by K.A. Applegate
The Animorphs find out there's a nuclear disaster at sea- so what do they do? dash over there in dolphin form to see what's going on and help out rescuing people. Well, the blast throws the Animorphs back in time, to the Cretaceous age of course. It takes them a while to realize they're not in a strange place, just in an ancient time. It's extremely dangerous. They nearly get eaten by dinosaurs- several times- and there's a scene where Rachel morphs the grizzly bear while inside a dinosaur's stomach - to claw her way out- yeah, ugh. Glad for the paucity of description there. Eventually they manage to obtain morphs of dinosaurs so they aren't outmatched all the time, and then make a sudden discovery. It involves two alien races that inhabit Earth, eons in the past. The two alien civilizations are in a kind of stalemate, but the Animorphs get involved, hoping to use the energy of a bomb to blast themselves back into the future they came from- meanwhile a huge comet is looming ominously close in the sky . . . . They had to make some awful decisions about choosing if the alien race would live or die- after the aliens had helped them- to save themselves. Cassie protested having to morph a carnivorous dinosaur, and then went berserk when the instincts overtook her. Tobias makes a decision for the group without telling them- nearly on par with betrayal. Lots of drama setup for future events I think. But in terms of how they got back home, well I saw the ending coming a mile away. Biggest disappointment was when they got back to their own time, and found out the dinosaur morphs no longer worked. Why? what's the point of having the characters travel back in time where they can gain these incredibly powerful forms, if they can't use them? and why is it possible that their enemy Visser Three can use morphs of alien creatures from planets they've never heard of, but they can't use a morph from an extinct animal of their own planet? it made no sense, but a lot of this series doesn't. In spite of all this (and the constant POV switch every chapter) I did find it an entertaining read.
Read as an e-book on my device.
Rating: 3/5 245 pages, 1998
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Arkham Reviews
"Why? what's the point of having the characters travel back in time where they can gain these incredibly powerful forms, if they can't use them? "
ReplyDeleteTo be cynical, apparently these Megamorphs books were solely made for marketing purposes. Because they were longer than the other books in the series, they could make bookstore events around them... and charge a lot more.
I'm glad to have read your review, since I hadn't finished this one.
Hm, well, it's odd to me that they were written outside the main series line, because in #19 there's a direct reference to what Cassie experienced as a dinosaur- which nobody would get if that hadn't read this Megamorph...
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