A Man With An Agenda

I did not know what to expect when I picked up this series at a flea market back in October. My memories were vague at best and I had only read a dozen or so of the books back when they were first produced.

This series stands apart from the other youth-market cash-grab book series in its scope and risks, but I don't see this ever catching on again except in isolated pockets where millennial parents put it in their children's way. The books physically are not aging well, either. The set I picked up, even the ones that superficially looked clean and uncreased, were visibly the worse for wear after my reading - and I've always been careful about spines.

Is this series worth the investment as an adult reader with many, many more arguably better options out there? If you're a lover of middle grade and ya fiction, particularly dystopian, it probably is. The series is made up of ridiculous moments, absurd lapses in logic, and continuity errors abound, however, Applegate didn't flinch when writing about the trauma of war and in the end, the characters rang true.

'The Beginning' covers the end of the war against the Yeerks and goes several years into the future covering the careers and the paths the surviving Animorphs took. The end...is a little frustrating, but after thinking and thinking and thinking about it, I like it. Wars don't end, and neither now will these characters.

Animorphs

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