After skipping around rereading the series over the last month or two, I went back and reread the final 10 books or so again in order. This was always one of my favorite book series when I was younger (and I was a very prolific reader. But now that I read it as an adult, and with many more books under my belt, I can confidently say that Animorphs is easily in my top 3 book series of all time. And the last two books themselves rank among some of the best books I've read. Just the way Applegate writes the characters *after* the war is as genuine and strange and bittersweet as you can imagine. I am fortunate to have never been in a war, but the way she writes the end of the Yeerk war, with an almost anti-climactic "wait...so it's over?" is what I imagine it must have felt like for say a frontline WWII combat unit to get the news that the war was over. A few hours ago you were fighting for your life, now it's just...time to go home.
And I really don't think, in all the books I've read, with all the characters I've come to know and love, that I have ever come to know and love a more compelling, more genuine, more brilliantly written group of characters. The Animorphs are my friends, and I will always carry their story with me.
