bold move with the title, but they really pull it off this book.
this is a great final installment.
the entire book is good, but here’s a couple moments that stuck out.
spoilers
I forgot how it starts, with menderash willingly turning into a nothlit(mirroring tobias in the first book) so that he can pilot the Yeerk ship to take them to investigate the kelbrid space is so exciting!
I wonder how many mirrors of the first book there are that I didn’t notice since I was devouring the story.
the extended internal torment where Jake is reckoning with Rachel’s death and his responsibility as a war criminal who sends his friends to their death.
That Jake and Cassie don’t end up together.
but all the anamorphs are pretty much unfulfilled, carrying on Rachel’s legacy.
I can’t sing this book’s praises enough, it really is a solid ending with room to continue or conclude a limited run if they want to.
Finally finished the series last week for the first time and my god. I feel like from the moment I knew for certain someone was going to die in The Ellimists Chronicles I knew it would be Rachel, she just seemed least likely to be able to handle a post-war life.
That said I love how they managed to wrap everything up and still deliver on who dies in this book early enough to really show us the fallout after the war. I think the my favorite sequence in the whole series is definitely the tense negotiations between the animorphs and andalite high command when Marco points out that if they back down on those negotiations then the andalites will own them, because he is completely correct.
All in all a fantastic conclusion to a great series and I haven’t even touched on the final fates of the yeerk pool, the animorphs reserves, or the yeerks aboard the pool ship. But I can’t appreciate enough how much screentime they gave to the weight and truth of Jake’s actions as a war criminal during the fighting and how that affects him.
Only fitting that the antagonist right at the end is just a bigger and more advanced version of the same existential threat the yeerks pose: being swallowed up and assimilated by an entity that doesn’t want to kill you, just take away all free will and use you and your knowledge/memories to expand its reach.