Marco's narration.

This one's pretty sad so I guess I'll try not to cry, hahajk.

Well there is something chill with Marco's way of narrating. I really like his narration. I mean, Tobias might be my favorite but Marco's narrations are hella. I'm not gonna do a review for this, just a compilation of stuffs. xD

Marco describes Rachel:
Then, there's Rachel-who-thinksshe's-Xena. - Warrior Princess.

She was standing in the middle of the barn floor, looking immaculate, as usual. Rachel is one of those girls from the cover of Seventeen. Beautiful, fashionable, way too tall, far too many bright white teeth, massive quantities of very clean blond hair. But beneath all that fashionable clothing and perfectly applied makeup there is a sword-swinging Amazon warrior just trying to break out.

Rachel's like one of those terrible elf-maidens in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings - beautiful and dangerous.

Rachel, standing in the middle of the room, looking like someone was shining a spotlight on her.

Marco describes Cassie:
Cassie, the tree-hugger.

Cassie actually experiences normal human emotions like fear and doubt.

Cassie has never met a dress she liked. She does not subscribe to Teen or YM. She's much more likely to buy a magazine like Smelly Animals of America. You know, the kind of magazine that would have articles like "How to Give Suppositories to Raccoons," or "Let's Examine Owl Vomit!"

If you want to picture Cassie, think of a short, cute girl with very short black hair, wearing overalls and big muddy boots and looking totally capable of giving a tetanus shot to an angry bear. Cassie is our animal expert, and our resident ecology nut.

I'd say she likes animals better than she likes people, except that she really likes Jake. As in likes.

Marco describes Tobias:
And there's Tobias, the Bird-boy.

Tobias had his talons sunk deep into the wood to give himself a firm hold. And with his hooked beak he was preening the feathers of his right wing. Tobias is a red-tailed hawk. That's what he's been since he stayed too long in morph. He lives as a hawk now, mostly. I mean, he hunts and eats like a hawk.

Marco describes Jake:
And of course, our fearless leader, my boy, Jake. My way-too serious best friend Jake. Responsible, practically adult Jake.

Jake may be responsible and all, but he isn't a total forty-year-old.

Marco describes Jake x Cassie:
Actually, she and Jake like each other, although neither of them will admit it, of course. The only time they'll act that way is when we're about twelve seconds away from doing something insanely dangerous. Then they'll kind of give each other these pathetic sad looks.

It's so lame.

Marco describes Prince Elfangor:
It was one dying, doomed Andalite who gave us our power to acquire the DNA of any animal and then to become that animal. His name was Elfangor. He, and a lot of other Andalites, died trying to save Earth from the Yeerks.

Marco describes Ax:
And Ax, our resident Andalite.

Marco describes himself:
Well, there's me, Marco the Magnificent.

Marco's views:
I don't want the others to know. I don't want their pity. (on his mother being Visser One)

See, not every alien in the universe is a Yeerk. The universe has its heroes, too.

So for him, and for all the people of Earth, we fight, hoping to slow the Yeerks down enough so that the Andalites will have a chance to come again and save us all.

You remember that old song, "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun"? That could be the theme song for dogs. Dogs just want to have fun. (after realizing that dogs really like to play and run around and are way too happy)

"You know, she is just not getting the whole superhero thing," I said to Jake. "Does Wolverine look things up in the phone book? Does Spider-man? I don't think so." (when Cassie said they should look up Erek in the phone book before they do extreme things like flying to his house and checking things out)

"I've already written three pages. What do you mean, do I have a topic?" But Jake knows me. "So," he said. "Do you have a topic?" "A topic will . . . emerge. I'm going to just write until I discover a topic. The topic will rise from these pages. It will reveal itself to me. I just have to keep writing." (on writing his English paper)

There may be something in this world cooler than flying on your own wings, but I can't imagine what it is.

Rage is addictive, you know. I guess it's sorta like a drug. Anger and hatred get you high. They get you high, but like any addiction, they hollow you out and tear you down and eat you alive. I guess I knew all that. But all I could think of was that they were not getting my father. So I ran the scenes of violence over and over in my head. I rode that rush of fury till at last it burned itself out and left me feeling empty and beaten.

See, this is why guys and girls should not be in combat together. Because it's much harder for a guy to be a coward when some girl is watching. Especially when she's all gung ho. If it had just been Jake and Tobias, I'd have been weeping and groveling on the ground. (after a row with Rachel)

Two ospreys, a harrier, a bald eagle, a peregrine, and a red-tailed hawk, all flying together? Not in the natural world.

"Someday we'll think all this is funny," I (Marco) said. "You know, if we happen to live long enough."

Memorable conversations:
About where the mass goes when they morph:
< My mass. When you morph something smaller than yourself, your body mass must go somewhere. So it goes into Zero-space. Zero-space is the space that ships travel through when they are going faster than light. It's not very likely to happen, but sometimes a ship traveling in Z-space will intersect with a temporarily parked mass. >
This got my total, complete attention.
< Wait a minute. Are you telling me that when we get small, all the leftover . . . stuff ... all the extra flesh and guts and bones go bulging into Zero-space like some big balloon of human tissue? >
< Of course. Where did you think all the mass went? >
I shuddered. < I really didn't think about it. > Jake was no more thrilled than I was.
< So right now there's a big bag of Jake floating in Zero-space? And it's possible some spaceship will zoom along and hit it and splatter it all over? >
< No, no, of course not > Ax said.
< Of course no ship would actually hit a floating mass > Ax said, talking to us like we were nitwits. < The ship's shielding systems would disintegrate the mass. That's what troubles me about doing small morphs. It very seldom happens. The odds are millions to one. But it could happen. >

About Marco's Hair:
Ax turned his head toward me, making eye contact with his main eyes.

"Yeah, well, Wolverine has a big advantage over us," Rachel said dryly. "He's not real." Then she snapped her fingers. "That's what that hair of yours reminds me of: a wolverine. I knew it was something."

About the memories of violence:
"You saved our lives, Erek," I said.
"How do you . . . how do you live with the memory?" he asked me.
I knew what he meant. See, win or lose, right or wrong, the memory of violence sits inside your head. It sits there, like some lump you can't quite swallow. It sits there, a black hole that darkens hope, and eats away at everyday happiness like a cancer. It's the shadow you take into your own heart and try to live with.
I shrugged. "I guess I try not to think about it. I try and forget. And after a while, the nightmares don't happen as much."
Erek put a finger to his head. "Android," he said. He made a bitter, ruined smile. "I can't forget. See? I can never forget . . . anything."

The lovely ladies of Morph Club are doing a book-by-book review of this series. So good.

n  n
^ click to listen to episode 11-book 10 :)

From the site:
"Megan & Carey read Animorphs book 10! Join us for: yet more bug morphs, Marco's haircut, sad teens, androids, the saddest teen android, the raddest android party, a very confusing security system, and the secret origins of dogs."

KAA could have destroyed her own serie with such a storyline. Introducing powerfull androids into that war when the whole theme is about how animorphs are basically guerilleros and can't win the war but only slow things down (if they are lucky) until the cavalery arrives could have messed everything up. But she uses that plot to talk about pacifism and about "winning" with violence can also mean losing part of yourself. I love it when she talks ethics and psychology, she really is good at it.

And the whole story around the dogs... I mean. I'm biased, I'm a dog lover, but still, that was very cute and heart warming (which is not really a thing in that series).

Man, these books do raise some really hard moral and ethical questions.

Wow, there was some pretty great stuff in this book. I loved the Chee and their history, and even the thing with the dogs, cheesy as it was, and the whole contrasting theme of violence and what it does to the people who commit it was really well done. And, well. For me with my fear of spiders the morph-typical body horror just reached entirely new dimensions with Marco and Ax's spider morph. The pacing (I keep going on about books' pacing somehow...) was really solid this time around too, which was a nice change, even though I keep wishing there'd been a few more pages to flesh some things out just a little bit more.

My main problems with the book all appeared towards the end:
- I get that they don't have much time but they go on this entire ridiculously convoluted stealth mission without ever thinking about how they're supposed to carry the crystal out? Oh please. The only reason they did that was because the plot demanded it.
- The bat morph required for said ridiculous stealth mission was woefully underused. The usual "animal instinct temporarily taking over in a new morph" bit was missing too, simply because the plot required them to have full control of the morph immediately. And I kind of wish they'd kept it to one new morph per book.
- They gave the crystal to their dog who then loses it at the beach? Oh come on. Another case of the Reset Button screwing with things: yet again they have an extremely powerful bargaining tool (or whatever else they could do with it) in their hands and give it up because the plot says so, no matter how little sense it makes. (And if it weren't for the Reset button, you could bet that a Controller would find it washed ashore four metres away or something...)

But despite that, I enjoyed the book a lot, and that one conversation between Marco and his dad and the whole last scene with Erek were prime tearjerker material.

Mixed feelings! On one hand, Marco is my least favorite character, and most “teen written by an older person trying to sound like a teen character. Also, it’s bugged me low key the whole series, but why haven’t all of them acquired every animal they’ve come across? It’s not like there’s a limit. Then you would have enough spider thread to reach the bottom of the pipe, GUYS. (Or if both Jake & ax had used one thread and saved the others’, I guess.) poor planning all around.

HOWEVER! Nonviolent but incredibly powerful dog android aliens constructed by an alien race before their extinction... who later got their “essence” or whatever put into dogs? Sold. I definite remember this one from when I read it as a kid.

This one really stayed with me over the years. I think they turned into spiders and were almost eaten by a seagull. Things were always intense anytime they were insects or whatever.

This is the first time, I believe, that one of the Animorphs dies in a book and it's a major moment. The fact that it's Marco, the one most traumatized by death due to his previous belief that his mother drowned, made this book so powerful. He's really risking it all for the sake of the Earth almost at the cost of his life. A new moral question is introduced as well through the form of the Chee. Erek rewriting his programming and brutally murdering dozens of people is a shocking moment in a supposed children's book. The bloodshed, though not seen, is so vividly described it actually shook me. This is one of the best installations in the series.

This was fun! I mean none of the animorphs could ever say that but getting them into a heist, the new alien species — all just a delightful romp.

You know except for the battle at the end. There is something so visceral about Marco and what happens to him. Also the idea of almost dying and morphing and being fine… the closeness of death but the promise of escape is just… there’s a horror novel in there alone.

This wasn't the strongest of the Animorphs series. Marco should be developing more, but he was too sarcastic and goofy here. There was also an interesting aspect with the androids that wasn't developed as much as I would have liked. Perhaps it will pop up later in the series.

07/02/2023
Please note: This review may not be reproduced or quoted, in whole or in part, without explicit consent from the author and myself.

All of my thoughts are my own~

So here I am finally reviewing book #10 (audio-book format) of Animorphs and I have just got to say- these books are super intense. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy them, but woweeeee.

4.5 stars

Book #10, The Android, follows the Animorph kids and Ax the young Andalite as they continue to try thwarting the bad guys, the Yeerks. I felt as if this one did not follow the same pattern as some of the books before where we got to learn about the animals the kids morphed, but instead I felt as if the book focused more on the moral, and ethical dilemmas of the space war/trying to save humanity/defeat the baddies. I did enjoy meeting Erek and the other dog androids (sorry already forgot what they are called), but I felt their lore was so deeply important, especially for Cassie to learn. It felt as if the kids were given such a HUGE eye opener at just how devastating and how much of an impact (ahem PTSD actually) taking lives, fighting, and making giant choices can have on a person's mind.

As per my small review said, I was extremely stressed out the last 15 minutes trying to gauge how the kids were going to pull off their ridiculous and hair brained scheme without one or all of them dying only for the climax to sorta fall flat in HOW it explained (like trust me, it just worked out- it is a book for kids but common, I want a tad bit more), but I did deeply appreciate that, once again, the lasting emotional and mental damage of war was kinda thrust directly at the readers. It was correctly packaged for the target audience (children/young teens), but I felt it was a good way to pretty much express this very nuanced topic to any audience really.

It is only book #10 and yet the mental and emotional decline of each of them is extremely apparent in this book and in everyone of their POVs I feel like it gets gradually in your face that these are just kids and these kids are literally child soldiers fighting an insanely hardcore war and they still have to get their homework done in time. My only bone to pick as a parent myself is how the hell did NONE of their parents notice that their children were going through any of this stuff?? I get its the 90's but man.....oooof. Big call out to the generations before us I guess

- - - -

Short Review: Still motoring through the Animorphs (audio) books. Bigger and more cohesive review to come but i hate the whole giant climax, everything might go to sh*t, anxiety mess at the last 15 minutes this one had.

This book felt more like a character growth/emotional growth book than usual and it was definitely needed. These kids need therapy ASAP

When I started reading this series, I had heard that it was very anti-war and while I've seen this in spurts here and there throughout the last few books, THE ANDROID is where I have truly seen the full extent of it (so far).

Applegate tackles this topic so powerfully in this--especially the idea that just because you can doesn't always mean that you should. The guilt and ghosts of war will follow you and change you for the rest of your life, no matter your intentions and the outcome. ANIMORPHS was truly ahead of its time.

I liked THE ANDROID, too, because it introduced us to something a little different from the at-times repetitive topics and fights that the kids face. I liked that they got to meet more beings fighting (in their own way) for survival in a universe fraught with dangers.

Onto the next one!

Happy reading!