Book #16 of 2022: Visser by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs Chronicles #3) The Chronicles have been a consistently strong corner of the Animorphs franchise — perhaps surprisingly so, given how little they feature of our familiar teenage animal-morphing freedom fighters. In this third volume, for example, the spotlight lands on Visser One, the Yeerk commander …
Tag Archives: reread
Book Review: The Runes of the Earth by Stephen R. Donaldson
Book #12 of 2022: The Runes of the Earth by Stephen R. Donaldson (The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant #1) While I think the first trilogy of this fantasy saga remains its most thematically brilliant segment, and the second neatly integrates a new co-protagonist for a different perspective and set of psychological issues to work …
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Book Review: The Proposal by K. A. Applegate
Book #10 of 2022: The Proposal by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs #35) This is ghostwriter Jeffrey Zeuhlke’s second and final contribution to the Animorphs series, and I must say, I like it a lot less than his previous outing, #25 The Extreme. The best part is the focus on a crisis in narrator Marco’s mental …
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Book Review: Reave the Just and Other Tales by Stephen R. Donaldson
Book #375 of 2021: Reave the Just and Other Tales by Stephen R. Donaldson This reread is the final book I’ll finish in 2021, and since that’s a bit of an occasion and author Stephen R. Donaldson is one of my favorites, I decided to review each of the stories in the collection individually. As …
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Book Review: The Illusion by K. A. Applegate
Book #373 of 2021: The Illusion by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs #33) Remember that Scholastic Book Fair series from the 90s with all the wacky covers of kids turning into animals? Haha, anyway, this is the volume where one of those middle-schoolers gets captured and violently tortured in excruciating detail for a good portion of …
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Book Review: The Conspiracy by K. A. Applegate
Book #361 of 2021: The Conspiracy by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs #31) Kudos to Laura Battyanyi-Wiess, our first repeat ghostwriter: this Animorphs novel is possibly Jake’s strongest outing as narrator yet, and I love that it springs from such a simple premise. The hero’s great-grandfather has died, and his dad is insisting the family take …
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Book Review: The Reunion by K. A. Applegate
Book #355 of 2021: The Reunion by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs #30) I’m not a fan of the coincidence-heavy setup to this Animorphs volume — Marco has a nightmare involving his mom, the Controller to the Yeerk Visser One, which leads him to skip school and randomly go to the city’s business district, where she …
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Book Review: The First Journey by K. A. Applegate
Book #349 of 2021: The First Journey by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs Alternamorphs #1) I went into my adult reread of this choose-your-own-adventure Animorphs title with pretty low expectations, and yet it somehow still managed to disappoint. Who exactly is the audience here? The tone is more juvenile than the main novels, with lots of …
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Book Review: Gods of Riverworld by Philip José Farmer
Book #345 of 2021: Gods of Riverworld by Philip José Farmer (Riverworld #5) This somewhat-vestigial sequel to the core Riverworld plot is actually an improvement over the past couple titles, although it’s still not great. Having finally reached the grand tower at the head of the river in the previous story, the remaining protagonists spend …
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Book Review: Elfangor’s Secret by K. A. Applegate
Book #343 of 2021: Elfangor’s Secret by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs Megamorphs #3) Is there any Animorphs opening more unsettling than this one, with its in-media-res presentation of an alternate universe where our heroes are still fighting the same covert alien invasion, but as citizens of a racist, slave-holding empire? Rachel is nowhere to be …
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The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 