Series Re-Read #33 The Illusion

[buffyangellvr23.livejournal.com]

The anti-morphing ray is still in development, and still has to be stopped. So the group comes up with a plan. Tobias will morph Ax and get himself captured. When he demorphs to hawk, the Yeerks will hit him with the ray and think it doesn't work.

I have a hard time re-reading this one because of all the angst.

Do you think they did adequate follow-up with this book, handled Tobias's aftermath well enough? I'm not sure what I think.

Taylor's an interesting character, the whole Yeerk/host merging thingy that we find out about her. And of course she comes back in The Test.

Also interesting that Tobias didn't want to kill her in the end...I suppose he didn't want Rachel to kill her if she wasn't a direct threat anymore...if they weren't defending themselves or something like that.

Comments

[daphne-23.livejournal.com]

i have such kneejerk defensiveness about how animorphs is, on the one hand, more frequently really bad than harry potter, but ultimately far superior in the most important aspects, like characters who are three-dimensional and emotional honesty

Completely completely agree (sorry for adding nothing much more intelligent than that to the discussion of this book so far...) Yep, the quality of writing in Animorphs is pretty haphazard, but it's so far above HP in its characterisation and morality... HP *is* much better-written, but to me, the values it promotes are simultaneously awful, illogical, and far too neatly-wrapped up.

And I also agree very much with the discussion above on the long-term impact of Tobias's torture on him.

[sporadicfungian.livejournal.com]

GOD SERIOUSLY like for one animorphs isn't really grossly sexist, which is a zillion points right there, for another it acknowledges that sometimes there are no easy answers and sometimes good people do bad things and I COULD GO ON BASICALLY FOREVER.

i also would generally agree i guess that HP is better-written, but i also think that writers who write in a very conversational first-person style, especially in children's/YA lit, don't get enough credit for what they do. it's a lot harder than it looks to write books that simultaneously feel like an adolescent is talking to you (and i've definitely read YA books where it feels more like an adult TRYING to sound like an adolescent) and also manage to be intelligent and convey really powerful emotions. it's hard to do that in really simple language. it definitely goes up and down a lot, and some of the ghostwritten books are just awful, but i also feel like there are some really great moments, writing-wise, that most people wouldn't think to consider "good writing" because they don't take into account how hard it is to achieve that effect.

also i mean nothing but nothing in HP hits me as hard as this book does, or as 22 does, or the ending of 10 when erek goes back to his original programming, or even the very first book when it turns out tom is a controller, and tobias gets stuck in morph. or hell, 30, i mean no one in HP spends 100 pages trying to kill their own mother.

haha AS YOU CAN SEE I HAVE SOME VERY STRONG FEELINGS ON THE SUBJECT.

[acts_of_tekla]

Oh, so much word -- especially on the HP stuff. (Post-Book 7, I'm kind of a bitter ex-fan who only remains in fandom to hang out at Death to CapsLock and read the really good fanfic, i.e. Maya.)

But Animorphs makes me happy! I honestly think that reading good sci-fi/fantasy in general, and Animorphs in particular, pushed me towards a bioethics major. And one of the things that, upon reread, really impresses me about KAA is that she can write with such fantastic character voices. As was pointed out in the Opinionated Reviews, you could delete all of the names from the book and still figure out who's narrating based on the style. Cassie is more poetic, Marco jokes, etc. The ability to imitate that is one of the hallmarks of really good fanfic. (The Bounty is incredible in this respect.) And because we get all of these voices, we understand their points of view more.

[acts_of_tekla]

It was really effective in Everworld too -- Senna's book both is chilling *and* makes her somewhat sympathetic.