![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thistlechaser
The Hidden (Animorphs #39) by K.A. Applegate.
Quick synopsis: The Yeerks somehow find and repair a Helmacron ship. As Helmacrons are about a sixteenth of an inch tall, finding one of their crashed ships is quite a feat... At the same time, in contrast to all the lore in the series so far, a buffalo just happens to gain the ability to morph and then just happens to acquire Cassie. And then an ant does too...
Brief opinion: I really, really, really did not like this one. The logic made no sense (the buffalo and ant gaining ability to morph), and in the entire series thus far you need to touch an animal and concentrate on the DNA to acquire it. Plus, from the height a bird flies, Cassie unmorphs and remorphs into a whale to hit a helicopter... Morphing takes minutes to do.
How does this opinion compare to my original review in 2019: In 2019 I had said "The most I can say about this one is that it wasn't the worst book of the series. I guess it wasn't even bad?". This is one of those rare times when I completely disagree with past-me. I hated this book. Really really hated it.
Plot: For completely unbelievable reasons, the Yeerks end up with a damaged Helmacron ship. And somehow they repair the tiny thing. The Helmacron ship has some kind of tech to detect "morphing energy" (I can't remember if that was a thing in the Helmacron book or if it was made up for this one). So now the Yeerks can find the Animorphs (and the cube that gives the morphing power).
So the Animorphs race
Just by complete chance a cape buffalo is being transported in a truck. Cassie, with the morphing cube, hides in that truck. She sets the cube down on the floor, and when a Yeerk opens the truck's loading door and the buffalo rushes out, it just happens to touch the cube. And then it brushes by Cassie and just happens to acquire her.
Later in the story, for no reason at all, Cassie sets the cube down on the ground. An ant just happens to crawl across it and gains the ability to morph. Then that same ant just happens to crawl up Cassie's shoe, across her sock, and onto her leg. Thus, in contrast to all the lore in the 40+ books so far, acquires her.
The kids argue and angst about killing the buffalo (it has human DNA now, so is it okay to kill it? is it a person now?). Cassie doesn't give even a single thought to killing the ant with human DNA though.
In the end, the plan to destroy the Helmacron ship is for Cassie in bird morph to fly above the helicopter carrying it, morph into a whale, and so fall on it, causing it to crash. This is the plan, even with all the kids knowing it takes multiple minutes to morph...
Editing: More errors than previous books, but no idea how many are scanning issues vs actual editing issues.
What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: There wasn't a single thing I liked about this book. The idea of a buffalo being able to take human shape (though still having the mind of a buffalo) could have been really interesting, but even that wasn't handled well.
Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️ - Hated
-----
Starstuff: Ten Science Fiction Stories to Celebrate New Possibilities by various.
Quick synopsis: From the official summary: "A collection of hard science fiction for curious middle-graders and an antidote to despair in the face of dystopian uncertainty."
Brief opinion: As with all anthologies, some stories worked for me, most didn't.
Plot: The ten stories:
To-do List for the Apocalypse by Jenn Reese. An interesting story to start with, because it was pretty heavy and sad until the very end. A giant asteroid is headed straight for Earth. At the same time, River's parents are getting divorced, so River and her mother are driving from New Jersey to their new home in California, leaving all her friends and her whole life behind. At the very end of the story there was a twist as to what the asteroid really is. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ½ - Liked a lot
Calm Down People! It's Just Space Bees by Carlos Hernandez. A young girl becomes the first minor to go into space. On one hand, I really liked this story. Orquidea Bandana is a really smart kid and it shows, yet her interactions with the adults were perfectly realistic and believable. On the other, even though this was set far in the future, she uses current (2025) internet slang. I guess that would make the story more accessible to young readers, but it kept marring the believability for me. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️- Loved, even with the slang issue
The Whistleblowers by Kekla Magoon. I DNFed this one. A drug company is lying to the public for profit. The message seemed heavy handed, the two main characters weren't distinctive enough to keep straight who was who, and the story being told in a non-linear way didn't help at all. ⭐️⭐️ - Disliked
Aesop's Elevator by William Alexander. I thought I was going to love this one, but it ended up being heavy handed. A barely disguised Elon Musk races his environment-killing, ego-fueled rockets against an environmentally friendly space elevator. The footnotes with science facts were so distracting as well. ⭐️ ½ - Really, really disliked. No one needs more Musk in their life.
Zabrina Meets the Retro Club by Maddi Gonzalez. This story is a graphic novel, and it was just too small on my Kindle screen to read. Skipped it, no star rating.
The Most Epic Nap in the Universe by A. R. Capetta. Even though this is a book for MG readers, this is the first story that felt like it was written for child readers. It was about a girl trying to keep her best friend, when the reality of space travel made it seem impossible. Plus I hate second-person POV. ⭐️⭐️ - Disliked
A Proposal to the Animal Congress by Eliot Schrefer. Based on the title alone, I thought I would love this one, but it was nothing like what I expected. Set in the future, AI lawyers(?) represent animal species. The whole story was two AIs texting to each other. DNF. ⭐️ ½ - Disliked a lot
Of What We Never Were by David Robertson. This one was another weird one to be included in an anthology of positive stories. A girl has a best friend, Adam, who is AI (or seems to be). She has no connection with the real people around her because she spends time only with Adam and talks only with him. Then the company who created Adam turns him off... Only the last paragraph was positive (and even then only somewhat). Another heavy-handed story that I didn't enjoy much. ⭐️⭐️ - Disliked
Red, Right, Returning by Fran Wilde. In this one a young girl "borrows" some software her father is working on, and somehow it pulls in copies of her from other worlds. I usually like multiverse stories, but this one just did not work for me at all. DNFed it towards the end. ⭐️⭐️ - Disliked
The Traveler by Wade Roush. What is it with these authors and Musk? Can no one envision a future of humans in space without him? *huff* Anyway, this lackluster story was about a girl who sent a time capsule into space. At least it was more positive than a number of other stories in this book. Didn't really work for me though. ⭐️⭐️ ½ - Meh
Editing: Very good.
What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: I wish anthologies worked better for me. There are always too many stories I don't like compared to ones I do. I had planned not to get any new ones, so I'm not sure why I picked this one up. Anyway. This one worked for me no better than they ever do. I felt like I read a whole book that I didn't enjoy.
Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: Average of the nine stories (skipping the graphic novel one): ⭐️⭐️ ½ - Disliked. Feels about right, though I'd drop that half star.
-----
DNF #24: The Ravenous Sky by Kurt Kirchmeier. After loving the first book so much, it pains me to DNF this one, but I just wasn't enjoying it. I didn't believe that the teenage characters so quickly figured out the (new) problem with the world. And, unlike the first book, the voices of the two characters weren't distinctive at all -- I kept losing track of which character's chapter I was reading.
DNF #25: Orconomics by J. Zachary Pike. Clearly my sense of humor doesn't match a lot of other people's. Some reviewers called this the funniest book ever, the funniest piece of media ever. It didn't even mildly amuse me. If anything, the jokes tended to annoy me.
I like my fantasy books to be fantasy books, not a "satire that attacks the tenets of capitalism". DNFed about 20% in, but I really should have dropped it right away. Just not the book for me.
