The Invasion

Wasn't allowed to read these growing up so now doing my own belated book club. Blown away at how good this is right out of the gate. Has a great campy sentai-show setup but pulls no punches with how gruesome this intergalactic war actually is. All of the morph descriptions are straight body horror, and the violence only gets away with being this gory because of Halo rules (it's not blood, it's yellow goo).

Our first POV, Jake, is fully the likeable leader boy archetype, but the character voice is so strong it hardly matters. Particular highlight is dog brain, which is exactly what you'd expect but even more charming. Under the YA nonchalance is a surprisingly affecting tragedy, particularly Jake's distant relationship with his brother (I imagine we'll see even more devastating scenes from the other POVs whose family life seems even more complicated).

Great start to this series. I am sure it goes off the rails over the next 50 (!!) books, but I'm fully bought in right now.

I loved this book! Why didn't I read this as a kid? My favorite thing about this series so far are the designs of the aliens and Tobias. Tobias is my favorite character and the Andalites have such a creative design. I can't wait to read the rest of these books they're pretty well written for kid's books. I feel like they do a good job taking their audiences seriously and even have scenes that could be disturbing for some ages. The characters aren't just like “animal powers sweet!” they all kinda have mental breakdowns and there are many parts that demonstrate psychological trauma very well. Some parts are very 90s which is my only critique. But it gives the series a kind of narm charm. Like the characters talk about video games and make stupid pop culture references a lot. Also, their names are kinda dumb (Jake, Rachel, Cassie etc.). I unfortunately got spoiled about what happens to Tobias :( I'll try to keep out of the animorphs tumblr tag til I'm a little further into the series. I can't wait to get more volumes out of the library!