Megamorphs 2: In the time of Dinosaurs

[Bootlebat]

Theres no Yeerks in #26 right?

[gh astly]

It could be argued that the Iskoort are distant evolutions of the Yeerks (or is it outright stated? I honestly don't remember). Otherwise, they don't appear in that book if I remember correctly.

[lady_summoner]

I've always enjoyed this book. I’m fond of dinosaurs so that was part of it. I also like that the Animorphs were responsible for the big extinction. I know there were some issues in the book like Tobias’ unhealable wing and the others somehow not recognizing a dinosaur when they see one. But it doesn’t detract from my enjoyment.

Well, the questions that it opens up are:
1. How did he get books about dinosaurs? His aunts and uncles didn't care about him, so where did he get them? It's never implied at any point that he has a job.

1. They may not have really cared about him, but they didn't give him the Harry-Potter-live-under-the-stairs treatment either. Remember in book 13, he had a Star Trek calendar? So he did apparently get a few things sometimes.

[gh astly]

I never really noticed that in book 13. That is a good point though. Just ignore that first question, it was kinda dumb.

[VisserAx]

i like All Chronicles. A gd side track!

[YeerkSalad]

These aren't chronicles...

[kmbarrett]

I procrastinated a LOT before I finally read this because I thought it might be boring. If course it's now one of my favorites.

[YeerkSalad]

I was a little bored the entire time. The plot holes got on my nerves. The factual errors were pretty annoying. Also, Tobias said "Jurassic Park" was completely wrong because most of the dinosaurs were not in the Jurassic period. Tobias, you idiot! That was just the name of the movie (and the park) because the Jurassic period was when everything flourished, and it sounds cool. BLAGHHHHHHH!
As I read, I periodically muttered "You idiots!" It was a fun concept, but came out as a little boring, and the most plot hole-errific story up to this point.

[Ikandor]

I read „6th of January 2015“ instead of 2014 and wrote a comment. When I eventually realized I was a bit late on this one, I had already finished my answer. Years can be so confusing.

The book is based on a cool idea, but I have some main problems with it that are hard to overlook.

First off, it really bothers me that there’s no explanation whatsoever for anything. The first half is them being thrown in this time, figuring out that they’ve been thrown in this time and than running away from dinosaurs that live in this time. Eventually they figure out that there are aliens (after 140 pages of running) and finally have a plan. Which, by the way, doesn’t even work out in the end. The nuclear weapon thing that they have risked their lifes for in the first place gets flown into space and bumps uselessly against a comet. The comet then does what comets do and bumps against earth (not so uselessly this time) and they are sent back to where they came from. Lots of prehistorical errors and trauma for the Animorphs for nothing. At all.

I think I would like the book much, much better if Applegate had at least come up with a plot along the lines of „I am the mighty Ellimist. You six have to travel back in time and find a way to extinct the dinosaurs or else humanity will never develope and YOU WILL ALL CEASE TO EXIST. Good luck lol.“ Noone would have questioned the Ellimists stupid plans anyways so she could have easily used that as an explanation. And it would help the plot a lot since, as I said, all they do in the main part of the book is trying not to get themselves killed.

There are probably some historical inconsistences that I didn’t notice as I’m no expert and I don’t really care. But what I noticed were some plot errors. Like, for example, somewhere around page 61 or so they watch a T-Rex attack a baby dinosaur. They run away (understandably enough) and the T-Rex follows them. But why? He apparantly just attacked or even killed a prey that wasn’t that hard to kill but delivered tons of food. And chasing after a bunch of small weird smelling animals just because they ran and T-Rex turns out to like chasing after running things is so senseless. His behaviour only costs him energy.

Another main thing that Applegate overlooked is that there already was a similar incident in #11, The Forgotten, as

Spoiler:

a Sario Rip occures and throws them back in time. At the end of #11, Ax explains to Jake what a Sario Rip is. However in Megamorphs 2, Ax has to explain it to all of them again and Jake doesn’t give the impression that he’s familiar with it, which one might expect him to be.

And that Tobias couldn’t heal through morphing for some unexplained reason was annoying. Was it the Ellimist? Crayak? Maybe just a time travel rule noone knew of? Seems we’ll never know. Because plot.

Apart from all this stuff I have some personal problems with the book aswell because it’s one of the few I only own in german. It took me some time to get used to it again, but still… it feels weird. I don’t know if this only applies to the german translation but most of the time, it makes the impression that the books are translated by someone who has no idea of the Animorphs universe or just didn’t care about it. For instance, Ax‘ loved cinnamon buns are suddenly cinnamon waffles. Small things, really, but it just bothers me. Not happy with it.

Good things about Megamorphs #2: dinosaurs. And new alian races and fighting scenes. And fighting scenes involving dinosaurs and aliens. Also: time travel and Ax kicking dinosaur butt. I liked the idea, but it didn’t turn out as cool as I thought it would be. Maybe my expectations were just too high?

So in the end I guess it’s not my favorite Animorphs extra-book, but not the worst one either. I think the Hidden was actually worse.

[tbrowning1]

I liked the aliens from this book. I would have liked to see them revisited at some point later in the books. It's was also neat to see animal morphs that don't exist anymore and see how the author chose the behavioural patterns.