The Illusion / The Prophecy / The Proposal / The Mutation (Animorphs #33-36) + Visser (#35.5)[September 1, 2024]

[Yanique, Thread Master]

This is a Buddy Read for Animorphs Boxset: The Illusion / The Prophecy / The Proposal / The Mutation by K.A. Applegate starting on September 1, 2024.


Happy Reading

[Yanique, Thread Master]

comment #2

[Nirkatze]

It's working!

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

comment 4

[Nirkatze]

LOL

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

Supplemental Imagery Template

Book 33 - The Illusion:



Book 34 - The Prophecy:



Book 35 - The Proposal:



Chronicles #3 - Visser:



Book 36 - The Mutation:



Morph Vids:

Jake: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uNDL...
Rachel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECPeu...
Cassie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFn7h...
Marco: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlEX7...
Ax: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTcvR...
Tobias: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6caj...

[Silvana]

I did not know there's an animorphs BR. might start with this one coz I just finished book no. 32

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

We’ve been reading a book a week all year… one thread a month for 4 books, chronicles and megamorphs as extras in chronological order…

[Choko]

Silvana! Welcome!!! The more the merrier!!!

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

Read #33, The Illusion, with Tobias, at work yesterday...

This was a rough one, but a solid book... Tobias seems to get alot of extra body horror and identity issues, as the hawk boy of the group...

As I noted to Choko in another thread, Dune mythos is seeping into all my vibes these days, as Dune is such an influence on SF/Fantasy... I felt alot of the Bene Gesserit mantras/tests in Tobias' ordeal here...

[Silvana]

Choko wrote: "Silvana! Welcome!!! The more the merrier!!!"

thank you! Will start the audio for book 33 today.

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

Started Cassie's book for the month... #34... this is a bit of a sequel to Hork-Bajir Chronicles, #22.5... features an Arn & a memory copy of Aldrea, the Andalite MC of the Chronicles...

Typical one-off Animorphs plot, but with some interesting worldbuilding at least?... only 30% in so far...

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

(view spoiler)[Having Aldrea sharing Cassie's body sounds alot like having a Yeerk in her brain... without some of the stigma?... still creates some interesting comparisons... (hide spoiler)]

[Choko]

Finished The Illusion #33 ... I see what you mean with the Bene Gesserit mantras:))) But yeah, of all the characters and their relationships, I feel worse for Tobias and Rachel. Tobias is very split between two worlds, while Rachel is on the verge of complete break and possibly turning evil at any moment... She is handling things the worst, and her need for normalcy is putting emotional pressure on Tobias too ..

The torture was rough. I am surprised the debt and detail they went to in a children's book! Wow!

Also, I kind of felt bad for the girl who had volunteered to be infested... She was vain and immature, and I think some compassion from her classmates would have gone a long way for her to take a different path...

[Choko]

Finished The Proposal #34 ... (view spoiler)[ I don't trust the Arn. I am not sure why exactly, but I just don't.... Now, with our free Hork-Bajir giving them a DNA sample to create more of them, I am afraid they will be misused once again....

I felt sorry for Aldrea. Her life was really tragic and I wasn't sure if she would give up freely living in Cassie's head. You are right, that felt too close to being a Yeerk controller. (hide spoiler)]

That was cool!

[Choko]

Ok, my previous post was for The Prophecy #34 ... I just now finished The Proposal #24 ....

Marko! (view spoiler)[ Poor dude! I was wrong, he has it pretty rough too ... Really, I like that all the kids are dealing with some serious issues.

I guess Marko's dad decided to get his groove back and Marko isn't doing well with it, particularly while dealing with grief and guilt for almost killing his mom in his last book...

The cockatoo and poodle scenes were funny, as well as Ax "cleaning" the plates. But that last sentence of the book was very cliffhangery!!!! I will jump straight into Visser tomorrow! I need to know what happens! (hide spoiler)]

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

You book numbers are all over the place...

#33 The Illusion
#34 The Prophecy
#35 The Proposal
#35.5 VISSER
#36 The Mutation

[Choko]

I am sorry... I messed those up, but you know what I am talking about, right:)))

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

Yea I got it… it was just even the corrections were off on numbers so I tried to clear everything up in one go

[Choko]

Hahaha! Thank you!

I am 12 Ch. into Visser #35.5 ... It's the Visser 1 trial for treason with Visser 3 being an accuser... It gets intense!

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

I bet... we're getting close to endgame here... book 36/54 is 66.6% through the series... things really ramp up in the 40s

[Choko]

Finished Visser #35.5 ... This was good! I loved being in Visser 1's head. That was a heck of a story!

[Choko]

We are really getting closer to the end! It is kind of amazing! Do you remember if there is a satisfying ending?

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

The ending is highly controversial...

I think the Yeerk War is resolved, but other stuff happens... the finale spans 3 years and has all 6 POVs like a Megamorph book...

[Choko]

I am excited to get to it!:)

[Nirkatze]

So I swear I read #33 The Illusion a week ago, but I am having the hardest time remembering what it was about... Choko's comments helped a little... was it a Tobias book? I'm getting it mixed up with the Rachel Separation book... (view spoiler)[Was this the one where there was talk about Prom? And then... they were trying to prove that the ray gun thing wouldn't take away morphing.... Tobias got captured on purpose.... (hide spoiler)]

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

Nirkatze wrote: "So I swear I read #33 The Illusion a week ago, but I am having the hardest time remembering what it was about... Choko's comments helped a little... was it a Tobias book? I'm getting it mixed up wi..."

It was the resolution of the demorphing ray plot... (view spoiler)[Tobias got Ax as a morph and was captured on purpose, to make the Yeerks think the ray didn't work... but they tortured him a bunch to make him demorph so they could make him a Controller, and he experienced a bunch of his worst memories and a possible genetic memory from Elfangor (hide spoiler)]

[Nirkatze]

Oooh, I remember that little nugget now, thank you!

[Nirkatze]

I read Visser last week and it was a lot more fun than I thought it would be--definitely agreeing with Choko! I really love how Applegate has managed to make all the forces multi-dimensional... it'd be so easy in "children's books" to make straight-up evils... but the Yeerks have good sides as well as the bad... and a very compelling reason to fight... (view spoiler)[I was surprised that humans are almost the first fully useful race the Yeerks have found though--category 5, was it? The categories they separated species into were very eye-opening. And I was amazed at the story of Visser 1--her partnership with her host and having twins!! but then at the end, thinking that if her remaining child didn't love her, she could just make her do what she wanted... maybe even inhabiting her own child as a parasite... Instead of seeing that as a sign of evil though, I am starting to think of Yeerks as a species of selfish children who just haven't grown up to the point where they recognize the fact that other people have feelings and can hurt from their actions... even though they are intimately connected with that thought as they inhabit others minds, they've never developed a sense of empathy over it... perhaps as a survival instinct... (hide spoiler)]

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

Category 5: (view spoiler)[from the wiki, humans AREN'T the first Category 5 species they've found... just the only current Category 5 species... but all (the only?) other cat 5 species have made themselves nonviable hosts, becoming category 1-2, and either escaping or being exterminated in retribution...

Basically, yet another reason the Yeerks are infiltrating Earth quietly... I think it's a technological/sociological window, where hosts are super useful, and not smart enough to defend themselves permanently.... (hide spoiler)]

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

Reading Marco's book today, and OOF... always with the mom problems, lol... (view spoiler)[now his dad is dating a schoolteacher, and of course mom still might be alive after the plot of book 30... dilemma for Marco...

Plus whatever plot this is with the TV host promoting The Sharing... (hide spoiler)]

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

(view spoiler)[Another book where the author/characters are lucky this came out in the 90s, before everyone just has home security cameras everywhere... but you'd think alien tech could fill that niche and make everything 100% harder, too...

Also, with Marco screwing up his morphs and stuff, he's lucky he doesn't accidentally thought-scream into the Yeerk Controller's head and give away his identity, too... (hide spoiler)]

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

Ax's Young and Restless comment got a snort out of me...

[Choko]

The Young and The Restless comments were the best!!!

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

Read Visser today... the cliffhanger was a big hook for what was mostly a cameo... I really liked getting perspective in this one...

(view spoiler)[the surprises regarding Visser One's other human children, and the cognitive dissonance involved in loving them and remaining mostly true to Yeerk values otherwise...

So many gut punches near the end for Marco & his mom... and a bit of foreshadowing that things are ramping towards a finale... and that last page... (hide spoiler)]

[Choko]

I think this was probably the best book so far:)

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

Read book 36, The Mutation, today, and I gotta say... this is one of the first I actively was a bit annoyed by...

Mostly, because with a bit of googling, I know this plot is never revisited in the future, despite being another example of a new "alien" threat that is introduced for one book and then discarded/ignored forever... despite being a clear and present threat to humanity left unresolved... (view spoiler)[these Atlanteans/Nartec are just down in the ocean salvaging ships for tech and planning to conquer the world...

OK, they didn't get the SeaBlade... but the whole reason the SeaBlade was built was to get the Pemalite ship, and if the Nartec got that, it would be 10x worse, right?... (hide spoiler)]

Anyway, moving on, 4 more books and the next Megamorphs book to look forward to, in October...

[Choko]

#36 was annoying to me too... Just didn't fit with the rest of the stories... Although, the human mutation, which by the way, is evolutionary impossible to achieve in that short of time, was interesting... I felt sorry for all those Hork-Bajir though...

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

The plot was like "radioactive rocks" and moved on, lol...

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

The Spiderman Defense (radioactive spider bite)...

[Choko]

Yeah:) When in doubt, the radioactive bite solves all of them pesky evolution problems:)))

[Nirkatze]

Oh yikes, I never came and commented on the last few books here--like y'all I really loved #35.5 Visser--and totally read it before the Marco book that lead into it, whoops! (view spoiler)[I really liked the stepmom plot... and it being a teacher from his school, yikes!! When I was a kid, my parents dating was soooo uncomfortable... I think Marco took it a lot better than I did. I really think these books shine the best when they find ways to give serious thought to real childhood dilemmas and not in a condescending way. (hide spoiler)]

#36 The Illusion felt like another throwaway book for me... (view spoiler)[though I did find the inclusion of Atlanteans interesting, they felt throwaway... and Iain just confirmed it. (hide spoiler)]