Animorphs

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Animorphs.

Cool friends fighting aliens...more accurately, the pariah of a fascist civilization, minutes before being eaten alive in front of said "ccol friends" persuades and then bioengineers human child soldiers to facilitate an end to an ill-conceived and failing war now reduced to unilaterally exterminating a parasitic, physically disabled species, itself undergoing a violent civil rights movement on their own planet based on their self-recognized flaws, struggling to realize its place in a universe where godlike beings exist and decide not to offer remedy(rules of the god game) and spectate while the parasites overwhelm all vulnerable species in the known universe.

The child soldiers agree to resist the parasites, but at least a minority of them believe genocide is the wrong answer. After being physically and emotionally tortured, shot, repeatedly disemboweled and having their limbs hacked or bitten off by hosts of the parasitic species, however, all of the child soldiers begin taking violent, morally devastating actions that end their lives as they know them.

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Varyk

Book 1 - The Invasion (self.animorphs)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Varyk to c/animorphs

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I plan to ask a similar question for each book, namely was there a particular scene in this book that made you think or hit you really hard?

With book 1, however, I would argue that which scene stands out is fairly straightforward:

Title

Elfangor gets eaten after we, the readers have been hanging out with the preteen gang while they're goofing around for a few pages, and with his death it becomes instantly clear that this will not be a fun romp. Whatever happens from the point of Elfangor being devoured alive forward must reckon with this first horrific scene.

You?

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[–] Varyk 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Oh, The final scene really gets to me too, where

spoiler

Tobias reveals that he's trapped as a hawk. I literally couldn't believe it. I was like well, there's going to be something to save him, or he's going to try really hard and change back to a human and retain his morphing power, but there's what two dozen books before he is not trapped as a hawk?

It was really hard to feel that loss so immediately, and that was also an intentional disclaimer that everyone is not going to be okay in this story, these main characters aren't as protected as you think they are or as many YA book series would make them out to be.

[–] SuzyQ 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I just reread the first book and the line Jake writes "only in my memories" made me tear up.

[–] Varyk 1 points 1 year ago

Ooh yeah that is a devastating line.