Author Topic: Group Re-Read: MegaMorphs 3, Elfangor's Secret  (Read 10731 times)

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Offline Terenia

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Group Re-Read: MegaMorphs 3, Elfangor's Secret
« on: May 19, 2009, 08:24:44 PM »
Summary
We found out who Visser Four is. And he has found the Time Matrix. The machine Elfangor had idden in the abandoned construction site. The same place we met him on a night none of us will ever forget. Especially me. Now Visser Four has the Matrix, and he plans to use it to become Visser One.
But Jake, Rachel, Cassie, Marco, Ax, and I can't let that happen. We can't let him alter time so that the Yeerks will win this invasion. So we're prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice. And, ultimately, one of us will lose this fight...

Questions
1) What do you think about the alternate reality shown at the beginning of this book? There are several things to comment on here: Jake as the "Supreme Leader", the political climate, the existence of slavery, the fact that Melissa has replaced Rachel as an Animorph, etc.

2) It is assumed at one point that, originally, Visser Four went to more places than what we see in the book to create the alternate reality we see. Any speculation on what other points in history would be important to visit in order to create this reality?

3) This book isn't just an adventure through time, it is also a commentary on human nature over the centuries. This commentary is driven home by Ax's point of view.

     
Quote
I thought I understood humans. I understood nothing.
     
Quote
The same species that spawned my friends [...] seemed to revel in mutual slaughter and sank to depths no Yeerk would sink to. Depths of depraved brutality that would be unimaginable to an Andalite.

       What do you think about these quotes? What about the various wars and conflicts that the Ani's find themselves in?

4) Each of the Animorphs (except Jake) faces a stain on their consciences: Ax a Hessian soldier, Tobias kills Hitler, Rachel kills a tank of men, Marco kills the Yeerk that is Visser Four and Cassie makes it so that John Berryman never existed. Why do you think that Applegate decided to give everyone this burden?

5) What do you think about Jake's death, and the Ani's various reactions?

6) What do you think about Cassie's famous polar bear scene?

7) They eventually succeed in fixing the timeline by preventing John Berryman's existence. How do you think this may have altered subsequent timelines? Was this the best/only solution?

8 ) Anything else? Favorite parts/quotes?

Quote
War is obscene, the worst thing humans do. But warriors, the individual men, are the very best of humanity. Not because they are willing to kill. But because they are willing to risk death, to sacrifice themselves for others.


Next week we will be reading #30: The Reunion

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Offline Chad32

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Re: Group Re-Read: MegaMorphs 3, Elfangor's Secret
« Reply #1 on: May 19, 2009, 08:36:51 PM »
I was very confused in the beginning. Tobias was talking about weird things like how the slaves were having fun too. Like, how could you tell? And then Jake and Cassie were acting weird, Rachel was gone, and Mellissa was in her place. Putting Mellissa in the alternate timeline may have been a bit of fanservice, since it's the only time she plays any importance outside of book two.

[off topic] Speaking of book two, I read somewhere that one of the points of that book was to give Rachel a reason to fight. Everyone else found a personal reason, while hers became protecting families.[/off topic]

Humans can be quite brutal during war times, so it must have been shocking for Ax. This is one of those instances where KA puts forth her distaste towards war. Spoken through Ax.

Jake's death was quite sudden, but if I was Crayak, I would want it to be like that. A way that the other Anis can't oppose. One second he's alive, the next he's doing a reinactment of the JFK assassination.

I remember the polar bear thing. Cassie says something to the effect of "I'll show you something white!"


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Offline SuperBlue

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Re: Group Re-Read: MegaMorphs 3, Elfangor's Secret
« Reply #2 on: May 19, 2009, 09:20:56 PM »
LOL that was my favorite megamorph. I'm gonna re-read it cuz I dont remember the "famous polar bear scene"

Jake's death was out of nowhere it was just so incredibly random which was actually more realistic than a lot of the deaths in the series i mean they are in a war so a random out of the blue death like that should have been expected.

As for the people that the Animorphs killed or wiped out of history...lol the only one I remember was Cassie stopping Visser 4's host from being born. But I don't think Tobias should feel bad about killing Hitler since Hitler was evil and he was gonna die anyway, and Marco killing Visser 4 wasn't all that bad since that's what they were trying to do anyway

Mellisa being an Animorph plus Marco's GF was definetly fan service. I would have actually like for her to have become an Animorph in the actual 1-54 books. I was hoping that the Animorphs would save Mellisa while they were saving their parents or when their getting the Auxiliaries Rachel sees Mellisa fleeing from her controller parents, they save her, and make her part of the Auxiliary Animorphs
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Offline SkyMorpher

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Re: Group Re-Read: MegaMorphs 3, Elfangor's Secret
« Reply #3 on: May 19, 2009, 11:34:41 PM »
Yeah  me too, I'm at that point now with my re-read on LJ. Darn, I need to go mention that when I have time, I didn't think to put it in there last night.

I know one way they were lucky...it would have been a really big oops if one of the guys they killed was their own ancestor. Oops lol.

I like how the end wasn't clear-cut with the holocaust vs no holocaust thing in there.

I'll have to come back tomorrow for more in depth talking, because I've got to get up early for work.

Oh yeah big question: Why didn't the Time Matrix ever get mentioned again???? I never figured that one out.

Offline Shark Akhrrana

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Re: Group Re-Read: MegaMorphs 3, Elfangor's Secret
« Reply #4 on: May 20, 2009, 01:15:34 AM »
Questions
1) What do you think about the alternate reality shown at the beginning of this book? There are several things to comment on here: Jake as the "Supreme Leader", the political climate, the existence of slavery, the fact that Melissa has replaced Rachel as an Animorph, etc.
It took me totally off guard. The whole thing with the  slaves at the beginning . I WAS SO CONFUSED. but it all got fixed so yay.

Quote
2) It is assumed at one point that, originally, Visser Four went to more places than what we see in the book to create the alternate reality we see. Any speculation on what other points in history would be important to visit in order to create this reality?
Well since he tried to kill the king to stop John from quoting so many plays. i think that John  would just start reciting another play so Visser 4 might want to go after Shakespeare next XD

Quote
3) This book isn't just an adventure through time, it is also a commentary on human nature over the centuries. This commentary is driven home by Ax's point of view.

    
Quote
I thought I understood humans. I understood nothing.
     
Quote
The same species that spawned my friends [...] seemed to revel in mutual slaughter and sank to depths no Yeerk would sink to. Depths of depraved brutality that would be unimaginable to an Andalite.

       What do you think about these quotes? What about the various wars and conflicts that the Ani's find themselves in?

I THINK this book is very effective in showing how war truly is. especially the part where Jake dies. DEATH CAN BE SUDDEN.

Quote
4) Each of the Animorphs (except Jake) faces a stain on their consciences: Ax a Hessian soldier, Tobias kills Hitler, Rachel kills a tank of men, Marco kills the Yeerk that is Visser Four and Cassie makes it so that John Berryman never existed. Why do you think that Applegate decided to give everyone this burden?

I think she felt that they needed to feel the burden that people that are at war have to go through to try and help us see what it would be like.

Quote
5) What do you think about Jake's death, and the Ani's various reactions?

I think that is the most realistic death in the entire series. quick , sudden, no time to react or second guess yourself

Quote
6) What do you think about Cassie's famous polar bear scene?

I think that was epic. It was great AND  it totally got the point across.

Quote
7) They eventually succeed in fixing the timeline by preventing John Berryman's existence. How do you think this may have altered subsequent timelines? Was this the best/only solution?

Wasent Visser 4 the one who was in charge of the invasion of Leera? so if they delete John either the Visser was not a Visser anymore or he had a different host. Who knows many things might have been changed because of that. I Think there mighthave been another way out....have to read it again to see if i come up with something.

Quote
8 ) Anything else? Favorite parts/quotes?

I love the medieval part with the daemon (hork-bajir) XD

Quote
War is obscene, the worst thing humans do. But warriors, the individual men, are the very best of humanity. Not because they are willing to kill. But because they are willing to risk death, to sacrifice themselves for others.
[/quote]

NICE quote


Next week we will be reading #30: The Reunion
[/quote]
« Last Edit: May 20, 2009, 01:17:26 AM by Shark Akhrrana »

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Offline foxglade

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Re: Group Re-Read: MegaMorphs 3, Elfangor's Secret
« Reply #5 on: May 20, 2009, 03:24:36 AM »
6) What do you think about Cassie's famous polar bear scene?

That was AWESOME. And I think the direct quote was:

"You don't like black people, Mr. Davis?" I said pleasantly. "No problem. I can
turn white. Watch me."

And the best line of the whole scene was:

"Nan, nah, don't kill me! Don't kill me!" He looked at Tobias. "Don't let her
kill me."
Tobias shrugged.

Woot! Cassie takes control! Take that, racists!
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Offline Chad32

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Re: Group Re-Read: MegaMorphs 3, Elfangor's Secret
« Reply #6 on: May 20, 2009, 09:19:45 AM »
Also the part where Rachel was about to go berserk on some men, then Jake comes by and starts scolding her. So those guys are seing a kid talk down to an elephant. That was cool.


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Offline Yarin

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Re: Group Re-Read: MegaMorphs 3, Elfangor's Secret
« Reply #7 on: May 20, 2009, 10:01:32 AM »
I really liked this book especially the beginning with the alternate reality
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Re: Group Re-Read: MegaMorphs 3, Elfangor's Secret
« Reply #8 on: May 20, 2009, 11:19:57 AM »
More to come, but right now I've been mulling over the scene were Rachel is explaining the holocaust to Ax, and they remark that she flips over little things, but the big stuff makes her cold.
Completely understandable, but the that gets me is that, well, that stuff doesn't bother me anymore.
I think the first time I read this book I didn't really understand, but now, it's nothing more than history; stories that you learned in school. It does nothing to me emotionally anymore and somehow that makes it seem odd to me that Rachel reacted with such passion on the subject.
Granted, had I been thrown back into it, I may feel different, but flying servalance and discribing it, I couldn't react like that anymore.
Don't know why, but reading that makes me feel....hollow.
Just saying; more on the book later
Something, something, oh crap I pissed everyone off again....

Offline dolphin4077

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Re: Group Re-Read: MegaMorphs 3, Elfangor's Secret
« Reply #9 on: May 20, 2009, 09:10:41 PM »
1.  I remember thinking during the first time I read this that the beginning was so wrong; it kinda freaked me out, but it was interesting. 

2.  I assume he messed with the American Civil War.  Maybe he messed with Spanish-American war or some other moment when imperialism was the goal.

3.  It made me depressed about humanity. 

4.  Giving the Animorphs a burden serves a couple of purposes.  A) It gives them motivation to get things back to normal.  B) It makes the adventure real despite the whole thing never happening.

5.  Pretty much agree with everyone else. 

6.  Loved it!

7.  The only thing I can think of that changed was that after Visser 4 was demoted for losing Leera he got a host that didn't need to cut across the abandoned construction site. 

8.  There were so many great parts/quotes: Ax and Tobias (in Hork-Bajir morph) in a medieval church, Jake annoyed at Rachel for tossing around knights calling her a witch, and Marco stealing George Washington's boots.

Quote:  "Amazing," Marco said.  "The United States is gone, or at least way different; the Nazis never happened,  Einstein, who knows?  But hippies are right when and where they're  supposed to be?"

Of course, any sentence in this book that contained the word "hippies" made me laugh. 
 

Offline Chad32

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Re: Group Re-Read: MegaMorphs 3, Elfangor's Secret
« Reply #10 on: May 20, 2009, 10:01:10 PM »
How the heck did Visser Four find the TM, anyway? He just happened to get the urge to start digging around in that one spot with equipment? Or maybe he did research on Elfangor, pieced some things together, and started digging around his landing site? What?


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Offline EmberGryphon

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Re: Group Re-Read: MegaMorphs 3, Elfangor's Secret
« Reply #11 on: May 20, 2009, 11:31:40 PM »
Y'know, as a general rule I liked the series more the further into it we get... but I really liked the first two Megamorphs more than the last two. *shrugs* I feel like this one was just... too jumbled and confusing. Our heroes had no real idea what was happening... So it felt kind of difficult to keep up. ^^()

I liked it fine, just not as much.

1) Y'know, I don't really understand the fascination with making Melissa into an Animorph. ^^() She really gets no character development in the series itself; we know nothing about her except that she's not as fierce as Rachel (since she still gets to exist in the AU), she's good at gymnastics and she talks to her cat. And yet she's one of the most talked-about NPC's in the series, as far as I've seen. I guess she's a female human character considered to be reasonably attractive who is about the age of the Animorphs, which means she gets shipped with poor single Marco, but... it just seems kind of out-of-the-blue. ^^()
Anywho, I thought the AU was fairly compelling. What kind of amuses me is that... well, Visser Four had to think he'd get something, personally, for doing this, right? But once the world was the way he wanted to make the world... what difference would it make, as far as his personal accomplishments go? Once he changed the timeline, the AU would have become reality, right? Why not just take the Time Matrix to Visser Three and say, "Hey, humans used to be super-powerful, highly technological super-beings that had nearly destroyed us when I used this to make them into technologically backwards primate-creatures. You're welcome! =3" and reap the same rewards with a sliver of the effort?

2) Sans Einstein, were nukes/nuclear reactors ever invented? That alone would change a lot about more current history... Starting with Hiroshima/Nagasaki and the Cold War, on up to a boatload of present-day headaches.

3-5) The harshness of this book was really what drew me, despite the fact that I didn't find the storyline as compelling as some. I liked that she didn't pull any punches with it. War is nasty, and in this one it wasn't animals or aliens getting ripped apart- Jake the human gets the back half of his head blown out, and that's vivid and violent and disturbing in the way all first-hand accounts of warfare are gonna end up. I love how sudden that was, and I love how he wasn't in morph at the time. I kind of like how they go through all that effort to not kill too many humans in their war, and then they realize that humans kill each other in inventive and nasty ways all the time. That's pretty deep.

6) =)
Although... KAA kind of has the habit of presenting racism as something dead and gone. It's never mentioned in the main series, except as something completely irrelevent- I believe Rachel narrates something along the lines of, "Jake is white and Cassie is black, but no one but an idiot cares about that," which is true. But... there's something of a flippancy there; it feels like she avoids talking too much about racial issues even as she takes all these other conflicts head-on. She can talk about genocide and WMDs all day long, but she says the word "hispanic" in relationship to Marco/Eva all of... what, once or twice? And her talking about racism in a book about the follies and foibles of mankind's past mistakes and then ignoring it again once we're back in the current timeline feels, again, like she's dodging the issue of racism in the present.
Does that make any sense at all?
I'm thinking no. ^^()

7) Very creative, extremely anticlimactic. xD

[off topic] Speaking of book two, I read somewhere that one of the points of that book was to give Rachel a reason to fight. Everyone else found a personal reason, while hers became protecting families.[/off topic]
*nods* I've ranted about that personal thought; each of the first five books- and book eight- was centered around giving every Animorph a reason to fight. ^^

Offline filmstu2005

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Re: Group Re-Read: MegaMorphs 3, Elfangor's Secret
« Reply #12 on: May 21, 2009, 04:36:02 AM »
I really liked the opening, very well written. Threw me for a loop b/c I was hearing Melissa, slaVES, and Marco could morph into a grizzly bear. So wrong.

Then i understood it was an alternate timeline. Made sense. That switcheroo with Rachel and Melissa, where Melissa was actually dating Rachel's bf, Tobias, kinda eerie and undermining for Rachel. But it sort of ties in to the series' mythology. As we all knew, Rachel wasn't "chosen" to be an Animorph. Only the others were put together to meet Elfangor, and Rachel kind of just "tagged along" as a serendipity, as the Ellimist put it "Earth's contribution to save itself."  So it makes sense that in this alternate timeline Rachelwas the replaceable one instead of the others. Its b/c she wasn't "destined" to be there.

I still hate the fact that she was even considred replaceable.


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Re: Group Re-Read: MegaMorphs 3, Elfangor's Secret
« Reply #13 on: May 21, 2009, 08:13:02 AM »
7) They eventually succeed in fixing the timeline by preventing John Berryman's existence. How do you think this may have altered subsequent timelines? Was this the best/only solution?

This seemed very iffy for me, actually. Because it's not John Berryman who found the Time Matrix, it's Visser Four. Even if he ends up in another host, he might still find the Time Matrix, and then they have to go through all this again.

Other than that, though I enjoyed the book. ^_^.
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Offline Chad32

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Re: Group Re-Read: MegaMorphs 3, Elfangor's Secret
« Reply #14 on: May 21, 2009, 09:06:46 AM »
Both Rachel and Jake were only in the site by chance. Neither is more or less replacable than the other. It's just that in the alternate reality, people were still very sexist.


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