I wrote previously about how I started reading The Animorphs in the year 2024, but that was over two months ago and we’re many books further into the series. I feel like we should be approaching the halfway point soon, but that’s still almost two full months away. Right now, even though I’m a week ahead (as of writing this, anyway–I’m on schedule as this gets posted since I’ll be taking a week away to focus on reading Dune for a different book club), I feel like we should be much further along considering all of the stuff that has already happened. The Animorphs have time travelled twice, we’ve gotten two (comparatively) massive stories about characters from the past, we’ve learned so much about the universe of this series, and our poor protagonists have been traumatized so many times that they’re turned into hardened veterans in a way that is equal parts fascinating and equal parts horrifying. In a Youth series! I genuinely don’t think I’ve seen a better portrayal of trauma and what it means to be a child soldier in any kind of fiction ever. Sure, I think the series would have benefited from some of the more modern knowledge about how trauma works and why it works that way, but I think this is still handling it all pretty well for a series largely created in the nineties.

I don’t really have any specific notes because the books are starting to blur together a bit. The general pacing of most of them feels pretty formulaic, but I don’t think anyone ever read The Animorphs for an original plot. I mean, the first ones were pretty individual, but they’ve been repeated so many times now, as I finish book twenty, that I don’t really feel particularly surprised by them, especially when permanent changes to the status quo are so few and far between. I mean, Tobias got stuck as a hawk pretty early on and sure, he can morph now, but not a lot else has changed in terms of the world. The characters have changed plenty, each of them taking steps down a path that might lead to darkness, a darkness that changes every time one of them tries to right their course and instead just ends up descending in a new direction. But they’re still a ragtag group of kids fighting a war they absolutely should not have to be fighting against forces that should have long ago overwhelmed them and only haven’t because, for whatever reason, those forces have decided to largely stay in one unnamed geographic location that’s probably somewhere near New York. Literally all the Yeerks have to do to win is go do their work in a different country. That’s all. Pull up roots and move.

Despite this long-running stasis, it looks like things might be starting to change. The twentieth book in the series ends on a cliffhanger, after doing the unthinkable and adding a new member to the Animorphs. I think this is going to go poorly for them because the one person whose insight I trust the most on anything that doesn’t concern his captured mother–good ol’ Marco–thinks the new kid is going to be trouble. I think this burgeoning sociopath (depicted as such by a lot of outdated stereotypes centered around the idea that some kinds are just Born Wrong rather than a pattern of behaviors that are a reflection of the way they were raised or what they’ve been through) is going to be a problem, if only because he feels so spoiled and entitled that he’s going to completely disregard the lessons the rest of the Animorphs learned in a way that gets someone hurt. Hopefully just himself, but maybe not! Who know! This could be the first significant change to the world of the books since Tobias got the ability to morph back.

I’m still enjoying myself, overall. I have a few issues with things here or there–mostly specific depictions of trauma or how the books seem to just ignore something that should really be super important–but I’m enjoying my time with the series. I still don’t know that I’d recommend the books to someone who isn’t reading them all for a bit (like me) or who doesn’t already have an established interest for other reasons (like all my fellow book club members), but I don’t think it would be a waste of your time to read the series. I mean, each book is about sixty to seventy pages, so it won’t take you a super long time to read through them anyway. I can do about one per hour to hour and a half if I’m not interrupted, so I can’t imagine it would take most readers much longer than that. They’re a decent way to fill an afternoon, an evening, or to consume during breaks if you’re trying to avoid doomscrolling or spending too much time on the various social media apps. Honestly, they’re kind of like the potato chips of books. They’re light, you can go through a lot of them in a day if that’s all you’ve got going on, and they’ll spoil your appetite by viscerally describing the transformation process in the segments I like to imagine got a lot of people into body horror. Good times all around.