Book #118 of 2022: The Diversion by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs #49) I’m surprised that series author K. A. Applegate didn’t claim this volume to write herself, and particularly that it was assigned to ghostwriter Lisa Harkrader, who had previously only penned Cassie’s eminently skippable Australian visit in #44 The Unexpected. Here, the plot is …
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Book #115 of 2022: The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice (The Vampire Chronicles #2) 1976’s Interview with the Vampire is a modern classic of the gothic horror genre, popularizing a new variety of sympathetic bloodsucker with its brooding and homoerotic immortals. Following in 1985, this first sequel isn’t nearly so good, but it still has …
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Book #112 of 2022: The Return by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs #48) At this point in the Animorphs series, the overarching plot of the Yeerk invasion and teenage guerilla resistance war is entering its endgame. The companion books are all finished, and each of the six core protagonists has one more adventure to relate to …
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Book #106 of 2022: The Ellimist Chronicles by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs Chronicles #4) This final Animorphs companion novel is a risky departure even by the standards of the Chronicles sub-series, which has previously left the teenage morphers behind solely to flesh out backstory periods of galactic history whose species and major events are already …
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Book #103 of 2022: Battle Royale by Koushun Takami First published in 1999 (or 2003, for the English translation), this controversial thriller posits a dystopian Japan where school classes of fifteen-year-olds, selected by random lottery, are forced to fight one another to the death each year. The children are kidnapped, locked into metal collars lined …
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Book #100 of 2022: The Resistance by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs #47) Although the Animorphs books are short, they tend to be rich in heavy and complicated thematic material, which is why my reviews discussing them often wind up quite extensive. But there’s honestly not much to say about this one. The plot is half …
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Book #94 of 2022: The Deception by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs #46) We’re in the Animorphs endgame now, as is perhaps best indicated by the numbering convention breaking down. For the first forty-five novels of the main series, the narrators followed a predictable loop, with Jake at the start of each cycle telling stories #1, …
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Book #88 of 2022: The Revelation by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs #45) [Note: Spoiler warning! It was too hard to write a review for this book without going into significant detail about its various surprises.] This series has been spinning its wheels for a while now, putting out volumes that are sometimes better and sometimes …
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Book #82 of 2022: The Unexpected by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs #44) Pretty much the definition of a filler adventure, and another story where the heroes’ only real victory is living through to the end of it, rather than any strategic objective they’ve been aiming to achieve. This particular mission to stop the Yeerks from …
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Book #79 of 2022: Archer’s Goon by Diana Wynne Jones This 1984 sci-fi / fantasy novel, which I read and reread countless times as a child and is apparently one of Neil Gaiman’s favorites as well, opens with an irresistible premise: a hulking enforcer camps out in the thirteen-year-old hero’s kitchen, saying his mysterious employer …
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