"Classic" Animorphs books?

[char486]

Does anyone else feel like there is a certain chunk of the series that is classic is your mind. The books that you just always, always remember, and the rest of the series after that point isn't as clear or vivid to you. I suppose this kinda only goes to those of us who read the original run, waiting month after month.

For me, the epitome of Animorphs, my classics, are hands down 1-24.

Anyone else?

[Estelore]

I ended up reading them out of order, because I only had the opportunity to buy them two or four at a time at the school bookfairs, and I'd get whatever was available...

...so the 'classics' for me are actually 21-54. Excepting a small handful of the latest books, I read that chunk of them before I read the first 20.

[goom]

i guess the ones written by KA (not ghostwriters) would be classics for me.
except #54.

[anijen21]

I consider the Golden Age of Animorphs to be from 10-26. 1-10 were still a little wobbly in quality, and 26 was the best book in the series so that's where it starts going downhill in my mind.

[11:11]

I agree about the whole "before the ghostwriters" being the "classic" Animorphs books for me. Although if you really want to get technical about the "classics" it'd be the first 7 books before the titles changed from the flat colored font to the metallic.

[Dameg]

Hum... I agree that the most classic are the first, before the ghostwriters, and some near the end... I'd say 1~26 and 49~54. 49~52 weren't translated in French, and I think they're really important for the story... So even if I read them only few time ago, they're classic for me.

[Alex Oiknine]

Hmm, my classics are all over the place in the series.

#1, #3, #4, #5, #6, #10, #13, #15, #18, #19, #20-22, #23... The Illusion, whatever one that was. The Chronicles and Megamorphs #4

I'm probably missing a few there. Oh, and #54 is classic by the default that it is the last book.

[Dameg]

Oh, I forgot the Chronicles. They're also in my classic list

[Azguard]

 I think the first few, maybe up to 8. And then the David trilogy. I sorta stopped keeping up as much after the early 30's.

[AniDragon]

I'd say 1-26, then 29, 30, 33, 35, 40, 45, the chronicles, and the megamorphs. After 45 I just sort of lump everything together into "Final Arc", so I'm not good with specifics. I guess late 30s and early 40s were what I found to be the weakest point of the series.

[LisaCharly]

Yeah, the early 30's were uneven with points of brilliance (30 and 33), and the late thirties and early forties were pretty terrible overall. Personally, I'd exclude 40 from that list because while I love Mertil and Gafinilan, the Anis themselves seem pretty out of character for most of it, especially Marco.

I'd agree that all the KA books, the final arc and 29, 30 and 33 are classics. 29 isn't a great book, but I think it captures a lot of the fun spirit of some of the earlier tomes. Personally, there's a lot in the early series I find weak (ahem, #11), but as a whole the early books do a lot of important set-up and character analysis.

[Dameg]

Yeah, some early books aren't so great. I don't really like #2 & 3 and prefer when Ax appears ^^'

[Galladerotom]

The first book was good but I never really understood the point of 2 and 3. I consider the books up to 33 to be the classics. The anti-morphing ray plot had to be one of my favorites, and I don't think it was ghost written.

By the way the ghost writters take far too much blame for that part of the series, I think Applegate was just trying to keep up with new plots, also remember she was having little Jake at the time. Plus do know what it would be like for an author to have to write a book every month?

[LisaCharly]

Personally, of my least favorite books in the series (41, 36, 44, 42, 39, 32, 11, MM3, 24 and 47), KA wrote 30% of them. I think it's fair to say that in general, the ghostwritten books were of lesser quality than the KA books on average. Whether that was the fault of KA or the ghostwriters or just circumstance isn't something we can know.

That said, my favorite book (#30) is ghostwritten, so yeah.

[Dameg]

In fact, KAA re-wrote the ghostwritten parts she didn't like.
Gallad, you have a point: writing a volume a week is really hard. Finding new ideas, new stories every month? Well, I understand why they aren't all awesome.

In #2 & 3 there is a point: In #2, to show how it is to live why your Controlled parents, and that some people can decide to be Controllers for a reason or another. In #3, it's to show the transition of life for Tobias. But they aren't really good. Hopefully, Ax appear in the new volume ^^ If Ax didn't show up, if there were no Ax, I think Animorphs would have been boring and I would have stopped reading them...