Animorphs: Book 11: The Forgotten
In book 11, the Animorphs steal a crashed prototype of a new kind of Bug Fighter to fly to Washington and land on the lawn of the White House to show the world about the Yeerk invasion, however along the way they get into a fight with Visser Three's Blade Ship and an accident causes both ships to spiral out of control and to travel back in time by about 24 hours, and then crash into the middle of the Amazon.
At first I really loved this book, as it was doing something fresh and new, and I liked how it was doing it. I also love how the grocery store that the Bug Fighter crashed into, and thus destroyed, was Safeway – you see, when I worked at Sobeys, Safeway was our main competition. Nice to see one of their stores finally blown up, lol. It was neat as well to have Jack have 'the flashes'. It added an air of mystery o the first half of the book as to just what the heck is happening, and it is explained perfectly later on. It was also nice to see more playful Rachel and Marco scenes as I love those, although lately it seems Rachel and Marco have more chemistry together then Rachel and Tobias.
Anyway, I also really found myself enjoying the jungle morphs and most scenes that took place in the Amazon, mainly because I love jungle animals and jungle locations the most, and it was really kick ass to see the Animorphs in another location besides their own town, but also because it was great to see them come across all the dangerous aspects of the jungle that I thought the book would either leave out or just skim over like it was nothing, but luckily they came across one major jungle danger after another, painting a pretty realistic picture of how jungles actually are. It was also cool seeing Jake mess up time after time, showing he's not the invincible know-it-all leader that he's been portrayed as in other books. He's only human, and he's only a kid, and bound to make mistakes. And one last thing, I also liked reading about the countless animals that the Yeerks were killing in the jungle, scared that they may be the Animorphs, and the Animorphs not being able to do anything to save the animals without getting themselves killed. It showed a darker side of the series not often seen yet, and I appreciated that.
But then the last quarter of the book comes, which completely makes almost all the good things I thought about this book moot, as the end makes it so NOTHING in this book actually happened; none of the events from stealing the bug fighter onwards and none of the morphs they obtained in the jungle actually happened come the end, as Jake managed to get his other-self to not go through with any of it, so it undid everything. And on top of that, because none of it actually happened afterward, none of them have memory of the event, which makes this book 100% pointless. Let's recap: Events never actually happened, and no memory of said events = pointless and a waste of an otherwise damn good premise.
I also found it incredibly unrealistic and out of character for them to try and fight the Blade Ship near the beginning, KNOWING it would result in their deaths, as opposed to trying to outrun it back to Earth in which case, they at least had a chance – a very very small chance, but a chance none the less. I mean, not even Marco had any objections – which would be a first time pretty much. And while on the topic of out of characterness, shouldn't it have been Rachel that was so concerned for Tobias during all this? Yet it was Cassie that was constantly voicing her concern for him in the various situations. Even Visser Three was majorly out of character when he scolded his minions for their jungle destruction. Why the heck would he care? Hell, he's gotten mad at his minions in the past for NOT killing every animal in sight in the happenstance that one or more is an Animorph.
And just what the heck was up with the Natives being able to understand English perfectly fine?
What started off as a great book, and had a great idea, actually turned out to be one of the books I liked the least and the book I had the most problems with so far. In the end, it had just felt like glorified fanfiction more then an actual entry of the series.