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 this invasion. So we're prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice. And, ultimately, one of us will lose this fight ..."
Animorphs is hands down my favourite series of books of all time, an epic set of young adult books detailing the war between five shapeshifting teenagers and their alien ally battling a massive invasion of brain-occupying slugs. It was the second biggest selling childrens series of the 90s (after Goosebumps) and had probably the best story arc of any childrens book series ever written.
Seriously. Because whilst Harry Potter may have killed off a lot of its supporting cast, it didn't have the chutzpah to kill of one of six main characters from the 50 books and then end the series with the implied death of all but one of the others as they go out against unbeatable odds for no benefit whatsoever.
Oh, and the romantic subplot was upended when one half of the ongoing will-they-won't-they became a war criminal responsible for the genocidal slaughter of thousands of prisoners in a last ditch attempt to stop the conflict dragging on for years more.
Years after I read them (they were first published from 1996) I still try and bore people with a full run down of individual stories and why I loved them. At some point, I will get round to blogging the whole series I'm sure, but suffice it to say that you should read them.
The holes in my collection of the physical books I'm always on the lookout to fill, and I picked this up in a charity shop. It's a short book - even the extended 'Megamorphs' won't stretch you more than an hour, but it's well worth a read, because this is a book that veers into my other favourite genre: Alternate History.
The idea is this; the war isn't going as smoothly as anticipated (mainly because of the guerrilla tactics of the Animorphs) so the Yeerks, the alien brain slugs, have decided to break up the course of human history. And they succeeded. So now the world is a fascist dystopia, slavery and genocide are accepted as normal and the war against the Yeerks will be over in a matter of months.
In an attempt to stop it the Animorphs are given the chance to pursure the agent responsible for changing the past back through time, encountering him at Agincourt, Trafalger, the crossing of the Delaware and the Normandy Landings. most of which end up being changed, to disasterous (and lethal) effect.
So you get a bit of information about each of these major historical turning points (Napoleon wins, America never breaks way from England, British Empire ends up going to war with a united Europe in World War Two) with little of the usual battles between aliens and people. It's a great introduction to history, and the idea of time travel and its repurcussions.
It's also the second Megamorphs in a row that deals with time travel, as Megamorphs 2 is about the Animorphs fighting aliens in the Time of the Dinosaurs. It's like these books were written for me.
Also Try:
K A Applegate, the entire Animorphs series - http://animorphsforum.com/ebooks/
K A Applegate, Everworld
Michael Grant, Gone
R L Stine, Goosebumps (or a review of all the Goosebumps books - http://www.bloggerbeware.com/)
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