![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Animorphs #37: The Weakness by K.A. Applegate (Elise Smith)
Traditional or self-published: Traditional
Rating: Okay (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)
I'm not sure if it's thanks to the new ghost writer or if it's because of how far into the series we are, but this book did a good thing: Whenever the Animorphs need a new morph, the local animal rescue place just happens to have that animal. Usually there's a whole big thing about them breaking in to acquire the DNA, but this time it was covered in one sentence. Something like: "We needed cheetah morphs, the zoo just happened to have a new pair, so we flew in and acquired it."
While the plot of this one was kind of pushing believability a tad (they stole a jet plane and successfully flew it...), it was the character stuff that was good and interesting. Rachael (the boldest of the group) seems to be nearly insane by this point. Jake (the usual leader) was away with his family, so she took over as leader. With her too-wild, never planned out missions, things went bad fast. Multiple characters nearly died, one character had a limb burned off, another had "a hole the size of a fist" wound going through her... It's really something how the really bad things are just casually mentioned -- you could have easily missed one character had his leg blown off. (All these wounds are easily fixed, they can just demorph and they become whole again, but they still feel all the pain and trauma of it happening.)
It was really pretty scary to see her mental state. But it was just as good reading to see the conversation she and Jake had when he returned, about what it takes to be a leader in a time of war.
Traditional or self-published: Traditional
Rating: Okay (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)
I'm not sure if it's thanks to the new ghost writer or if it's because of how far into the series we are, but this book did a good thing: Whenever the Animorphs need a new morph, the local animal rescue place just happens to have that animal. Usually there's a whole big thing about them breaking in to acquire the DNA, but this time it was covered in one sentence. Something like: "We needed cheetah morphs, the zoo just happened to have a new pair, so we flew in and acquired it."
While the plot of this one was kind of pushing believability a tad (they stole a jet plane and successfully flew it...), it was the character stuff that was good and interesting. Rachael (the boldest of the group) seems to be nearly insane by this point. Jake (the usual leader) was away with his family, so she took over as leader. With her too-wild, never planned out missions, things went bad fast. Multiple characters nearly died, one character had a limb burned off, another had "a hole the size of a fist" wound going through her... It's really something how the really bad things are just casually mentioned -- you could have easily missed one character had his leg blown off. (All these wounds are easily fixed, they can just demorph and they become whole again, but they still feel all the pain and trauma of it happening.)
It was really pretty scary to see her mental state. But it was just as good reading to see the conversation she and Jake had when he returned, about what it takes to be a leader in a time of war.
