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Book Review: Animorphs Book 1: The Invasion
2 years ago
TLDR version: Fun book but none of these characters are getting away from this without some serious therapy needs.
So Animorphs is one of those books that I was the perfect age to read as a kid. Only problem is my reading skills as a child weren’t the best and I never made it past the early couple of books. Now that these books seem to be trending (due to someone revealing all the traumatic stuff that goes down) it seemed like the perfect time to read them. Now that I’m an adult who has much better reading skills, I finished the first book in two days while reading between customers at my day job. So I think it’s safe to say I won’t be having the same issues.
So for those who don’t know, Animorphs is a book about five middle/junior high school students who are at the mall on a Friday night and on their way home, decide to cut through an abandoned construction site. While there, they suddenly are visited by an extraterrestrial creature in a spaceship. The alien is called an andelight, looks like a blue centaur with a scorpion tail. Plenty of drawings online if you want to know what it looks like. Anyway, said creature tells them that humanity is being invaded by body snatching slugs called Yuurks and that he tried to defend the planet, failed and is dying.
He then proceeds to use a blue cube to give them all the power to absorb the DNA of any animal they touch and then morph into said animal. However if they do not morph back to their original form in under 2 hours, the morph remains permanent. Shortly after the alien gives them the power, they have to hide because the bad guy spaceships come and another andelite, this one under the control of a Yuurk and is named Visser Three, steps out of the bad guy spaceship, morphs into a giant alien monster and rips the friendly andelight apart. In front of these kids. Did I mention the andelight is psychic and the children hear his dying screams in their heads?
This is why the Animorph books are infamous. You come for the weird cover of the book of the boy slowly morphing into a lizard and stay for the traumatized child soldiers, body horror and war crimes.
Anyway, the five kids are as follows. Jake, the main narrator for this book and the guy that for whatever reason, everyone looks towards as a de facto leader. Marco, Jake’s best friend and the guy who seems to be there to tell everyone what a terrible idea it is that they are thinking about fighting an alien race. Rachel, Jake’s cousin. She’s not really given much description in this book beyond being really self confident and also tends to break out into cursing when she’s pissed. Since this is a children’s book, the cursing is not actually said on page but is implied. Cassie, the flower child whose mom and dad are veterinarians and has way more access to deadly animals then any child should. And lastly Tobias, the awkward bullied kid who hangs out because Jake saved him from bullies once and has a terrible home life. CHILDREN'S BOOK EVERYBODY!
Anyway, so the kids have to make a daring escape after being chased by Hork-Bjars (race of scary looking aliens that are apparently peacful and are just enslaved by the Yuurks) and Taxxon (weird centipede monsters that like to eat anything and are allied witht the Yuurks of their own free will). They escape and the next day start talking about what to do. Jake is on the fence. Marucs is against it because he’s afraid if he dies, his father will have no will to live. Long story, mom died two years ago and now Marcu’s dad is in a deep depression and has trouble holding down work. Tobias is all for it because of awesome morphing powers that let him get away from his own depressing existence and he had some sort of weird connection with the andelight before it died. The girls are leaning towards yes. But then Jake finds out his brother is actually a controller, that’s the name given to people who are being controlled by Yeerks, and that tips Jake into wanting to fight.
The group goes to this weird cult thing that is secretly a Yuurk recruitment/abduction trap that the Yuurks run disguised as a youth group and Jake uses his morph powers to turn into the family dog and sneak up on the secret meeting. Finds out the Vice Principle is a controller Then he hears that his brother suspects him of being at the crash site and that they may need to kill him. So that’s more trauma.
Then Jake morphs into a lizard to eavesdrop on his vice principal and discovers the site of the Yeerk Pool. Yeerks have to leave their host body once every three days to recharge in these pools or they will die.
Then they go to the zoo and get some better morphs to fight. Then Cassie gets kidnapped and is about to be infected by a Yeerk but then the kids come to save the day with their super awesome battle morphs. Visser Three shows up and they fight. Jake temporarily frees his brother but he gets recaptured and then they escape. But at the last scene in the book, Tobias shows up in his hawk form and reveals he spent more than two hours as a hawk and is now stuck.
Overall....the book is entertaining. I can see why they are fondly remembered. But my god, the amount of torture these kids are put through just in book one is immense. I’ve read spoilers for the later books so I know it's only going to get worse. There are a few things that don’t make sense. During the scene where they are running away after gaining morphing powers, Jake is running through the half finished building and wakes up a homeless man. But how did the homeless man not wake up from the destruction of a spaceship literally right next to his sleeping spot. Also why is everyone so hung up on Jake being the leader. I can understand why Tobias would, guy kind of hero worships Jake. But Marcus is constantly questioning him the entire book. And Rachel and Cassie just seem to decide to make Jake the decision maker.
Beyond those small gripes though, it was fun. Watching children fight for their lives is always a delight. That was a joke. Protect the children. I’ll continue reading for now and let you know what I think of Book 2.
So Animorphs is one of those books that I was the perfect age to read as a kid. Only problem is my reading skills as a child weren’t the best and I never made it past the early couple of books. Now that these books seem to be trending (due to someone revealing all the traumatic stuff that goes down) it seemed like the perfect time to read them. Now that I’m an adult who has much better reading skills, I finished the first book in two days while reading between customers at my day job. So I think it’s safe to say I won’t be having the same issues.
So for those who don’t know, Animorphs is a book about five middle/junior high school students who are at the mall on a Friday night and on their way home, decide to cut through an abandoned construction site. While there, they suddenly are visited by an extraterrestrial creature in a spaceship. The alien is called an andelight, looks like a blue centaur with a scorpion tail. Plenty of drawings online if you want to know what it looks like. Anyway, said creature tells them that humanity is being invaded by body snatching slugs called Yuurks and that he tried to defend the planet, failed and is dying.
He then proceeds to use a blue cube to give them all the power to absorb the DNA of any animal they touch and then morph into said animal. However if they do not morph back to their original form in under 2 hours, the morph remains permanent. Shortly after the alien gives them the power, they have to hide because the bad guy spaceships come and another andelite, this one under the control of a Yuurk and is named Visser Three, steps out of the bad guy spaceship, morphs into a giant alien monster and rips the friendly andelight apart. In front of these kids. Did I mention the andelight is psychic and the children hear his dying screams in their heads?
This is why the Animorph books are infamous. You come for the weird cover of the book of the boy slowly morphing into a lizard and stay for the traumatized child soldiers, body horror and war crimes.
Anyway, the five kids are as follows. Jake, the main narrator for this book and the guy that for whatever reason, everyone looks towards as a de facto leader. Marco, Jake’s best friend and the guy who seems to be there to tell everyone what a terrible idea it is that they are thinking about fighting an alien race. Rachel, Jake’s cousin. She’s not really given much description in this book beyond being really self confident and also tends to break out into cursing when she’s pissed. Since this is a children’s book, the cursing is not actually said on page but is implied. Cassie, the flower child whose mom and dad are veterinarians and has way more access to deadly animals then any child should. And lastly Tobias, the awkward bullied kid who hangs out because Jake saved him from bullies once and has a terrible home life. CHILDREN'S BOOK EVERYBODY!
Anyway, so the kids have to make a daring escape after being chased by Hork-Bjars (race of scary looking aliens that are apparently peacful and are just enslaved by the Yuurks) and Taxxon (weird centipede monsters that like to eat anything and are allied witht the Yuurks of their own free will). They escape and the next day start talking about what to do. Jake is on the fence. Marucs is against it because he’s afraid if he dies, his father will have no will to live. Long story, mom died two years ago and now Marcu’s dad is in a deep depression and has trouble holding down work. Tobias is all for it because of awesome morphing powers that let him get away from his own depressing existence and he had some sort of weird connection with the andelight before it died. The girls are leaning towards yes. But then Jake finds out his brother is actually a controller, that’s the name given to people who are being controlled by Yeerks, and that tips Jake into wanting to fight.
The group goes to this weird cult thing that is secretly a Yuurk recruitment/abduction trap that the Yuurks run disguised as a youth group and Jake uses his morph powers to turn into the family dog and sneak up on the secret meeting. Finds out the Vice Principle is a controller Then he hears that his brother suspects him of being at the crash site and that they may need to kill him. So that’s more trauma.
Then Jake morphs into a lizard to eavesdrop on his vice principal and discovers the site of the Yeerk Pool. Yeerks have to leave their host body once every three days to recharge in these pools or they will die.
Then they go to the zoo and get some better morphs to fight. Then Cassie gets kidnapped and is about to be infected by a Yeerk but then the kids come to save the day with their super awesome battle morphs. Visser Three shows up and they fight. Jake temporarily frees his brother but he gets recaptured and then they escape. But at the last scene in the book, Tobias shows up in his hawk form and reveals he spent more than two hours as a hawk and is now stuck.
Overall....the book is entertaining. I can see why they are fondly remembered. But my god, the amount of torture these kids are put through just in book one is immense. I’ve read spoilers for the later books so I know it's only going to get worse. There are a few things that don’t make sense. During the scene where they are running away after gaining morphing powers, Jake is running through the half finished building and wakes up a homeless man. But how did the homeless man not wake up from the destruction of a spaceship literally right next to his sleeping spot. Also why is everyone so hung up on Jake being the leader. I can understand why Tobias would, guy kind of hero worships Jake. But Marcus is constantly questioning him the entire book. And Rachel and Cassie just seem to decide to make Jake the decision maker.
Beyond those small gripes though, it was fun. Watching children fight for their lives is always a delight. That was a joke. Protect the children. I’ll continue reading for now and let you know what I think of Book 2.
