Do you guys enjoy the "David" books?

[Shenmue654]

XD It was the 90s. They blamed everything on the metal. Such a shame. T___T ? XD

[NothingFromSomething]

Marco & Jake both seem like metal type guys anyway.    Neither jocks nor nerds, they like playing DOOM, all signs point in that direction.  Haha.

[NickDaGriff]

Jake was kind of a jock, but with a nerdy side when it came to war and military history, which could account for his interest in DOOM.  But yeah, I could see him being into metal.  Marco too.

[guitarhero01234]

Well, we already know they were into Offspring and Nice is Neat. Not really metal, but definitely hard rock, especially in the case of the latter

[CatMorph]

I'm a little torn when it comes to the David trilogy. On one hand, the three books serve as great bases for character development, especially for Rachel

I think the David Trilogy is what prevented me from making an Animorphs OC or Animorphs Mary Sue.

After seeing what the Animorphs went through, I knew they wouldn't be welcoming of a new member ever again, and if they did they would be very suspicious.

The David Triology was the last book I read before I started losing interest, then I came back to the series later. I'm not sure, but I think after the David Trilogy, more stuff was ghost written, and I began to lose interest. The tone felt different.

There was good character development with Rachel. She really began to think and wonder about herself. Why did Jake choose her to hunt down David and not someone else? This was the part where she was starting to realize how dark and ruthless she was and how much she actually enjoyed the war and how good she was as it.

David started out sympathetic, but then he did some horrible stuff that lead to the point of no return. They made the decision to leave him trapped as a rat forever instead of killing him. It did feel rushed, but they had to cram it into three books.

My favorite part was when Jake thinks, he's beginning to see why Visser Three hates them so much. Jake begins to feel paranoid as he realizes David could be anything, anywhere, a flea spying on them, a tiger that could attack any minute. I think KA Applegate wanted to experiment with having one of their own using the morphing power for evil, instead of just adding a new member.

I guessed David might not be a permanent character when he didn't appear on the cover. Hey, a fanfic narrated by him might be interesting.

[Dylan]

I never imagined them as metal lmao, Jake was much more jock and I saw Marco as kinda a cool nerd.
I love all four David books. I know that 48 is kind of controversial but I love it a lot

[ViciousVisser]

I never imagined them as metal lmao, Jake was much more jock and I saw Marco as kinda a cool nerd.
I love a four David books. I know that 48 is kind of controversial but I love it a lot

I like 48 too! Sure, it was one of the weirder, darker ones, but I still thought it was interesting!

[DinosaurNothlit]

I like 48 too! Sure, it was one of the weirder, darker ones, but I still thought it was interesting!

Heh, that seems like a funny statement to me, because the weirdness and darkness of it were probably the primary reasons why I liked that book.  Basically, my brain heard, "Sure it was one of the better ones, but I still thought it was good!"  Lol.

That, and the deliciously ambiguous ending.  Favorite closure of any Animorphs book, by a mile.

[Matches]

The "David Trilogy" is pretty much what made me want to come here and discuss them, I just recently read them for the first time. I really love/hate them, its a hard read emotionally.

I will say that the parts about the Summit and the World Leaders is lacking, and feels like it only exists to give David a mission to go on, nothing really came of it.

The books have changed how I view the Animorphs, and especially Cassie. This is the first time they have made some big mistakes and done something morally repugnant out of necessity, I am not much further in the series (only at 24 as of this post) but I know from other discussions I have seen that it goes in a darker path after these books.

David as a character is not the best, I think we are supposed to see him as crazy if not evil, and he changes from being a scared kid to that way too quickly. I know he is hated by a lot of readers and see it as he got what he deserved. I can't help but pity him though, I think if the Animorphs had handled him better and not been so cold to him it would not have turned out the same way, Marco especially pushed him away from the group. Maybe I feel so bad for him because I identify with David a lot, when I was around 14 I was a problem child (granted I never tried to murder anyone) but I know what its like to be a loner and have emotional issues, and violent tendencies. I was lucky enough to get into a new home environment and turn my life around. And I cant help but think David was not beyond saving either, and there were other solutions besides the brutal one the Animorphs used. (If David is supposed to be a sociopath, someone who genuinely cannot improve as a person, I do not think Applegate displayed it very well, and all teenagers at that think like psychos, theres a reason it cant be diagnosed until 18)

I think the Animorphs choice to turn him into a Rat, was overly cruel and a selfish act. They are kids and they want to be the good guys, they dont want to have the blood of someone else on their hands. But I genuinely think it would have been better to just kill David instead of condemning him to live as flea ridden rat alone on an island going insane from loneliness. Its something I wouldnt wish on my worst enemy, let alone a child. (I know he comes back at some point from spoilers but I have not read that yet) Yes he tried to kill them, and possibly killed Saddler, again I would even be fine if they just ended up having to kill him in a fight, but the rat plan was way too far. My views on Cassie changed a lot from this, she is the soft hearted one who wont kill and came up with this plan. I see her less as someone who was empathic to manipulative, and she was already my least favorite Animorph.

I guess they did what they thought was right, but I think this is the first time I cant look at them as heroes anymore.

[NothingFromSomething]

The rat thing worked for me, it sort of seemed like the type of thing a kid would do.  Deep down they knew it'd probably kill him, but it was their "out" from actually committing the act, an out-of-sight-out-of-mind type of thing.  Having no idea of how he'd come back of course, a far as they were concerned it was something they could live with, but were old enough to know he'd probably only live a few weeks/months or whatever there.

Sort of cool layered but believable teen mentality, doing something awful but in a way they could justify to themselves.

[Shenmue654]

Yeah, agreed on that. Cassie's creepy decision there can best be described as an artifact of the teenage inability to put yourself in someone else's shoes. You're more egocentric then even than you were as a child, and I don't just mean that in the moral sense--- I mean it in the biological or neurological sense. The same mechanism comes into play when a little teenage girl becomes interested in something she definitely shouldn't--- She can't take the perspective of someone else looking at her actions from the eyes of an adult. Similarly, a teenager who does reckless things doesn't *realize* who their death might hurt, or that they are at risk of death. They cannot yet imagine themselves dead. And they cannot yet comprehend that leaving someone for dead as a rat is much, much worse than death.

[NothingFromSomething]

I mean, I don't know if I'd call it "creepy".  It's about the best they could do under the circumstances, at that point David's way too dangerous (literally to the entire planet, if he managed to take out the Animorphs one by one the whole world's doomed), he can't just be left alive with morphing power.  It's trap him or kill him at that point.  Yeah, killing him's probably the merciful way to go as an adult would see it, but I get that the group at that point weren't in grim do-what-you've-dotta-do mode like the finale just yet.  For them, it was the best option, nothing creepy about it.

[Matches]

The problem comes from the fact that it seems completely avoidable

If Marco and Rachel wherent such ****s to him, and Jake was more understanding and patient with him the rift between him and the Animorphs probably wouldnt have happened.

They should not have taken him on the mission either, leave him in the barn or somewhere. He was a liability even if he wasnt crazy, just because he was new to all this and they take him on their most dangerous/important mission yet.

It just seems like the Animorphs wanted him to fail, and he was just a kid in the wrong place at the wrong time.

A better approach it and show how evil is his would have been something like: Have them get the box back in a previous book. David sees them morph after a battle, and schemes his way into the group to get the power from the beginning.

[NothingFromSomething]

Oh, c'mon.  You can't justify David's actions due to being mocked by Rachel & Marco, that's ridiculous moral relativity.

He literally considered collaborating with the alien invaders, and then went on an attempted killing spree of the group.  No, the group probably shouldn't have included him in honest-to-god "Animorphs mission business" so early, but who knows?  David, being David, would probably have taken that as a slight, "you don't trust me!  waah!", it's a wash.  No good options.

Yeah, David's situation sucked, being thrown into all this so quickly.  But so were all the others, when it happened to them.  Sure, David had the added horribleness of his parents being taken, but Marco's dealing with that too and never tried to murder anyone.  David, basically, was an intrinsic f*ck-up, he was just a tinderbox of a kid to start with, Yeerks/morphing in his life or no.

[DinosaurNothlit]

To be fair, I think David probably blamed the Animorphs for his parents being captured, given that they knew it would happen and they did nothing to stop it.  Granted, too, of course, that there wasn't much the Animorphs could have done, but David might not have been in the right frame of mind to see it that way.  Especially after how coldly Marco basically rubbed it in his face that his parents were now his enemy.

Yeah, Marco and Jake had to deal with infested family members, but they both had at least a little bit of family left.  David not only got dropped into the war at the same time as losing all possibility of having a normal life, but then the other Animorphs, who are now the only people he can turn to, don't trust him.  Jake doesn't even let him keep the hotel room that he broke into just so he could have a bed, for Ellimist's sake.

In all honesty, I think he was just trying to take back some measure of control over his own life . . . and he realized he could not do that while the Animorphs were still alive.

Not saying that any of that justifies murder.  But for a young kid who basically just got thrown into the emotional meat grinder, I'd at the very least say it wasn't a foregone conclusion that he would have still been a psychopath without those factors.