Author Topic: Thoughts about the Last Book  (Read 5202 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline Terenia

  • Jr. Staff
  • *****
  • Posts: 10125
  • Karma: 490
  • Gender: Female
  • Got it memorized?
Re: Thoughts about the Last Book
« Reply #15 on: June 06, 2008, 11:53:06 AM »
OT: Terenia, your signature scares me.  :o

OT: Good! That's the point...sort of. :P


Yeah, I dunno. I think the ending would have been better served if the final battle had more to do with the Yeerks directly instead of the One. I mean yeah, there were Yeerks on the ship, but it was really about this "new evil" which we hadn't built up any animosity towards (besides it taking Ax). We had 59 previous books to draw an opinion about the Yeerks as a force. So it all ending in a final battle with the Yeerks and a complete Yeerk force may have made it better for me.

You know, maybe Earth was a win, but it didn't gut the Yeerk forces (I still find it hard to believe that they fell that hard after losing Earth when they had two other planets and many other species). Ax could still have been taken in some capacity so it was a rescue mission, but at least it would be against an enemy we know. Just a thought...

Best Fanfiction Author 2008
Best Roleplay Writer 2009
RAFian Artist of the Year 2010
Best Roleplay Writer 2011
Best Roleplay Writer 2013

Offline sherrilina

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Posts: 32
  • Karma: 5
  • Gender: Female
  • Jake/Cassie ftw!
Re: Thoughts about the Last Book
« Reply #16 on: June 09, 2008, 08:20:19 PM »
OT: Terenia, your signature scares me.  :o

OT: Good! That's the point...sort of. :P


Yeah, I dunno. I think the ending would have been better served if the final battle had more to do with the Yeerks directly instead of the One. I mean yeah, there were Yeerks on the ship, but it was really about this "new evil" which we hadn't built up any animosity towards (besides it taking Ax). We had 59 previous books to draw an opinion about the Yeerks as a force. So it all ending in a final battle with the Yeerks and a complete Yeerk force may have made it better for me.

You know, maybe Earth was a win, but it didn't gut the Yeerk forces (I still find it hard to believe that they fell that hard after losing Earth when they had two other planets and many other species). Ax could still have been taken in some capacity so it was a rescue mission, but at least it would be against an enemy we know. Just a thought...
I consider the final battle to be the one aboard the Pool ship--we never even saw the one with the One!  And as far as final battles go, I think it was pretty awesome.  They managed it using resources and skills/tricks that were realistic and long-established (no magical special clause pulled out of thin air to deus ex machina them to victory!), and it was very well-written and exciting/climactic....though obviously what follows was less so.  But still necessary of course....

And why wouldn't it severely hurt the Yeerks when the Andalites themselves considered blowing up earth in a major measure against them?  They not only lost an entire pool ship (over 17,000 Yeerks, not counting the others lost in fighting), but a coveted class five species....they don't have the HB planet (because it was all poisoned, remember? HB hosts were good but too rare/few), and the Taxxons aren't good hosts....so they were set back terribly by the loss of earth and humans as hosts (5 billion of them!), and more importantly humanity is free.  That's what the Animorphs were most fighting for, so that you and me (lol) wouldn't have to be enslaved, to protect and save their friends and families, and they achieved it!  The Andalites and the Yeerks can keep on fighting (though psychologically the Yeerks have suffered a major loss as well since many now see a way out of their parasitic existence), but earth is safe, and that's what mattered most of all....
"Cassie is quieter than Rachel, more peaceful, like she always understands everything on some different, more mystical level.  I guess you could say I kind of like Cassie......"

Offline RYTX

  • Shadow and Flame
  • Xtreme Member
  • *******
  • Posts: 4877
  • Karma: 140
  • Gender: Male
  • Pretend I said something clever
Re: Thoughts about the Last Book
« Reply #17 on: June 09, 2008, 08:28:59 PM »
^ Agreed, for the most part
I think it's down played how much of the Yeerks invested in Earth, plus adding up all the damages we saw over the years.
Their top general is tapped in a box of cookies, whatever that system was that the first Visser One messed up, the events on Leera, plus the rebellion of on the Hork Bajir world that was bound to occur (the Yeerks did still have the plant remember, book 34) and their home world still on lock down
All these things added together and there Yeerks have been getting pretty roughed up of the years; but most importantly, earth was the HQ, once that went out everything else is kinda of the left overs, they may keep going, but the fact of the matter is they really don't have a chance with the small numbers of mostly unsuitable units still out there after such heavy losses.
Something, something, oh crap I pissed everyone off again....

Offline Duff

  • Entreprenerd
  • God
  • ********
  • Posts: 10057
  • Karma: 222
  • Gender: Male
    • Under the Capes
Re: Thoughts about the Last Book
« Reply #18 on: June 09, 2008, 08:36:41 PM »
OT: Terenia, your signature scares me.  :o

OT: Good! That's the point...sort of. :P


Yeah, I dunno. I think the ending would have been better served if the final battle had more to do with the Yeerks directly instead of the One. I mean yeah, there were Yeerks on the ship, but it was really about this "new evil" which we hadn't built up any animosity towards (besides it taking Ax). We had 59 previous books to draw an opinion about the Yeerks as a force. So it all ending in a final battle with the Yeerks and a complete Yeerk force may have made it better for me.

You know, maybe Earth was a win, but it didn't gut the Yeerk forces (I still find it hard to believe that they fell that hard after losing Earth when they had two other planets and many other species). Ax could still have been taken in some capacity so it was a rescue mission, but at least it would be against an enemy we know. Just a thought...

but that would end up being a different message than the one they were trying to get accross. It would be more of a wars never really end kinda message, which isnt too bad, but it would also add in a cliche bum bum bum yeerks are back and downplay the accomplishments they actually did

instead, it was a new threat, and the message wasnt about war, but about warriors, that warriors never truly put war behind them, and will always be fighting something, i much prefer that message

Offline Terenia

  • Jr. Staff
  • *****
  • Posts: 10125
  • Karma: 490
  • Gender: Female
  • Got it memorized?
Re: Thoughts about the Last Book
« Reply #19 on: June 09, 2008, 08:40:43 PM »
Well, no, I don't think it would be a "the Yeerks are back" thing if it wasn't about Earth. Instead of the Yeerks being defeated in the war they were only defeated in the battle for Earth. The war continues on...and on....and on....kinda like Vietnam....

Best Fanfiction Author 2008
Best Roleplay Writer 2009
RAFian Artist of the Year 2010
Best Roleplay Writer 2011
Best Roleplay Writer 2013

Offline zaprowsdower

  • Jr. Xtreme Member
  • ******
  • Posts: 1248
  • Karma: 49
  • Gender: Male
  • The Ancient of Days
Re: Thoughts about the Last Book
« Reply #20 on: June 09, 2008, 08:43:23 PM »
Like Vietnam, the Animorphs were guerilla fighters who got most of their success by wearing out the enemy stealthily before all-out battle.
Not caring about what's popular since 2006.

Offline Reaper

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 107
  • Karma: 10
  • Gender: Male
  • I seal my promises with a fist...
    • FictionPress - Reaper
Re: Thoughts about the Last Book
« Reply #21 on: June 10, 2008, 01:11:58 AM »
Shouldn't have ended that way. Seriously...it's okay if you're going to have a sequel, but it would be like if Halo 2 ended how it did, and H3 was never made. Personally, I wanted to see what it was that had...possessed...A x, and more desciption of that massive space ship city thinger.

Offline CounterInstinct

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 418
  • Karma: 35
  • Gender: Male
Re: Thoughts about the Last Book
« Reply #22 on: June 10, 2008, 04:15:47 AM »
Well, in my opinion, "The One" is K.A's gift to Fan Fic writers, so that Jake, Rachel(maybe not), Tobias, Cassie, Marco, and Aximili will live on. Not die with the ending.
I'm just a writer, and my main goal was always to entertain. But I've never let Animorphs turn into just another painless video game version of war, and I wasn't going to do it at the end. I've spent 60 books telling a strange, fanciful war story, sometimes very seriously, sometimes more tongue-in-cheek. I've written a lot of action and a lot of humor and a lot of sheer nonsense. But I have also, again and again, challenged readers to think about what they were reading. To th

Offline Hylian Dan

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 162
  • Karma: 58
  • Gender: Male
Re: Thoughts about the Last Book
« Reply #23 on: June 10, 2008, 12:32:00 PM »
I thought the One was great, and I didn't mind that him and the Kelbrid weren't hinted at earlier in the series. It made last few chapters of the Beginning pretty scary, I thought. The scene where Ax finds the polar bear hair aboard the seemingly empty ship was seriously chilling. The One scared me, how he seemed so powerful and we knew nothing about him, and how he only appears in the last few pages of the series.

The confrontation with the One is the beginning the title probably refers to. I agree with sherrilina that the final battle was really the events aboard the Pool Ship and Blade Ship. All of that stuff I thought was so much more intense and interesting than the usual Hollywood-style final battle, with all the good and evil forces clearly marshalled against each other, and the side characters are pitted against each other and a few of them die while the main heroes fight the main bad guy and win and celebrate and mourn the fallen. Everything in The Answer was so intense and climactic and unexpected.

And KA did set up how the Yeerk Empire was weakening. Taylor summarized it nicely in book 43. The Andalite had finally launched their major fleet, and the Yeerks' strategy of luring it to the trap at Anati failed. The Hork-Bajir couldn't sustain the Yeerks, Leera and Anati and Earth were lost, the Taxxons were revolting, 17,000 Yeerks had just been slaughtered, and the two most reliable Vissers had both failed spectacularly. On top of that, the lower-ranking Yeerks were getting tired of the war and resentful of their leaders, who were picking and choosing those who got morphing power. And with morphing power, Yeerks didn't really have a desperate need for hosts anymore.

Offline Chad32

  • God
  • ********
  • Posts: 11951
  • Karma: 195
  • Gender: Male
Re: Thoughts about the Last Book
« Reply #24 on: June 13, 2008, 02:23:51 PM »
I didn't notice this thread when I made mine yesterday.

I feel like I'm in the minority, as I just disliked the ending overall. I would have liked a more clear cut ending where Rachel and Tom lived, Cassie and Jake remained together, and Ax didn't get captured by The One.

But that's just me. Some people might like the more realistic ending, but I don't care for realistic endings in a nonrealistic book series. If KAA made a fictional series about a normal war, and had it end in a realistic fashion as wars don't end nice and pretty, then I wouldn't resent that. I would expect it from some WWII fiction story, but not Animorphs.


Ani-Master 2014!

Offline CounterInstinct

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 418
  • Karma: 35
  • Gender: Male
Re: Thoughts about the Last Book
« Reply #25 on: June 13, 2008, 09:01:33 PM »
Well, it would disappoint me a lot if it ended happily ever after just like that. Animorphs isn't a fairy tale. Animorphs is pretty realistic, those aliens were theoretically real, so it was as close to reality as possible. Not like HP, where magic is faaar from reality. At least the Animorphs had the technological explanation to what was happening. I guess it was pretty realistic.
I'm just a writer, and my main goal was always to entertain. But I've never let Animorphs turn into just another painless video game version of war, and I wasn't going to do it at the end. I've spent 60 books telling a strange, fanciful war story, sometimes very seriously, sometimes more tongue-in-cheek. I've written a lot of action and a lot of humor and a lot of sheer nonsense. But I have also, again and again, challenged readers to think about what they were reading. To th

Offline nothlitlifestyles

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 84
  • Karma: 10
  • Gender: Male
Re: Thoughts about the Last Book
« Reply #26 on: June 15, 2008, 06:12:52 AM »
Well, it would disappoint me a lot if it ended happily ever after just like that. Animorphs isn't a fairy tale. Animorphs is pretty realistic, those aliens were theoretically real, so it was as close to reality as possible. Not like HP, where magic is faaar from reality. At least the Animorphs had the technological explanation to what was happening. I guess it was pretty realistic.

Not to argue with your post at all cause I agree with what your saying but I wouldnt really say there was a technological explanation to anything other than "It was a technology" Lol. sorry that was always something I found really comical about the whole series is that nothing every really even had a foundation it was just, yeah yeah, that technological stuff.

Offline CounterInstinct

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 418
  • Karma: 35
  • Gender: Male
Re: Thoughts about the Last Book
« Reply #27 on: June 15, 2008, 06:52:15 AM »
Well, everytime Ax tried to explain how a device works... Marco just kind of interrupts...  ;D
PLus, the Z-Space concept was vaguely explained...
I'm just a writer, and my main goal was always to entertain. But I've never let Animorphs turn into just another painless video game version of war, and I wasn't going to do it at the end. I've spent 60 books telling a strange, fanciful war story, sometimes very seriously, sometimes more tongue-in-cheek. I've written a lot of action and a lot of humor and a lot of sheer nonsense. But I have also, again and again, challenged readers to think about what they were reading. To th

Offline zaprowsdower

  • Jr. Xtreme Member
  • ******
  • Posts: 1248
  • Karma: 49
  • Gender: Male
  • The Ancient of Days
Re: Thoughts about the Last Book
« Reply #28 on: June 16, 2008, 02:02:17 PM »
Z-space is just a void, between atoms I believe. Sorta an alternate dimension,
Not caring about what's popular since 2006.

Offline Adams_ink84

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 64
  • Karma: 25
  • Gender: Male
Re: Thoughts about the Last Book
« Reply #29 on: September 29, 2008, 11:25:07 AM »
forget everything else forget rachel wtf did they do to ax at the end after they captured him how the hell did he get a mouth ....... :sign0069: :sign0069: