Richard's Animorphs Forum
Animorphs Section => Animorphs Forum Classic => Topic started by: Larrikin on February 04, 2015, 07:08:51 AM
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So my friend is learning English and absolutely loves the Animorphs books. However the books take her a long time to read. I would hate for her to spend all the time reading a book that really does progress the story. I remember when I reread them a couple years ago there were some in the middle that added nothing to the story. Which are the books that contain story lines that are not referenced in any other books nor provide any meaningful backstory?
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31 is an idiot plot that made my head hurt. I suppose it has some charactarization between Jake and Marco that adds sontext to a later book, but he main plot literally shouldn't hae happened. The Yeerks should have contingency plans in case a controller needs to travel. The one about rachel morphing a starfish and being split in half. The one about underwater mutants. The one about Buffa Human. I'd say the Helmacron ones, but the last Helmacron book has them stealing the morphing cube, and the Anis trying to get it back. I feel like it's worth reading because this is the last book Cassie narrates before book 50. She says the Yeerks getting the morphing cube would be the worst thing ever, before book 50 where she lets Tom's Yeerk escape with the cube. An interesting bit of context to her betrayal.
There are a lot of filler books, even earlier in the series. Book 9 is kind of filler, but it really helps set the stage for the kind of person Cassie is, and helps give some context to book 19.
I know there are some books that can really be skipped without losing anything. 41. The back half of the last book, perhaps. Most Megamorphs books.
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imo: 2,9,11,12,14,16,17,24,25,28,31,32,34,35 except that last page,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,44,47
Some of these are mildly referenced in other books("Remember that cat from book 2?"), but I feel like none of them advance the story or any of the characters in meaningful way.
That said, I still think 24 is ***ing hilarious.
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I have heard people say that number two is the more filler-y book of the first set. Especially since Mellisa has no real role in the rest of the series. Darn shame, too. She gets cameos in two other books, but is otherwise incidental at best. And those two other books aren't even Rachel books.
So RYTX, you think someone could take out nine books in a row without missing much at all? Thirteen, if it weren't for 33 and 43.
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Honestly, I would have put 33 and 43 up there, but some people think Taylor was of consequence (which she wasn't, though she should have been. Perfect time in the series to introduce a secondary antagonist) and liked that crap with ghost Elfangor.
But yeah, while there are books from that stretch I enjoy (36, and uh, well, 36) that whole stretch of there series, the missions where trivial or stupid, the characters didn't really grow, and nothing happens that impacts them in a lasting way. They set up a lot of these books with the potential to be real plot points in the series, but never came back to them (a free HB colony in space, the Andalite's coming to Earth, Taylor).
Though I'm biased. I recall that 32 (maybe 33) was the last one a read my first time through before taking a very long break from the series. Were I picked up again with 46, realized something I'd skipped something important, and had to go back. And it turns out only 45 had anything of consequence.
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Oh yeah, those were the Taylor books. Like david, they could have done so much more with her. For some reason they didn't want to crowd the Animorphs Rogues Gallery.
I wonder what happened to that Hork-Bajir resistance force on the homeworld, and why Tobi wouldn't go there to help the group. Instead she gets a seat in Congress somehow. Did she convert to christianity and tell them she was male, or something?
I don't blame you for saying a big chunk of the back half of the series is filler. Things did go downhill a bit when KA stopped writing any books.
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2's pretty instrumental in setting up Chapman's motivation though, and I always felt it gave a way better insight into the dynamic of the kids and their interactions than the first book showed. It's "small" in plot, but gets under the surface a bit more, which I like. 3 goes bigger again with advancing the Yeerk stuff, 2's just a different "type" of book.
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Yeah, I don't label that filler as quickly as some other people. I just wish Mellissa was used more.
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Chapman's motivations for what? The human who got himself taken to protect his daughter? Sure, neat. Would have been nice if they'd done something with it other than mention it a couple times later down the road. Especially since they made him out to be such a prick in TAC. (The development, the role of voluntaries, YPM, more things that could have been used in that late stretch.) All we see of Chapman is the toady Yeerk who hates his boss. If the question is is this book skippable or not, retaining it can't be because Chapman-the-human-we-never-see-free-again loves his kid.
Now the team dynamics is certainly better than 1. But since so much of the series deals with that, the story is not really compelling (the story telling yes, it's a well written early book, but the events remain negligible to me).
3 I only think is significant for Tobias's development, and accepting being a hawk. Blowing up the ship, while it gets a nod later, is one of the lesser missions, that as they become more capable won't have warrented it's own story.
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Perhaps a better question would be: Which books had major plotpoints? Could we cut the series down to about 20-30 books?
Saying that, perhaps a lot of the fillers were mainly for character development?
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There was some good character development, but some characters went off the rails. They treated Rachel's character poorly, for instance. They wanted her to be the one who goes down the darkest road, to a point where she could never come back. Then what do they do at the end of the last two books she narrates? In 48 she realizes what Crayak is doing on her own and denies him without being helped by anyone else. Then at 54, one of her last thoughts is about shopping, and asking the Ellemist if she mattered. Does that really sound like an irredeemable bloodknight?
I do think the series could have been half as long without losing much of anything. Especially since little to no effort was put into fleshing out the other groups. You can hae the animorphs remain the main characters while giving the Hork-Bajir, Chee, and YPM more focus from time to time. It would certainly be better than finding out about mutants under the sea, the fact that the Yeerks have no contingency plans in case controllers need to travel, and what happens if an animal gains the morphing ability.
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All Cassie books. Seriously.
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Flat characters aren't very interesting when they're surrounded by dynamic ones.
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*Sighs at the Cassie comment*
*Realizes he's too lazy to type out a defense*
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*Takes advantage of the opening to bash on Cassies*
I hate Cassie, I do. However, I admit she is a monumental character and pivotal to many elements of the story. But seriously, Cassie books, really weak. She had 4, but that's important for bringing in Ax, anyone could have had it and it'd still be vital. 19 with Aftran, and the roll she had in 50 but beyond that think about the missions that were from her POV. Save the trees, space toilet, Helmacrons, ghost of Aldrea, buffa-human, and Cassie goes to Australia. Dafaq? Those are just soap boxes for Cassie to talk about all that's bad with what they have to do. Cassie herself is vital for her interactions with the others, and her enemies, and those points, especially the former, tend to be made in the others' books rather than the ones she narrates.
A similar argument could be made for any of them I suppose, but again, and excuse to bad mouth miss sub-temporally grounde
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In her defense, four isn't bad. Nine was a chore, though, cementing not only her naivety, but also Visser Three's badass decay. Then in 14 we get the "no morphing Humans just because" line. We get her abandoning the group because she doesn't want to change in 19. Helmacrons in 24. 29 gets points for YPM, and Aftran's deadpan statement of "No Cassie, he's screaming because he has a Yeerk in his head.". Not that much of anything is done with the YPM afterwards. She got the book with some free Hork-Bajir going to start a resistance on the Homeworld that's never mentioned again. Austrailia. Another Helmacron book where she says the Yeerks geting the box would be the worst things ever, and the end of book 50 where she betrays the group by letting Tom's Yeerk escape witht he box.
She's a character who never grows, gets preachy about things that would become irrelevant if they lost the fight, and it's sometimes hard to see that her role in the group is an important one. I'd just rather that role be filled by someone less annoying and more dynamic.
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If I was head douce in charge, I would have cut her from the team the very second she became a liability. "But the blah blah are sentient, and the skunk needs a blah blah blah! We have to save the blah blah or the rain forests will blah! Oooooh, Jake i'ma gonna tell miss frizzle on you!" Just stfu Cassie. If there was a weakest link in the group, it would that monumental whiner.
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Bwaha. Yeah, that whiner that kept 'em all alive and sane through a whole 3 year war.
I mean, tree-huggers bug me as much as the next person, but Cassie was never one of the irrational ones who did it without a point. She always had her head in the game and acted on pragmatism.
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Really? I seem to remember at the end she completely abandons Jake until Marco convinces her to help him, and Tobias goes full hawk and leaves Human society altogether. And when Marco wanted to do something different with his life, he morphed lobster in his pool instead of going on a proper vacation. alive and sane. Sure.
Always had her head in the game, and acted on pragmatism? I think we were reading a different book series.
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When the hell did Cassie "abandon" the others after the war? If anything it was Jake that withdrew from everyone. Marco and Cassie were the only real functioning ones for a while there, and she hardly abandoned Jake.
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Jake was withdrawn, yes. He needed Cassie more than ever, but she didn't even talk to him for years from what I remember. Marco kept an eye on him, but he was never really all that touchy feely. I think he asked Cassie to marry him before the war ended, but she pushed him away. For someone who is supposed to be more in tune with other people, neglecting someone who is going through a crisis isn't very smart.
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The book pretty clearly gives the impression that the little-to-no-contact between the two of them was totally on Jake, though. Cassie was actually taking college classes and working to preserve the Hork-Bajir colonies and stuff (essentially making sure they didn't lose all they'd fought for to looney human radical groups/terrorists), while Jake was moping over the tragedies of Rachel/Tom and Tobias in his parent's house 24/7. It seemed both Cassie and Marco had been trying to drag him out of it for quite a while, though Jake being Jake it was pretty impossible.
It's been a while since I've read it, but I'm almost 100% sure the marriage thing not panning out was totally mutual with them no longer feeling it. Or even Jake figuring it all wasn't the same post-war, what they had together during those years.
The neglect thing is BS. That book picks up, what, a year after the events of the pool ship? It's implied (nothing explicit, but suggested) that both Marco and Cassie were "there for him" during that period but he was just too deep in his head stuff to listen to anyone. That's the whole point of the trial sequence, Jake finally pulling his head out of his ass.
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Maybe I need to reread the book, then. My dislike of Cassie may have made me blame the distance on her, and since it's been onver a decade since I read 54 my memory is foggy. I thought she cut off contact with pretty much everyone. Marco and Tobias as well. Though she did know where Tobias lived.
Not sure I'll actually reread that part again, but I'll concede for now. My sympathies have been much more on Jake than Cassie.
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I'll just copy the list I sent to my sister here:
[spoiler]XenoFrobe said the following:
Here are the books in the order you should read (or skip over) them:
1: The Invasion
2: The Visitor (Other people say skip, I say read. Sets up Rachel and Tobias nicely.)
3: The Encounter (One of Tobias' most badass moments in here)
4: The Message
5: The Predator
6: The Capture
7: The Stranger
Megamorphs 1: The Andalite's Gift (Skip this one. Just a rushed monster of the week episode.)
8: The Alien
9: The Secret (In which Cassie is a terrible person. Sets up her character for some weird decisions later. Optional.)
10: The Android (Real life fan who won a contest online got to be an insert character, and accidentally ended up becoming a major side character in the series because Applegate like him. XD)
11: The Forgotten (Just a stable time travel loop episode that hits the reset button. Skip.)
12: The Reaction (Optional. Rachel makes some dumb moves in here.)
13: The Change (Tobias book=good book)
14: The Unknown (ohgodnoskipskipskip)
15: The Escape
16: The Warning (Obligatory "internet is full of creeps" PSA episode, but it is AWESOME anyway.)
17: The Underground (Meh, filler. "Battles that involve oatmeal are just never going to end up being historic, you know?")
18: The Decision (Way cool episode. Aliens rule.)
Megamorphs 2: In the Time of Dinosaurs—(Creates some inconsistencies, but makes up for it with great character moments.)
19: The Departure (Great Cassie episode, mainly because it show what a horrible hypocrite she is.)
The Hork-Bajir Chronicles
20: The Discovery
21: The Threat ---------DAVID TRILOGY HOLY CARP
22: The Solution
The Andalite Chronicles (This one has the same plot twist as 23, so read in whichever order you want. I love the Doctor Who/Star Trek campy sci-fi feel of this one, though.)
23: The Pretender (Great Tobias episode.)
24: The Suspicion (Oh man the Helmacrons are annoying. Skip.)
AND THUSLY BEGINS THE ERA OF GHOSTWRITIA.
25: The Extreme (Optional filler episode, but has a potentially [unconfirmed] significant reference if you're trying to figure out some backstory much later.)
26: The Attack (Actually by Applegate, not a ghostwriter. One of my favorites.)
27: The Exposed
28: The Experiment (lol vegans. Applegate herself went in and changed the last chapter to have everyone eating hamburgers just to spite the ghostwriter, that's how bad it was.)
29: The Sickness (Cassie's greatest moment and episode here. She gets to be badass for once.)
Megamorphs 3: Elfangor's Secret (Time travel, hits the reset button, but does it well and HOLY CARP THIS IS BLOODY. Drives the whole anti-war theme of the series home as well as the finale, in some ways.)
30: The Reunion (PAYOFF)
31: The Conspiracy (Debatably skippable. It's an poor plot, but provides important context for later.)
32: The Separation (Worst possible Rachel episode. No.)
33: The Illusion (Pretty messed up episode. I like it.)
34: The Prophecy (Tie-in with Hork-Bajir Chronicles. Filler.)
35: The Proposal (Kinda goofy and dumb, but lays down some important plot for later and sets up for Visser. Applegate actually said this was one of her least favorites in the series, but it's still important.)
Visser (Basically The Yeerk Chronicles. Beginning of the Earth invasion. This is one of the books that makes you wonder how they got away with selling this to kids. Sex, drugs, alcohol, and brutal violence play pretty heavily in here, even if it's not all explicitly onscreen.)
36: The Mutation (Meh, filler.)
37: The Weakness (Some character stuff for Rachel.)
38: The Arrival (Interesting deconstruction of a Mary Sue character. More Andalites are always good.)
39: The Hidden (I like this one even though everyone else hates it, it's a good Cassie episode. I actually felt torn. Still filler though.)
40: The Other (Filler, and raises some questions, but introduces a new side to Ax. Also, more Andalites.)
Megamorphs 4: Back to Before (The obligatory 'It's a Wonderful Life' episode. Optional, but interesting and reveals something about Cassie.)
41: The Familiar (Skippable 'potential future' episode.)
42: The Journey (STUPID HELMACRONS NO GO AWAY)
43: The Test (It finally happens :D)
44: The Unexpected (Filler, but not horrible filler. You get to pretend Cassie is a cool character for a little while. Skip it anyway, not worth the time.)
(The endgame begins here. Hoo boy, does it pick up.)
45: The Revelation (Several moments I was waiting for through the whole series, finally realized. :D )
46: The Deception
47: The Resistance
48: The Return
49: The Diversion (Maybe the best Tobias book. So many emotional moments, and it highlights why I like him as a character.)
50: The Ultimate (Dang it, Cassie.)
51: The Absolute
52: The Sacrifice
53: The Answer
54: The Beginning (The reason I'm currently writing a fanfic. Depressing as all get-out. If you want a great ending, don't read Marco's last chapter and just pretend it never exists.)
The Ellimist Chronicles (GOOD GOSH THIS IS SO SAD WITH CONTEXT. Seriously, the last line alone is the most depressing thing I've ever read. The whole thing is like all the sad moments in Doctor Who all wrapped up in one book. If you want to read it during the main series, probably read it just before the endgame kicks in.[/spoiler]
You're actually both right. Jake shut the world out and didn't let anyone in until the trial. He resisted any attempts to get him out of his PTSD shell. Cassie was really put off when he finally admitted that he killed the Yeerks out of rage and revenge, which made her feel uncomfortable around him and led her to seek companionship elsewhere. They both just kind of grew apart from each other.
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Cassie didn't seek out whatever that guy's name was (Ronnie? Hazy memory) after Jake, it seemed she was pretty resistant to dating the guy if anything. She still pretty obviously cared for Jake, and he for her, it just became less of a romantic thing post-war. Perfectly valid, wartime dynamics and peacetime dynamics are usually totally different, plus they weren't exactly the same people after the war as they were going into it. Jake was a hell of a lot darker of a human being, and Cassie wasn't quite as sweet and uncompromisingly hug-everyone-'cause-they're-all-super-happy-awesome-and-nice as she used to be either.
I don't think Cassie was too surprised about Jake's whole honesty-outburst of what he was thinking with the prisoners, either. Just one of those things where it's upsetting to hear it actually verbalized and acknowledged. She'd already seen him blackmail Erek and order Chapman kidnapped and threatened etc, she knew he had the capacity for that stuff in him.
As for your list, I don't know why you'd recommend any first-time reader skip any of them, though. Sure, some of them are weaker than others, even borderline-unnecessary, but if someone's reading it through for the first time aren't they better off getting the full picture? You don't gain anything by skipping books other than convenience & expediency, better to absorb the whole story even if sections of it aren't of quite the same quality as others.
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Reading the filler books has caused some people to take a break from reading the series. It kind of depends on the peron.
I don't think Cassie ran into the arms of Ronnie, but I kind of thought of him as a replacement scrappy. Someone you don't like, not because of who they are, but because they're in someone else's spot. In the reader's opinion, at least. Jake and Cassie had something going before the war even started. They had their first kiss in 26. She had a complete breakdown in the megamorphs book where Jake (temporarily) died. Then everything went to crap in the final arc, and they broke up, and she's dating someone else. Not Ronnie's fault by any means, but he's "in Jake's spot". Not the most rational reason to dislike someone, but it happens.
54: The Beginning (The reason I'm currently writing a fanfic. Depressing as all get-out. If you want a great ending, don't read Marco's last chapter and just pretend it never exists.)
I'm not a good writer. If I was, I'd be writing a proper ending where the Animorphs got what they deserved. I'm not talking about happy sunshine times, like some people accuse us of thinking when we rant about how bad the ending was. That's a strawman argument, as if we want to go from one extreme to the other.
though the more I think of it, the farther back I would go if I was going to write Animorphs AU. Change the whole final arc. Go further back to bring David back in 27 as a morph capable villain via Crayak copying what the Ellemist did in 13. Give other groups the spotlight more. Keep Visser Three from undergoing badass decay, mostly by showing him a LOT less. When he does show up, it's an "Oh crap, abort mission" moment. Let them defeat Sub-Vissers, who get knocked off for failure. Towards the end of the series, guess who gets the new slot? Now the animorphs have to save Tom because his slave master's failure means death.
So at the very least, change the last book and title it The End. I would have bet money on the final book having that title from very early in the series. At most, go WAY back to practically the beginning of the series and make some (IMO) improvements.
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But doesn't that whole concept of "Cassie and Jake belong together" fall into the same notion of people wanting a happy ending in general? Katherine and Michael seemed to have it not work out between them because they "belonged" together and the whole moral of the series is life isn't clean and overwhelmingly-just, it's messy and complicated and even a victory sometimes brings pain and confusion and regret.
If they ended up together "just because", it sort of negates all of that. And, generally speaking, how many people actually end up with their highschool sweethearts longterm? Granted most of those examples haven't fought a guerrilla war together through their adolescence, but all the same, it's unlikely in any even that it would work out just because it's "supposed to".
It basically just ties into the idea that they've both changed. Yeah, Jake had a major crush on Cassie pre-construction site and Cassie seemed to reciprocate. Yeah, they were in love during the conflict. But they weren't the same people by the end, toward the conclusion of the war Jake was basically some 80-year-old WWII veteran mentally, and Cassie had seemingly come to the conclusion that people (humans/Andalites/Yeerks) were far crappier than she'd given them the benefit of the doubt for, but figured all she could do was try to do positive things herself, personally. She's almost cynical by that final book. And Jake's so weary he can barely keep himself together, let alone devote anything to Cassie.
Nothing's "meant to be". Whatever actually happens is what was "meant to happen".
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People have argued that the series needed a dark ending, and accused the skeptics of wanting something way on the other end of the scale. All I can say is that I got quite attached to these characters. I didn't even really dislike Cassie all that much until the end of book 50. One of the themes in the early series was hope. Now after KAA lets the ghostwriters take over half of her series, she decides to go diablos ex machina on everything.
I didn';t want a springtime and flowers ending. Nobody did. What I did want was for them all to live through it, and end up in at least a somewhat stable place in their lives where they're able to somewhat enjoy the fruits of their labor. We went through a whole series with no sympathetic named characters dying, except for one megamorphs book where it was reversed, then suddenly Rachel and Tom are dead. the auxilaries are dead. Jara Hamee is dead. You can't make that dramatic a swerve without people getting whiplash.
I don't know how many people stay with their highschool sweethearts. I'll be honest, and say I don't have much experience with relationships. I will say that what happened in 49 and on was most likely the author's way of making things go as wrong as possible, whether it really made sense or not. Jake sending them to attack when they should have stayed away, then going to rescue his family last, knowing one of them is a controller? A lot of the final arc is contrived. If it was more organic, maybe it would feel more justified, but it wasn't.
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I think you hit the nail on the head there Chad. For a whole series, major characters seemed to be immune from death, and eventually it felt like it would continue. Suddenly, end of the series comes, and we get multiple character deaths, it's a complete change of tone. What's more, we were probably all kids when reading this, so it probably struck even harder!
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Complete change, and right at the end so the author didn't really have to worry about the consequences of it. That's a big reason it pissed me off so much. if you wanted to kill people off once in a while, fine. But do it in the middle, and deal with your decisions. Don't kill people in the last book, and try to tell me that's how it should be.
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It would have been fine to an extent. I can understand killing Tom, because there's a strange irony in there where he was the first person Jake wanted to save. Killing Rachel seemed to be simply for a massive shock value, to make the final book seem climactic, which is also understandable but less so.
As for Jara, that seemed completely pointless. That didn't need to happen, and it was unnecessary sadness without a pay-off or any sort of literary justice. Same with the Auxillaries, but at least they had a kind of death scene, and weren't just mentioned as a side note. Jara deserved better.
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The guy that proved he wasn't a controller by slicing his own skull opened deserved more than one throwaway line. The auxilaries deserved more than being cannon fodder. It would be kind of a dark irony that Tom's rescue was the first mission they went into, and making sure Tom didn't become the next Eva was part of their final mission. Rachel's death was just for shock value. She was the strongest of them all. If anyone was going to pull through, it would be Rachel. But they wanted to make her seem like a hopeless cause, dispite the end of book 48 where she sees through Crayak's faustian deal on her own.
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Rachel wasn't a hopeless cause, but she was scared she might be. Remember, a lot happened between #48 and #54, she just wasn't the character in focus.
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We usually see the best of her when she is the narrator. What she is on the inside is different from what she shows on the outside. I'm not saying she didn't skirt the line, but I do think she could have pulled through.
What was the worst thing she did in the series, anyway? If there was a moral event horizon for her, what would it be?
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I think generally speaking it was more the ghost writers that wrote Rachel as some bloodlusty head-case, the K.A.-authored ones are way more layered and three-dimensional.
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Some characterization did suffer from the ghostwriters not really understanding them the way their creaor did.
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Well, with a long series of books, most of them self-contained, it's inevitabile that many seem "skippable".
Also because they are narrated by a different character, so every time it start from a different POV, a different situation that usually is not connected to the previous...the exception is David trilogy or, in a more vague way, 32 and 33.
Then I would be more cautious in defining them "fillers".
The first 8 books are necessary to explain all the main characters. Book #2 may seem unuseful but it shows other morphs, the life of a Controller, and some group dynamics. And Rachel's family, and, of course, first book narrated by her.
IMHO, the very "filler" or unuseful books are 24-39-42...in conclusion Helmacrons ;). Other books are in fact useless for the plot, e.g. #11 The Forgotten, but it's quite interesting and introduces Sario rip.
Also #32 is avoidabile, but ignoring the absurd story of the two halves, this book talk about the Anti-Morphing Ray that will be important for the next book.