Review: Megamorphs #3: Elfangor's Secret

22:13 Cilla 0 Comments

Title: Elfangor's Secret (Megamorphs #3)
Author: K.A. Applegate
Publisher: Scholastic
Source: Downloaded from Amazon
Synopsis:
We found out who Visser Four is. And he has found the Time Matrix. The machine Elfangor had hidden in the abandoned construction site. The same place we met him on a night none of us will ever forget. Especially me. Now Visser Four has the Matrix, and he plans to use it to become Visser One.


But Jake, Rachel, Cassie, Marco, Ax and I can't let that happen. We can't let him alter time so that the Yeerks will win the invasion. So we're prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice. And, ultimately one of us will lose this fight...

Review: ⋆⋆⋆⋆

"Their third mass? Which made me wonder if  they had any hope of winning. I mean, one church service, maybe. But three? That's not a sign of confidence. That's more like 'I'll be there any minute now, Lord, so have Saint Peter make my bed.'"

I am on a mission to finally finish reading the entire series of Animorphs, complete with its spin-offs. For a while, I was on a roll, but then around #35, the quality dipped and I lost interest. I found this book in my iBook app while I was mindlessly scrolling through my phone though, and I was hooked back in.

The beginning was really confusing - I would explain but I feel that would be spoilery - but it's all explained quickly enough, so hang in there! I love time-travel, alternative history type of plots, so this was right up my alley. Plus, after several disappointing installments, I felt that this was a return to form. There were genuinely funny moments alongside ugly moments. Animorphs at its heart is a war story, and while it's very much humans (plus good aliens) vs. bad aliens, this one is about humans' wars. From Agincourt to Normandy, our heroes encountered the brutality of man-made war. Applegate didn't hold much back; if I had any romantic notion about the battlefield, it's well and truly dashed.

At times the main plot felt a little lost among the chaos of the actions, and weirdly enough I got so distracted by the alternative histories that I nearly forgot about the Time Matrix, the thing that made it all happen in the first place. Plus, as much as I agree with the message that war is an awful thing, there were moments when it started to feel just a touch preachy. Nevertheless, this has restored my interest in Animorphs.

I can't end this review without mentioning the moment Cassie was confronted with overt, seriously ugly racism. Her response was brilliant.

''We Andalites have fought wars among ourselves in the past. We did not kill children. It is not possible to conceive of a greater evil than the deliberate killing of a child."