The Earth is being invaded, but no one knows about it. When Jake, Rachel, Tobias, Cassie, and Marco stumble upon a downed alien spaceship and its dying pilot, they're given an incredible power -- they can transform into any animal they touch. With it, they become Animorphs, the unlikely champions in a secret war for the planet.
Animorphs
Jake, an average suburban kid, is confronted one night by a creature from space who teaches him how to morph into the forms of other creatures. This fantastic, unpredictable, edge-of-your-seat series can best be described as an "X-Files" for kids--plus a whole lot more! Jake, Rachel, Cassie, Tobias, and Marco are the Animorphs--five kids who can change into any animal they touch. The bottom of each page is animated with "flip-book" images, so as kids flip pages, drawings of each character "morph" into animals.
I found an archive of all the Animorphs books and, for some reason, thought that reading through them for the first time in well over 20 years was a brilliant idea.
There's interesting bits here with how morphing works and stuff, but I definitely wouldn't recommend this nowadays. It's surprisingly brutal for a children's book (as all the good ones are) but it is still a children's book, and the simple language and plot really holds it back from being a really good read.
Wasn't allowed to read these growing up so now doing my own belated book club. Blown away at how good this is right out of the gate. Has a great campy sentai-show setup but pulls no punches with how gruesome this intergalactic war actually is. All of the morph descriptions are straight body horror, and the violence only gets away with being this gory because of Halo rules (it's not blood, it's yellow goo).
Our first POV, Jake, is fully the likeable leader boy archetype, but the character voice is so strong it hardly matters. Particular highlight is dog brain, which is exactly what you'd expect but even more charming. Under the YA nonchalance is a surprisingly affecting tragedy, particularly Jake's distant relationship with his brother (I imagine we'll see even more devastating scenes from the other POVs whose family life seems even more complicated).
Great start to this series. …
Wasn't allowed to read these growing up so now doing my own belated book club. Blown away at how good this is right out of the gate. Has a great campy sentai-show setup but pulls no punches with how gruesome this intergalactic war actually is. All of the morph descriptions are straight body horror, and the violence only gets away with being this gory because of Halo rules (it's not blood, it's yellow goo).
Our first POV, Jake, is fully the likeable leader boy archetype, but the character voice is so strong it hardly matters. Particular highlight is dog brain, which is exactly what you'd expect but even more charming. Under the YA nonchalance is a surprisingly affecting tragedy, particularly Jake's distant relationship with his brother (I imagine we'll see even more devastating scenes from the other POVs whose family life seems even more complicated).
Great start to this series. I am sure it goes off the rails over the next 50 (!!) books, but I'm fully bought in right now.
Okay, this was actually pretty entertaining. Kind of a clunky start to a whole series but I get what they were going for.
Definitely an easy read and well in line with other books of its kind such as Goosebumps.
I'm told the series does get better as it goes on. I guess one thing that I wasn't prepared for, despite the promise of body horror and aliens was just how dark some bits were. Even with only a single sentence or two!
I was gonna post more updates but since these are so short it wasn't really worth it. Let's find out what happens in Book 2, shall we?
Review of 'Invasion (Animorphs #1)' on 'Storygraph'
4 stars
The Invasion sets up the world of the Animorphs and has a good mix of plot and info-dump. It establishes the expectation that they won't have it easy, that they need to keep secrets, and that morphing isn't just a toy. A good series opener!
For those who are currently unaware:
Animorphs is a series about a group of five friends (and later one more friend, we'll get to him) who find out that the Earth is being invaded by parasitic aliens that could be in anyone but not yet everyone. They must use the power to change into any animal they have "acquired" in order to fight the alien invasion, all while being unable to tell the ones they love that they are in a daily struggle that leaves them emotionally wrecked on a regular basis.
This series deals with anxiety, body horror, death, loss, violence, divorce, death of …
The Invasion sets up the world of the Animorphs and has a good mix of plot and info-dump. It establishes the expectation that they won't have it easy, that they need to keep secrets, and that morphing isn't just a toy. A good series opener!
For those who are currently unaware:
Animorphs is a series about a group of five friends (and later one more friend, we'll get to him) who find out that the Earth is being invaded by parasitic aliens that could be in anyone but not yet everyone. They must use the power to change into any animal they have "acquired" in order to fight the alien invasion, all while being unable to tell the ones they love that they are in a daily struggle that leaves them emotionally wrecked on a regular basis.
This series deals with anxiety, body horror, death, loss, violence, divorce, death of parent(s), trying to trust when it's inherently unsafe to do so, being child soldiers, war, ptsd, and probably some other things I've forgotten right now but this re-read will refresh my memory. It's a really good series and was formative for a lot of people who spent at least part of their childhood in the 90's or into the early aughts (myself and my co-host included). I'll try to keep these reviews spoiler-free but honestly you should just read this series if you get a chance.
I was expecting this to be pretty awful, despite the decent reviews. Turns out, the decent reviews were valid. This is fairly nifty dystopian paranoia fluff.
