GOD YES the only thing Ax ever said about Loren was like "my brother had chosen a worthy mate" or something and I was like "really? Ax, the Andalite fetishist has absolutely no problem that his heroic brother/role-model holed up with a human??? You wouldn't even talk to the gimpy Andalite!"
That is
exactly what I mean!
Exactly!
Ax can be such a racist (speciesist?) sometimes - like a lot of other stupid kids parroting supposed cultural ideals - yet he just
accepted Elfangor's decision to run away from way to hook up with some blonde alien chick (who I think Ax also said was short) before the Ellimist dragged him away again? If he was that accpeting, why didn't he turn to Loren in book #50, when he was despairing as to what Elfangor would do? If she remembered something,
anything, beyond that "flash of blue", the conversation might be worthy of his time. But even if she didn't, her spirit was still in tact, even if her memories weren't. The woman his brother abandoned the Andalites for may have brought him some comfort, you know? Just by being there.
Really, it was entirely OOC for our favourite little Andalite. The whole Elfangor-Loren-Tobias-Ax arc was sloppily handled, and it was such a wonderful and interesting idea. We never got a scene wherein Tobias told Ax and the others about Elfangor being his father, either, which I always thought was shockingly lazy writing. Would Ax accept it? Would he freak out? Would he embrace Tobias, crying "my nephew!"
Who knows? BECAUSE KAA NEVER WROTE IT. Ugh.
I kind of think it was laziness too :/ There were enough 130-page ghostwritten books that could have definitely benefitted from the extra 20 of character development.
Definatley. #54 is a prime example of this. 150 pages - that's
it?! That's all we get as a wrap-up, after five years? Are you
serious?! Where's our 400-page epic, damnit?! The least we should have gotten was a 190-pager like #1, just so the story could be told properly, and all the characters got their chance to shine, like they did in most of the
MegaMorphs books.
They'd all almost become cardboard cutouts by the end of it.
The same thing happened whenever they brought back characters from the Chronicles books. Aldrea was weirdly immature and submissive and lost all of her charm, Arbron lost every semblance of his sense
of humor and character. I kind of wince on this reread whenever that happens. It really is kind of sad, because no one's story felt over at the end of their books, but damn if I knew that was what we were going to get...
This is an excellent point. The ghostwriters have a lot to answer for, here. But so do KAA and her editors for approving the release of books like #34 in the state they were in. Not only Aldrea, but Marco's
awful pseudo-funny line about
The Phantom Menace. Ugh - that a groaner!
The tragedy was, KAA wrote #53, and she still stuffed it up. She had not one, but
two Chronicles characters, on board - Loren and Arbron - and she still butchered them. Was Loren even
mentioned in #53 or #54? It was like she was setting fire to her own work and legacy.
