Bisexual Icon Tobias: An Incomplete Review of Animorphs Book 1: The Invasion
Story time:
When Animorphs was at its feverish height of popularity and what seemed like an entire Borders’ kid’s section was devoted to these weird mutating frog kids, I was a snobby eleven year old who was like, “These covers are so GAUCHE, truly not meant for a SOPHISTICATED reader of TASTE and CLASS, please point me to the DEAR AMERICA, which has classy features like ITALIC FONTS and a silk bookmarks. I pity the plebeian child who reads this dreck.”
Twenty years later I am like, “Yum yum, dreck, I love to eat it,” and am not as much of a literary snob. But if there’s one thing I’m snobby about it’s terfs and FUCK YOU, JK ROWLING! KA Applegate’s Animorphs was recommended to me as an alternative to nostalgic 90’s literature that wasn’t written by a terf, and being the kind of snobby that history will prove right, I decided to give it a try.
So, how is Animorphs (as reviewed by a 31 year old woman in the year of Our Lord 2020)?
It’s okay! I actually thought I would like it a lot less than I did. Here’s a very unofficial review, based on a series of texts I sent my best friend who is also reading Animorphs for the first time:
“Also, oh my gosh…. the font in this book… I can’t”
“I’m one chapter in and I’ve already decided Marco sucks.”
“Just got through my first morph and I wonder how much of this book series is just gonna be wacky hijinks with kids trying to get their clothes on after a morph?”
“Rachel is my favorite so far. Why is KA Applegate so in love with Tobias? This whole book has a toBIAS.”
“Almost done with the first book. I am here for Tobias’ huge and obvious crush on both Jake and Rachel. Bisexual icon, tbh.”
More formally, I thought the book was okay. I was actually impressed with some of the writing. The way that Applegate describes the morphs, when the characters are caught in an animal body fighting for supremacy of their thoughts over the instincts of the animal was quite vivid and detailed. The descriptions of the aliens races are precise enough that they’re easy to picture. There’s moments that she captures emotion quite well, especially terror.
The plot moves along at the speed of a bullet. It goes zero-to-one hundred real quick. Almost right away the characters in the book are fighting for their lives, being chased by aliens, descending into hell pits full or tortured humans enslaved to an alien race, watching their brothers get thrown off of cliffs, and getting permanently trapped in hawks’ bodies. (SPOILER if you are a child and it’s 1997). It made the book read quickly, but the stakes were so high I got compassion fatigue and had trouble mustering up emotion when everything was dramatic from the get-go.
The dialogue is bad. It’s so bad. It’s simplistic and forced and full of out-dated references (“We should tell someone we saw a UFO! Maybe we could get on Letterman.”) I know I am not the intended audience for this book, but the dialogue gets Oooooooooooooooof stars rating.
I don’t know if I’ll keep reading (though I might thrust this book into the hands of a 9 year old boy). I feel like I get the gist of the series, but also there’s like 54 books in the series and if I read one a week I could be finished in about a year and part of that seems very appealing to my completionist soul.
