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A review by jackbylund
The Encounter by K.A. Applegate
Three down. Fifty-one or something to go.
This third volume should have our most interesting narrative voice, but the confines of the story actually make him the dullest. Tobias became permanently trapped as a red-tailed hawk—the dangerous bioproduct of staying animorphed in one form for over two hours. He grapples with his human identity (and soul?) as well as the animal instincts now living in his brain that drive him to kill and eat…as well as to run off with a girl hawk? Yes, middle school-age Tobias very nearly forsakes his humanity to have a bird wife.
Now, what’s notable about that is that the Animorphs series does not romanticize animals; it emphasizes again and again that animals think differently from us, feel fewer emotions than us. It’s a franker and starker position than you’d expect from a series like this.
All this ends up making Tobias our least interesting narrator of the Animorph squad so far because he spends time away from the other characters. Almost all his drama is internal. It’s worth addressing, but interest in it pales compared to what his comrades get up to. Meanwhile, other previous and future narrators deal with the terror of their own family members being secret agents of the invading alien space slugs. Or turn into fish to get sucked into a giant water logistics invasion spaceship and explore it. While Tobias just kind of watches from outside.
Once again, the series surprises with how dark it can be proportionate to its audience. Our heroes try to do good things (like setting an imprisoned hawk free) only for those well-intended actions to lead to bad consequences (the villainous Yeerks mistake the freed hawk for Tobias and kill her).
Craziest thing: characters’ gender does not necessarily align with their animorph. If you commune with a male animal and are female, you will animorph into a male animal, and vice versa. A delightful little bit of gender exploration I hope gets developed further. There’s definitely enough pages going forward.
Also, turns out the majority of the Animorphs books have individual Wikipedia pages with plot summaries and extremely inconsistent subheadings covering anything from the morphs that happen in the book, the contribution to characters’ arcs, and (in this book’s case) inconsistencies and contradictions to the continuity of previous volumes. For instance, the article claims the characters take longer than would be realistic to fall 700 feet from the water ship. My guy, if you can’t suspend your disbelief over something that small in a story like *this*, go read The Martian again.
This third volume should have our most interesting narrative voice, but the confines of the story actually make him the dullest. Tobias became permanently trapped as a red-tailed hawk—the dangerous bioproduct of staying animorphed in one form for over two hours. He grapples with his human identity (and soul?) as well as the animal instincts now living in his brain that drive him to kill and eat…as well as to run off with a girl hawk? Yes, middle school-age Tobias very nearly forsakes his humanity to have a bird wife.
Now, what’s notable about that is that the Animorphs series does not romanticize animals; it emphasizes again and again that animals think differently from us, feel fewer emotions than us. It’s a franker and starker position than you’d expect from a series like this.
All this ends up making Tobias our least interesting narrator of the Animorph squad so far because he spends time away from the other characters. Almost all his drama is internal. It’s worth addressing, but interest in it pales compared to what his comrades get up to. Meanwhile, other previous and future narrators deal with the terror of their own family members being secret agents of the invading alien space slugs. Or turn into fish to get sucked into a giant water logistics invasion spaceship and explore it. While Tobias just kind of watches from outside.
Once again, the series surprises with how dark it can be proportionate to its audience. Our heroes try to do good things (like setting an imprisoned hawk free) only for those well-intended actions to lead to bad consequences (the villainous Yeerks mistake the freed hawk for Tobias and kill her).
Craziest thing: characters’ gender does not necessarily align with their animorph. If you commune with a male animal and are female, you will animorph into a male animal, and vice versa. A delightful little bit of gender exploration I hope gets developed further. There’s definitely enough pages going forward.
Also, turns out the majority of the Animorphs books have individual Wikipedia pages with plot summaries and extremely inconsistent subheadings covering anything from the morphs that happen in the book, the contribution to characters’ arcs, and (in this book’s case) inconsistencies and contradictions to the continuity of previous volumes. For instance, the article claims the characters take longer than would be realistic to fall 700 feet from the water ship. My guy, if you can’t suspend your disbelief over something that small in a story like *this*, go read The Martian again.