 22)
K. A. Applegate
Scholastic
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
***** (Great)
NOTE: In honor of the re-release of the series, I'm finally posting individual reviews of the Animorphs books.
DESCRIPTION: They thought they were doing the right thing. They thought they were giving a scared, lost boy a chance to fight back. They took a leap of faith... and were betrayed. David, the newest Animorph, turned on the very hands that tried to help him. Now, with Tobias gone and Jake bleeding to death after a run-in with David's lion morph, Rachel snaps. She's already lost her normal life to the Yeerk war. If this snot-nosed, arrogant punk thinks he can take away her friends, her comrades-in-arms... he'll pay in blood. But there's one problem with her plans for vengeance. Visser Three, with powerful alien technology and hordes of Controllers at his disposal, has spent months hunting for the Animorphs without success. How are five kids going to stop someone with their own power to morph - someone who, unlike them, isn't afraid to kill?
REVIEW: The David trilogy wraps up with Rachel's tale. Even as the hate boils up inside her, she finds herself standing back and seeing just what the war has done to her, the girl whose greatest thrill in life used to be a perfect gymnastics routine or a weekend sale at The Gap... and what the war has done to her friends. None of them are the people they used to be, and it's unlikely they'll ever go back to their old selves. A subplot about a critically-injured relative throws these changes into stark relief, as the cousins Jake and Rachel find themselves surrounded by "normal" people reacting to tragedy in a normal way. In light of the series finale, there's some very strong foreshadowing here of the lives that await them when the battle's done. Despite her own horror at the thoughts she's capable of, Rachel has to make peace with herself. With David, however, no peace or compromise is possible. I've always considered the David trilogy to be the highlight of the series, and rereading it hasn't diminished my opinion.
After this book, in the original run, came The Hork-Bajir Chronicles (reviewed on my website here); again, while it's not necessary to do so, I'd strongly suggest reading the books in the order of their original release, for continuity reasons.
The Invisible Man (H. G. Wells)
The Invisible Man
H. G. Wells
Public Domain Books
Fiction, Sci-Fi
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: A strange figure, bundled head to toe, arrives in a small English inn, quickly creating a stir with his blunt, antisocial manners and peculiar scientific instruments, with which he sequesters himself day and night while flying into untold rages. Is he a vivisectionist, a victim of some horrendous accident, or something more sinister? Much as the local tongues wag, none can guess the horrible truth, the terrible and tragic tale concealed by glove and hat-brim and bandages... the truth of a man felled by his own greatest triumph.
REVIEW: Yes, it was free on Kindle... many classics appear to be, which is rather convenient for those of us who skirted such staples in our misspent youth. (Not that I regret a moment spent buried in my Choose-Your-Own-Adventure collection, mind you...)
Where was I?
Oh, yes - I was implying the existence of a review rather than outright giving one. It may seem a cheap padding device to boost word count, but evidently it was a legitimate writing style for H. G. Wells; the book would've been half as long (if not shorter) had it focused on actual events, and not irrelevent sidetracks. A great many people, places, and things receive ample paragraphs of description, while the main plot mostly stagnates until close to the halfway point. I might not have minded so much, except so many of those peripheral people were caricatures along the lines of the Keystone Kops, ignorant yokels with slapstick sensibilities whose antics only needed a little goofy incidental music to transform into cartoons. Even after the Invisible Man is revealed to be invisible, the story scarcely develops enough momentum to clear the ground, though by the end it picks up to a satisfyingly brisk pace. Between copious clumps of padding, a tragic tale of a failed genius turned mad by the achievment of his heart's desire can be glimpsed. Unfortunately, those glimpses came too late to salvage this one in the ratings. It was just too much slogging and too little actual story. To be frank, I only justified an Okay rating out of deference to the age of the book, and thus the unfamiliar cultural mindset of the man who wrote it.
H. G. Wells
Public Domain Books
Fiction, Sci-Fi
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: A strange figure, bundled head to toe, arrives in a small English inn, quickly creating a stir with his blunt, antisocial manners and peculiar scientific instruments, with which he sequesters himself day and night while flying into untold rages. Is he a vivisectionist, a victim of some horrendous accident, or something more sinister? Much as the local tongues wag, none can guess the horrible truth, the terrible and tragic tale concealed by glove and hat-brim and bandages... the truth of a man felled by his own greatest triumph.
REVIEW: Yes, it was free on Kindle... many classics appear to be, which is rather convenient for those of us who skirted such staples in our misspent youth. (Not that I regret a moment spent buried in my Choose-Your-Own-Adventure collection, mind you...)
Where was I?
Oh, yes - I was implying the existence of a review rather than outright giving one. It may seem a cheap padding device to boost word count, but evidently it was a legitimate writing style for H. G. Wells; the book would've been half as long (if not shorter) had it focused on actual events, and not irrelevent sidetracks. A great many people, places, and things receive ample paragraphs of description, while the main plot mostly stagnates until close to the halfway point. I might not have minded so much, except so many of those peripheral people were caricatures along the lines of the Keystone Kops, ignorant yokels with slapstick sensibilities whose antics only needed a little goofy incidental music to transform into cartoons. Even after the Invisible Man is revealed to be invisible, the story scarcely develops enough momentum to clear the ground, though by the end it picks up to a satisfyingly brisk pace. Between copious clumps of padding, a tragic tale of a failed genius turned mad by the achievment of his heart's desire can be glimpsed. Unfortunately, those glimpses came too late to salvage this one in the ratings. It was just too much slogging and too little actual story. To be frank, I only justified an Okay rating out of deference to the age of the book, and thus the unfamiliar cultural mindset of the man who wrote it.
The Threat (K. A. Applegate)
The Threat
(The Animorphs series, Book 21)
K. A. Applegate
Scholastic
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
***** (Great)
DESCRIPTION: Six have become seven. Adding David to the team, giving him the ability to morph, was as much an act of desperation as a leap of faith. With the Yeerks threatening to infest the heads of six major world nations at a nearby international summit, they need all the help they can get... and, with his parents taken and Visser Three hunting him down for the blue Andalite box, David had nowhere else to go. If only Jake could be sure it was the right thing to do...
David may be an Animorph now, but he's still an enigma. A not entirely welcome enigma, either. He second-guesses orders, acts on his own, and even uses morphs to break the law when left to his own devices. Jake even gets the uneasy feeling that David thinks he ought to be the new leader of the team. Maybe it's just the impossible stress he's been under. Maybe it's just a phase. Maybe it's Jake's imagination. Or maybe David will be the greatest mistake the Animorphs have ever made...
REVIEW: Jake takes up the tale of David in the middle book of the trilogy, as the newest Animorph shows his ugly true colors. His job as leader of the team has never been easy, but dealing with a traitor in their ranks - a traitor who wouldn't even be among them had he not been willing to give David a chance - twists in his gut like no decision he has made to date. And, of course, their goal of stopping the Yeerks from infesting major world leaders only gets harder by the minute. It all sets up a humdinger of a finale in Book 22.
(The Animorphs series, Book 21)
K. A. Applegate
Scholastic
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
***** (Great)
NOTE: In honor of the recent re-release of the series, I'm finally posting individual reviews of the Animorphs books.
DESCRIPTION: Six have become seven. Adding David to the team, giving him the ability to morph, was as much an act of desperation as a leap of faith. With the Yeerks threatening to infest the heads of six major world nations at a nearby international summit, they need all the help they can get... and, with his parents taken and Visser Three hunting him down for the blue Andalite box, David had nowhere else to go. If only Jake could be sure it was the right thing to do...
David may be an Animorph now, but he's still an enigma. A not entirely welcome enigma, either. He second-guesses orders, acts on his own, and even uses morphs to break the law when left to his own devices. Jake even gets the uneasy feeling that David thinks he ought to be the new leader of the team. Maybe it's just the impossible stress he's been under. Maybe it's just a phase. Maybe it's Jake's imagination. Or maybe David will be the greatest mistake the Animorphs have ever made...
REVIEW: Jake takes up the tale of David in the middle book of the trilogy, as the newest Animorph shows his ugly true colors. His job as leader of the team has never been easy, but dealing with a traitor in their ranks - a traitor who wouldn't even be among them had he not been willing to give David a chance - twists in his gut like no decision he has made to date. And, of course, their goal of stopping the Yeerks from infesting major world leaders only gets harder by the minute. It all sets up a humdinger of a finale in Book 22.
Thursday, October 6, 2011
The Chestnut King (N. D. Wilson)
The Chestnut King
(The 100 Cupboards trilogy, Book 3)
N. D. Wilson
Yearling
Fiction, YA Fantasy
**+ (Bad/Okay)
DESCRIPTION: Henry York Maccabee, reunitied with his family in one of the magical realms beyond the cupboard doors, survived his second confrontation with the deathless witch Nimiane... but at a cost. A drop of her blood touched his cheek, leaving a spreading scar of death that threatens to consume his sanity, and his life. His dandelion magic fights the growing chill, but the bond remains, a gray thread by which Nimiane's foul fingerling slaves can track him across any world, through any cupboard door. His father Mordecai and uncle Caleb travel to the dead realm of Endor, formerly Nimiane's prison, to search for a cure - hopefully tied to a way to end the immortal witch's life - but time is against them. When the ships of the distant Emperor attack his family's home, capturing his relatives as bait for the missing Mordecai, Henry realizes that he's sick of running away. He was the one who inadvertently freed Nimiane from Endor. He is the one who draws danger to his friends and family. So he is the one who must bear his dandelion fire into the darkness and end her evil... even if it ends his own life.
REVIEW: N. D. Wilson weaves a magical tale full of poetic beauty, ancient lore, and grand destinies. Unfortunately, he weaves it into a knot so tangled it took me most of the book to work my way back into the universe, full of obscure references and actions dependent on an inpenetrable internal logic that made most of the dangers and their solutions burst forth seemingly from the blue. The dialog, much like the overall narrative, didn't help by crafting itself almost exclusively in metaphor. At about the halfway point, I was ready to kill for someone to just spit out what they wanted to say, without dancing about in Shakespearean obfuscation. Most of the bloated cast never did pull their own weight, and female characters see their roles degenerate into mere objects that sentimentalize, feel vulnerable, need protection, and - if they're feeling particulary bold - cheer on the boys doing the real work. Richard, whose presence dropped from an intrigue into a disappointing puzzle in Book 2, proves about as useless as the girls this time out, never coming through or pulling weight or having any real purpose except to tag along behind Henry like a forgotten footnote stuck to the author's shoe. Having foundered along in the sinking ship, I was finally rewarded with an ending... but then came an epilogue so pointless that it drug the whole book down another half-star. (Yes, I was feeling that irked.)
I think I would've rated this book higher had I read it closer to the other two volumes, or had it included a recap - either a summary of the first two books, or in-story refreshers to help remind me who was who and doing what in which corner of the world - to reorient me. As it was, despite the undeniable beauty of Wilson's prose, I just could not immerse myself to enjoy this book properly. (And he never does explain why so many names are recycled...)
(The 100 Cupboards trilogy, Book 3)
N. D. Wilson
Yearling
Fiction, YA Fantasy
**+ (Bad/Okay)
DESCRIPTION: Henry York Maccabee, reunitied with his family in one of the magical realms beyond the cupboard doors, survived his second confrontation with the deathless witch Nimiane... but at a cost. A drop of her blood touched his cheek, leaving a spreading scar of death that threatens to consume his sanity, and his life. His dandelion magic fights the growing chill, but the bond remains, a gray thread by which Nimiane's foul fingerling slaves can track him across any world, through any cupboard door. His father Mordecai and uncle Caleb travel to the dead realm of Endor, formerly Nimiane's prison, to search for a cure - hopefully tied to a way to end the immortal witch's life - but time is against them. When the ships of the distant Emperor attack his family's home, capturing his relatives as bait for the missing Mordecai, Henry realizes that he's sick of running away. He was the one who inadvertently freed Nimiane from Endor. He is the one who draws danger to his friends and family. So he is the one who must bear his dandelion fire into the darkness and end her evil... even if it ends his own life.
REVIEW: N. D. Wilson weaves a magical tale full of poetic beauty, ancient lore, and grand destinies. Unfortunately, he weaves it into a knot so tangled it took me most of the book to work my way back into the universe, full of obscure references and actions dependent on an inpenetrable internal logic that made most of the dangers and their solutions burst forth seemingly from the blue. The dialog, much like the overall narrative, didn't help by crafting itself almost exclusively in metaphor. At about the halfway point, I was ready to kill for someone to just spit out what they wanted to say, without dancing about in Shakespearean obfuscation. Most of the bloated cast never did pull their own weight, and female characters see their roles degenerate into mere objects that sentimentalize, feel vulnerable, need protection, and - if they're feeling particulary bold - cheer on the boys doing the real work. Richard, whose presence dropped from an intrigue into a disappointing puzzle in Book 2, proves about as useless as the girls this time out, never coming through or pulling weight or having any real purpose except to tag along behind Henry like a forgotten footnote stuck to the author's shoe. Having foundered along in the sinking ship, I was finally rewarded with an ending... but then came an epilogue so pointless that it drug the whole book down another half-star. (Yes, I was feeling that irked.)
I think I would've rated this book higher had I read it closer to the other two volumes, or had it included a recap - either a summary of the first two books, or in-story refreshers to help remind me who was who and doing what in which corner of the world - to reorient me. As it was, despite the undeniable beauty of Wilson's prose, I just could not immerse myself to enjoy this book properly. (And he never does explain why so many names are recycled...)
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
The Discovery (K. A. Applegate)
The Discovery
(The Animorphs series, Book 20)
K. A. Applegate
Scholastic
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Since becoming an Animorph, school has become the less-stressful part of Marco's life... or, rather, the place where stress comes from ordinary things, like pop quizzes and girls and lunchroom bullies, instead of alien parasites and watching his own body melt and distort into animal form. But then he sees a new kid on campus with something very, very strange in his backpack. Strange, yet all too familiar. It's the blue cube that Prince Elfangor used to create the Animorphs, transferring the Andalite morphing technology to five human kids. They had thought that it was destroyed when the Yeerk Dracon beams reduced the dead prince's spaceship to molecular dust. Apparently not.
Then Erek the Chee brings grim news: a top-secret world summit meeting is coming to the area, placing six world leaders within the Yeerk's grasp. Only one of them's already a Controller... but Erek doesn't know who. Just one more helping of stress atop Marco's already-overfull plate.
As the Animorphs race to secure the blue cube before their mission to the summit meeting, the boy David - oblivious to what he's found - posts an ad online offering the "strange box" he found for sale. With the Yeerks closing in, the Animorphs have two choices: steal the box and abandon the boy to his fate, or use its power as Elfangor did to add David to the team. With time running out and the biggest mission they've ever faced closing in on them, they have to choose quickly...
REVIEW: This begins the David trilogy, one of the great moments of the series as a whole. The first book struggles a bit under the extra load of establishing a new character and setting up a large-scale mission. It also ends on a cliffhanger. The Animorphs' early read off David is mixed, to say the least: he's a loner who keeps a cobra for a pet and doesn't respond well to authority, but beneath it all he seems to be just as scared and lost as any of them were that first fateful night in the construction site. While Marco can sympathize with his position, somewhere deep down he senses the trouble that's to come... but, considering his own early issues with being an Animorph, he doesn't feel right voicing those misgivings, especially when the others seem almost relieved to have an extra pair of morph-capable hands available going into their most dangerous mission to date. If he'd stuck to his guns, perhaps things would've gone differently... but that's for Book 21.
As a closing note, this book starts the advertizing blitz for the short-lived Animorphs TV series on Nickelodeon (from 1998.) While it featured impressive CGI morphing effects, it short-changed the aliens - even the plot-pivotal Andalites - and the scripts dumbed down and glossed over the best parts of the books.(Nickelodeon also kept bumping the air times without notice or reason; I finally gave up trying to chase it.) I still keep expecting a reboot, if not a film franchise... preferably all-animated. The guts for a good show are right there on the page, if someone could manage it.
(The Animorphs series, Book 20)
K. A. Applegate
Scholastic
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
**** (Good)
NOTE: In honor of the re-release of the series, I'm finally posting individual reviews of the Animorphs books.
DESCRIPTION: Since becoming an Animorph, school has become the less-stressful part of Marco's life... or, rather, the place where stress comes from ordinary things, like pop quizzes and girls and lunchroom bullies, instead of alien parasites and watching his own body melt and distort into animal form. But then he sees a new kid on campus with something very, very strange in his backpack. Strange, yet all too familiar. It's the blue cube that Prince Elfangor used to create the Animorphs, transferring the Andalite morphing technology to five human kids. They had thought that it was destroyed when the Yeerk Dracon beams reduced the dead prince's spaceship to molecular dust. Apparently not.
Then Erek the Chee brings grim news: a top-secret world summit meeting is coming to the area, placing six world leaders within the Yeerk's grasp. Only one of them's already a Controller... but Erek doesn't know who. Just one more helping of stress atop Marco's already-overfull plate.
As the Animorphs race to secure the blue cube before their mission to the summit meeting, the boy David - oblivious to what he's found - posts an ad online offering the "strange box" he found for sale. With the Yeerks closing in, the Animorphs have two choices: steal the box and abandon the boy to his fate, or use its power as Elfangor did to add David to the team. With time running out and the biggest mission they've ever faced closing in on them, they have to choose quickly...
REVIEW: This begins the David trilogy, one of the great moments of the series as a whole. The first book struggles a bit under the extra load of establishing a new character and setting up a large-scale mission. It also ends on a cliffhanger. The Animorphs' early read off David is mixed, to say the least: he's a loner who keeps a cobra for a pet and doesn't respond well to authority, but beneath it all he seems to be just as scared and lost as any of them were that first fateful night in the construction site. While Marco can sympathize with his position, somewhere deep down he senses the trouble that's to come... but, considering his own early issues with being an Animorph, he doesn't feel right voicing those misgivings, especially when the others seem almost relieved to have an extra pair of morph-capable hands available going into their most dangerous mission to date. If he'd stuck to his guns, perhaps things would've gone differently... but that's for Book 21.
As a closing note, this book starts the advertizing blitz for the short-lived Animorphs TV series on Nickelodeon (from 1998.) While it featured impressive CGI morphing effects, it short-changed the aliens - even the plot-pivotal Andalites - and the scripts dumbed down and glossed over the best parts of the books.(Nickelodeon also kept bumping the air times without notice or reason; I finally gave up trying to chase it.) I still keep expecting a reboot, if not a film franchise... preferably all-animated. The guts for a good show are right there on the page, if someone could manage it.
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
The Weatherly Guide to Drawing Animals (Joe Weatherly)
The Weatherly Guide to Drawing Animals
Joe Weatherly
Joe Weatherly, publisher
Nonfiction, Art
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: Emphasizing gesture, motion, and rhythm, noted artist Joe Weatherly presents a guide to drawing animals.
REVIEW: I've seen this one recommended often, so I figured I'd give it a try. An inspiring, easy-to-follow book, it stresses the life and motion of the drawing over strict technical detail, focusing on overall forms, proportion, and general flow to give the finished work a lively dynamic. After a general overview of his approach, he highlights many animals directly, including nice sections on felines and canines, plus a variety of other animals from around the world. Unlike Jack Hamm's book on the subject, images outweigh text heavily. The writing could've used a keener-eyed editor; I saw a few irritating errors, including at least one misused word. Other than that, for a self- published book, it's very professional. Like all art books, this alone won't transform you into a great artist, but it offers a great deal of information for anyone who wants to learn.
Joe Weatherly
Joe Weatherly, publisher
Nonfiction, Art
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: Emphasizing gesture, motion, and rhythm, noted artist Joe Weatherly presents a guide to drawing animals.
REVIEW: I've seen this one recommended often, so I figured I'd give it a try. An inspiring, easy-to-follow book, it stresses the life and motion of the drawing over strict technical detail, focusing on overall forms, proportion, and general flow to give the finished work a lively dynamic. After a general overview of his approach, he highlights many animals directly, including nice sections on felines and canines, plus a variety of other animals from around the world. Unlike Jack Hamm's book on the subject, images outweigh text heavily. The writing could've used a keener-eyed editor; I saw a few irritating errors, including at least one misused word. Other than that, for a self- published book, it's very professional. Like all art books, this alone won't transform you into a great artist, but it offers a great deal of information for anyone who wants to learn.
The Departure (K. A. Applegate)
The Departure
(The Animorphs series, Book 19)
K. A. Applegate
Scholastic
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: Cassie has always been the heart of the Animorphs, the moral compass that kept them from straying over the line from defenders of freedom to cold-blooded killers. But she no longer knows where that line is. Once a well of compassion, she has lost herself in the pitiless minds of predators. Once a pacifist, she has followed her friends into ruthless battle. Once a lover of Nature's harmony, she has seen the constant struggle for survival that is the animal world. Everything seems to be going gray and dead inside. Cassie cannot seem to care about anything anymore. She doesn't want to - she can't - live like this.
So she walks away. From the battle. From her friends. From the fight against the Yeerks.
But walking away doesn't undo the changes that months of battle have wrought. The emptiness stays with her. Even her hopes of burying herself in work at the family wildlife clinic are dashed when she learns that their corporate sponsor has pulled funding. Then she finds herself lost in the wilderness... lost, but not alone. With her is the young girl Karen - a girl who knows more than she should about Cassie, about war, about the Yeerks and the Andalites. Karen is a human-Controller. She knows who - and what - Cassie is. And Cassie finds her wavering convictions put to their ultimate test.
REVIEW: Having seen the mighy Andalite image tarnished so severely in Book 18, and how peacable Cassie lost herself so completely in the mind of a Tyrannosaurs Rex in Megamorphs 2, this culminates a character transformation that epitomizes the series' strongest suit: its willingness to address the gray areas that other series (young adult and grown-up alike) often gloss over. Not every Andalite is Prince Elfangor, but not every Yeerk is Visser Three... and even in the midst of all-out war, there can be a time and a place - even a need - to recognize that the enemy may not always be who (or what) they appear to be. This book is less about the fighting and more about the complex issues of the Yeerk war. It loses a half-star for a bit of a logic hiccup at the end, and the fact that the escaped leopard subplot wasn't strictly necessary; a mountain lion or other native predator would've filled its role nicely. Overall, a beautiful tale.
(The Animorphs series, Book 19)
K. A. Applegate
Scholastic
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
****+ (Good/Great)
NOTE: In honor of the re-release of the series, I'm finally posting individual reviews of the Animorphs books.
DESCRIPTION: Cassie has always been the heart of the Animorphs, the moral compass that kept them from straying over the line from defenders of freedom to cold-blooded killers. But she no longer knows where that line is. Once a well of compassion, she has lost herself in the pitiless minds of predators. Once a pacifist, she has followed her friends into ruthless battle. Once a lover of Nature's harmony, she has seen the constant struggle for survival that is the animal world. Everything seems to be going gray and dead inside. Cassie cannot seem to care about anything anymore. She doesn't want to - she can't - live like this.
So she walks away. From the battle. From her friends. From the fight against the Yeerks.
But walking away doesn't undo the changes that months of battle have wrought. The emptiness stays with her. Even her hopes of burying herself in work at the family wildlife clinic are dashed when she learns that their corporate sponsor has pulled funding. Then she finds herself lost in the wilderness... lost, but not alone. With her is the young girl Karen - a girl who knows more than she should about Cassie, about war, about the Yeerks and the Andalites. Karen is a human-Controller. She knows who - and what - Cassie is. And Cassie finds her wavering convictions put to their ultimate test.
REVIEW: Having seen the mighy Andalite image tarnished so severely in Book 18, and how peacable Cassie lost herself so completely in the mind of a Tyrannosaurs Rex in Megamorphs 2, this culminates a character transformation that epitomizes the series' strongest suit: its willingness to address the gray areas that other series (young adult and grown-up alike) often gloss over. Not every Andalite is Prince Elfangor, but not every Yeerk is Visser Three... and even in the midst of all-out war, there can be a time and a place - even a need - to recognize that the enemy may not always be who (or what) they appear to be. This book is less about the fighting and more about the complex issues of the Yeerk war. It loses a half-star for a bit of a logic hiccup at the end, and the fact that the escaped leopard subplot wasn't strictly necessary; a mountain lion or other native predator would've filled its role nicely. Overall, a beautiful tale.
Monday, October 3, 2011
In the Time of the Dinosaurs (K. A. Applegate)
In the Time of the Dinosaurs
(The Animorphs series, Megamorphs 2)
K. A. Applegate
Scholastic
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: The Animorphs never should've been there. It was a human crisis - a downed nuclear submarine - with no ties to the Yeerk invasion. But it's hard to have a power like morphing and not use it to help when needed. How were they supposed to know that one of the warheads had been damaged? How could they have anticipated it exploding... and how could they have predicted what would happen when they were hit by the shockwave?
They couldn't have known. Never in a million years... or, to be more precise, sixty-five million years.
Some combination of the nuclear blast and being in morph opened what the Andalites call a Sario Rip: a hole in time. The Animorphs find themselves stranded in the late Cretaceous Age, facing some of the most dangerous predators ever to walk the Earth. But they aren't the only strangers to this prehistoric land... and Tyrannosaurus Rex may be the least of their worries.
REVIEW: It's a little hard to read this without thinking about how much has changed about dinosaur theory since this book was written. Everything from the appearance of dinosaurs to the ultimate cause of extinction has been turned on its head in the past few years. It's also notably unlikely that, given the spotty nature of fossil records and the fact that we know next to nothing about the external appearances of most dinosaurs, the Animorphs consistently encounter creatures they can readily identify on sight from childhood toys, library books, and movies. Those troubles aside, this volume feels slightly less contrived than the first Megamorphs, even if dinos are a blatant marketing tactic. It maintains the character dynamics, conflicts, and action level that the series is known for. And, marketing tactic or not, dinosaurs are cool... cool enough to rate a solid Good, despite some plausibility issues.
(The Animorphs series, Megamorphs 2)
K. A. Applegate
Scholastic
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
**** (Good)
NOTE: In honor of the re-release of the series, I'm finally posting individual reviews of the Animorphs books.
DESCRIPTION: The Animorphs never should've been there. It was a human crisis - a downed nuclear submarine - with no ties to the Yeerk invasion. But it's hard to have a power like morphing and not use it to help when needed. How were they supposed to know that one of the warheads had been damaged? How could they have anticipated it exploding... and how could they have predicted what would happen when they were hit by the shockwave?
They couldn't have known. Never in a million years... or, to be more precise, sixty-five million years.
Some combination of the nuclear blast and being in morph opened what the Andalites call a Sario Rip: a hole in time. The Animorphs find themselves stranded in the late Cretaceous Age, facing some of the most dangerous predators ever to walk the Earth. But they aren't the only strangers to this prehistoric land... and Tyrannosaurus Rex may be the least of their worries.
REVIEW: It's a little hard to read this without thinking about how much has changed about dinosaur theory since this book was written. Everything from the appearance of dinosaurs to the ultimate cause of extinction has been turned on its head in the past few years. It's also notably unlikely that, given the spotty nature of fossil records and the fact that we know next to nothing about the external appearances of most dinosaurs, the Animorphs consistently encounter creatures they can readily identify on sight from childhood toys, library books, and movies. Those troubles aside, this volume feels slightly less contrived than the first Megamorphs, even if dinos are a blatant marketing tactic. It maintains the character dynamics, conflicts, and action level that the series is known for. And, marketing tactic or not, dinosaurs are cool... cool enough to rate a solid Good, despite some plausibility issues.
The Devious Book for Cats: A Parody (Fluffy and Bonkers)
The Devious Book for Cats: A Parody
Fluffy & Bonkers (with Joe Garden, Janet Ginsberg, Chris Pauls, Anita Serwacki, and Scott Sherman)
Villard
Fiction, Humor
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: In modern times, it's all too easy to lose touch with one's own inner catness. We take our meals and our people for granted. We fail to appreciate the many moods of a nap. We hardly even stare anymore. When's the last time we played a proper game of shelf swat, anyway? Fluffy and Bonkers offer a guidebook for reclaiming our birthright, the profoundly simple joys of being Nature's perfect creation: a cat.
REVIEW: This parody succeeds by never overstaying its welcome, offering many short articles instead of a few long, drawn-out ones. From the horror stories of the Suck Monster and the Crazy Cat Lady to the rules of Shelf Swat, from basic gift giving to the history of the felinism movement, "Fluffy" and "Bonkers" tell all. The authors, known collectively as "Action 5," are professional comedy writers, contributing to The Onion (among other things); the professionalism shows, as they manage to find plenty of humorous topics and delivery methods. (I've read more than enough half-baked attempts that keep harping on the same not-funny premise to appreciate that.) They also strike a nice balance on the tone, acknowledging the independent feline nature without belittling pet owners or indoor cat-keeping. A fun, lighthearted book that any cat-lover should be able to appreciate.
Fluffy & Bonkers (with Joe Garden, Janet Ginsberg, Chris Pauls, Anita Serwacki, and Scott Sherman)
Villard
Fiction, Humor
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: In modern times, it's all too easy to lose touch with one's own inner catness. We take our meals and our people for granted. We fail to appreciate the many moods of a nap. We hardly even stare anymore. When's the last time we played a proper game of shelf swat, anyway? Fluffy and Bonkers offer a guidebook for reclaiming our birthright, the profoundly simple joys of being Nature's perfect creation: a cat.
REVIEW: This parody succeeds by never overstaying its welcome, offering many short articles instead of a few long, drawn-out ones. From the horror stories of the Suck Monster and the Crazy Cat Lady to the rules of Shelf Swat, from basic gift giving to the history of the felinism movement, "Fluffy" and "Bonkers" tell all. The authors, known collectively as "Action 5," are professional comedy writers, contributing to The Onion (among other things); the professionalism shows, as they manage to find plenty of humorous topics and delivery methods. (I've read more than enough half-baked attempts that keep harping on the same not-funny premise to appreciate that.) They also strike a nice balance on the tone, acknowledging the independent feline nature without belittling pet owners or indoor cat-keeping. A fun, lighthearted book that any cat-lover should be able to appreciate.
Sunday, October 2, 2011
The Decision (K. A. Applegate)
The Decision
(The Animorphs series, Book 18)
K. A. Applegate
Scholastic
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: Aximili's been stranded on Earth for months, but though he has a fight and a purpose, he doesn't have a home. Even among his friends, the Animorphs, he is an outsider, an alien, on a world where he doesn't belong. But he must force himself to accept the truth: until the Yeerks are gone, or until another Andalite warship comes, he'll never be among his own people. Or so he thinks.
While in mosquito morph, Ax and the Animorphs find themselves suddenly in Zero-Space, the nondimension where extra mass goes during small morphs... and where faster-than-light travel is possible. They've been caught in the wake of an Andalite warship, a million-to-one odds accident. Taken aboard by the surprised crew, Ax is thrilled to be back among his own species. But the ship is on its way to Leeran, to fight the Yeerks. It cannot detour to Earth to return the human Animorphs. And something is about to go very wrong with his own homecoming... something that makes Aximili decide once and for all who his people truly are.
REVIEW: Ax's books tend to be weaker than the rest. This one earned extra marks for moving the battle beyond Earth, a reminder that, even as the Animorphs fight Visser Three, an entire galaxy is at war, pitting species against species and Controller against free being. That war, as Ax learns the hard way, isn't going well for the Andalites, in no small part due to his people's ongoing refusal to work closely with its alien allies... not to mention a growing number of traitors in their own ranks. In his previous book (The Alien), Ax claimed to put his faith in "Prince" Jake above the Andalite superiors whom he temporarily contacted, but coming face-to-face with his own kind puts that loyalty to the test. On top of his inner struggles, he and the Animorphs find themselves pitched headlong into a war on alien soil - a real, open war, with carnage on a level that their guerrilla strikes against the secret Yeerk invasion on Earth have never reached. A high-action romp across Z-space, continuing a good streak in the series.
(The Animorphs series, Book 18)
K. A. Applegate
Scholastic
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
****+ (Good/Great)
NOTE: In honor of the re-release of the series, I'm finally posting individual reviews of the Animorphs books.
DESCRIPTION: Aximili's been stranded on Earth for months, but though he has a fight and a purpose, he doesn't have a home. Even among his friends, the Animorphs, he is an outsider, an alien, on a world where he doesn't belong. But he must force himself to accept the truth: until the Yeerks are gone, or until another Andalite warship comes, he'll never be among his own people. Or so he thinks.
While in mosquito morph, Ax and the Animorphs find themselves suddenly in Zero-Space, the nondimension where extra mass goes during small morphs... and where faster-than-light travel is possible. They've been caught in the wake of an Andalite warship, a million-to-one odds accident. Taken aboard by the surprised crew, Ax is thrilled to be back among his own species. But the ship is on its way to Leeran, to fight the Yeerks. It cannot detour to Earth to return the human Animorphs. And something is about to go very wrong with his own homecoming... something that makes Aximili decide once and for all who his people truly are.
REVIEW: Ax's books tend to be weaker than the rest. This one earned extra marks for moving the battle beyond Earth, a reminder that, even as the Animorphs fight Visser Three, an entire galaxy is at war, pitting species against species and Controller against free being. That war, as Ax learns the hard way, isn't going well for the Andalites, in no small part due to his people's ongoing refusal to work closely with its alien allies... not to mention a growing number of traitors in their own ranks. In his previous book (The Alien), Ax claimed to put his faith in "Prince" Jake above the Andalite superiors whom he temporarily contacted, but coming face-to-face with his own kind puts that loyalty to the test. On top of his inner struggles, he and the Animorphs find themselves pitched headlong into a war on alien soil - a real, open war, with carnage on a level that their guerrilla strikes against the secret Yeerk invasion on Earth have never reached. A high-action romp across Z-space, continuing a good streak in the series.
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