Book 8 to 37 - Visser Three is an Idiot

chinchil1en
Jan 20, 2019
3 min read

Updated: Sep 29, 2019

Series: Animorphs

Author: K.A. Applegate

Genre: children's/YA sci-fi

Oh my goooooooood, this series

NEVER

EVER

ENDS!

Okay at this point I am getting real sick and tired of these books. Do I still love them? Yes. Absolutely. Did there really need to be 54 of them? Absolutely NAWT!

I really had enough once the author and her multiple ghost writers started relying heavily on the goddamn gimmicks. Animorphs - in dinosaur times! Animorphs - go small! Animorphs - in the arctic! In the past! In the future! In Australia! Blegh. I wish Applegate had just cut out the fat and given us the meat, like when Tobias is so close to having a family, a real family, that cares - only to discover it's just a trap by the one and only Visser Three. Give my cosmic-level Ellimist stuff, like when the team is transported to the Iskroot world and pitted against the Howlers in a chess game of epic proportions.

In the end, the gimmicks are just putting off the inevitable fact that the Animorphs cannot hide forever; the Yeerks are going to figure out that they're a bunch of scrappy human kids and not elite Andalite warriors. Around book 20 or so, the keeping of this secret becomes less and less plausible. Let's list the facts that Visser Three can't seem to grasp:

Most of the Animorph missions don't occur 8-4, just on the weekends. Hmmm....coincidence? PROBABLY NOT.
Only one of the "Andalite bandits" speaks and demorphs to Andalite. ANOTHER COINCIDENCE, EH?
Marco is implicated and none of the Yeerks look into his friends - I mean, Jake's brother is a high profile Yeerk, and Cassie knows all about animals. COME ON
Visser One smells something fishy about the group after, what, two interactions? Visser Three cannot believably be that dense, and also be the leader of the Yeerk invasion on Earth. HE JUST CANNOT.

Seriously, by book 48 I am almost in tears of frustration waiting for the secret to just be OUT so the A-Team can wage actual warfare of those fearsome wee slugs - and to get some adults involved! Not because the kids aren't capable, but so they can finally have the support of a cheer team after all this time.

Books:

- The Hork-Bajir Chronicles

- Animorphs #23: The Pretender (Tobias)

- Animorphs #24: The Suspicion (Cassie)

- Animorphs #25: The Extreme (Marco) - Ghostwritten by Jeffrey Zeuhlke

- Animorphs #26: The Attack (Jake)

- Animorphs #27: The Exposed (Rachel) - Ghostwritten by Laura Battyanyi-Weiss

- Animorphs #28: The Experiment (Ax) - Ghostwritten by Amy Garvey

- Animorphs #29: The Sickness (Cassie) - Ghostwritten by Melinda Metz

- Megamorphs 3: Elfangor's Secret

- Animorphs #30: The Reunion (Marco) - Ghostwritten by Elise Donner

- Animorphs #31: The Conspiracy (Jake) - Ghostwritten by Laura Battyanyi-Weiss