Questions (or at least those that I feel I have something worth contributing that hasn't already been said)2) This is one of the few books (the only book?) that has absolutely NO Yeerks in it. Did you find the book completely irrelevant, a nice break from the war, or something else?Yes it was a nice break, but only because the MegaMorphs already lend themselves to be an aside from the main series. In the main series I think it would be distracting to have something like this that is not 'relevant' to the whole point of the series; but as the MMs are designed to be very "And now for something that's completely different" I think it's neat to step aside and engage in something else, in the same way that the 'Chronicles' were designed to fill in backstories but normally it isn't permissible to step out the main characters perspectives.
Funny how irrelevant it was to the series, i dont even think it was mentioned anymore....but it was fun to read
Really, you could point out a good handful of Animorphs books that have storylines that are irrelevant in the long run; ones that had the Animorphs avoided getting mixed up in the Yeerks really wouldn't be any more powerful anyways. At least as a MegaMorph, it's already feels like it is supposed to be outside of the normal series in some way.
3) In general, what'd you think about the idea of the Ani's in the dino time? Did you think KA's portrayal was well-done?In general, the portrayal of the Animorphs in a completely new setting was a great aside from the main story. One thing I appreciated was that, though the series was its own brand of 'animal shapeshifters' that had never been done either in fantasy or sci-fi, it surprised me as the series evolved from sticking solely to its original premise by doing a great job of jumping into other types of sci-fi/fantasy. The Helmacrons brought in the exploration of shifting in scale of characters and objects for new perspective that you see in the 'Honey I Shrunk the Kids' movies, 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' and 'Gulliver's Travels' for example. This seamless shift to other types of fantastic settings while staying in the Ani-verse was very cool and this exploration of the Animorphs series into a "Dino-story" type of sci-fi was totally awesome (OK, maybe it wasn't entirely seamless shift in this case, but I'll rant about that later). I identified very much with Tobias' childhood memories of being totally fascinated and obsessed with dinosaurs. Along with various articles, books and fact-pages about dinosaurs, the first book I ever owned was one of those 'personalized books' that you can order where they put your kids' name into the individual copy and it told all about me going back in time and having an adventure with friendly dinosaurs, I asked to have it read to me hundreds of times between the ages of 2 and 4 or so.
But while it was awesome in general, I agree with Ferahgo that as cool as the setting was, the fudging the details kinda annoyed me. While I appreciated the 'note from Tobias' at the end that let us know that it wasn't a KASU in the sense that she didn't do her research before writing, but in that she knew her writing didn't fit historically but was willing to say "here's my story, it's pretty neat so enjoy it." It was a good story, it was neat, I enjoyed it. Still, I believe it was entirely within her imaginative capabilities to work with the framework of existing history to make just as interesting and engaging of a story. Sure the setting had to have been late-Cretaceous to have had the ending it did and yes that would mean swapping out a few of the species in the story for a bit more realism, but Big Rex would have still been around and honestly: Who cares about all the other details as long as the dino-story involves him?
4) What do you think of the portrayal of the Nesk and the Mercora and the idea that Earth was being fought over millions of years before humans popped into existence?I'm not going to go on at too much length here, except to say that it does a great job of showing an ongoing, even eternal, struggle of Good vs. Evil and the interconnectedness of it all.
6) Rachel briefly brings up the idea of Tobias staying in morph permanently. Then, when the dino morph takes over Tobias' mind temporarily she revives him not by saying he's human, but by saying he is a hawk. What do you think about these scenes? What does it say about their characters and their development?I tend to view the Rachel/Tobias relationship as it develops from this point on out as symbolic of a common relationship problem. Rachel is in denial about Tobias, and wants him to be something that he isn't at heart. In the same way that the characters say that she was always a warrior at heart but never would have had a way of dealing with a 'normal' life, Tobias was also never complete until he became a hawk. After that, though struggled some with his 'predator/human' duality, he finally found a satisfying sense of 'who he was' that he never would have found as just a human. Rachel spends a lot of time in denial of the full aspect of who he is, but as we saw when he was losing his identity to the dinosaur mind she was ultimately willing to accept him as he was then loose him entirely. I think this struggle to get over expectations and accept someone for who they are is something common (in a much less bizarre form) in many relationships.
Anything else?My only other point of discussion is my time-travel rant, that makes this story not-quite-work in the way that a satisfying sci-fi does. I mean, I do certainly understand that with time travel authors (movie writers, ect.) struggle to make something that actually works or provide a way for time travel to function so that there aren't paradoxes and such. I know it isn't easy to do. However, when having that convenient literary device of "I don't know the details of how technology works precisely, but have a general idea of how it works in practice" that Ax provides, it usually isn't hard to provide something that works within its limited scope, and this one doesn't.
His insight that goes along the lines of "our actions here are already part of our own past, we don't have to worry about what we do since it is already a necessary part of our own past" lets us know that we have a single, solid time-line. We don't have to worry about their actions creating a paradox, it should ultimately be impossible for any of their actions to 'change' anything because it already happened as part of history of their 'present' universe. It's a good solid use of "whatever happened has already happened, if you know that it already happened then you know that it isn't possible for you to change it, so trying to do so will necessarily fail one way or another"
...Except that what they did doesn't work within this setting at all because of this: Unless humans came to exist without the Ani's time-traveling, the would have been able to come into existence to go back in time cause their existance. It's kind ove the opposite of a paradox, it is a contradiction not because it stops itself from happening but because the change in the past couldn't possibly happen without a present that is its effect. That is to say, how could the group go back in time to cause humanity to be born unless humanity had already been born?
A better "Well Jake, I wasn't paying attention in class, but I think it might work like this" explanation that the author could have had Ax give is that the time-line isn't a single, solid time-line where "Whatever we do has already happened" but is a flexible, self-correcting universal time-line. He might have said something along the lines of "In some original the comet never hit Earth, the crab-people and the ant people went about their war in some original way though we don't know what the outcome would have been. Then something must have sent some of the crab people back in time and their actions caused the ant-people to flee and create the comet-catastrophe. Then, since the crab people from the original time-line didn't survive long enough to go back in time and cause the catastrophe, and humans rose in their place there would be a paradox: the catastrophe couldn't occur without modern crab people from a catastrophe free time-line to go back and cause it to occur. Therefore, the universal time-line corrected itself by setting up a situation to send us back in time and cause the catastrophe without the need for a catastrophe-free time-line."
OK, kinda complex I admit, but anyone who is too young to figure out the multi-timeline paths and worry about the causality of it all already had to breeze over the brief discussions Ax caused the Ani's to bang their heads against the wall over; this way at least creates a type of time-travel that works.
