Happy Tuesday Folks!

I hope you’re having a good start to the week. You’re probably still a little bummed that it’s back to work time (like I am), but hey, we gotta pay that rent, right?

My escape from reality and work life boringness has been my continuation of the Animorphs series, this time #47.5, The Ellimist Chronicles.

If you know anything about Animorphs, you know that this little altruistic dude creeps up from time to time to help the Animorphs out in strange ways. He’s also responsible for some of their battles, so admittedly it’s a mixed bag. Regardless of all that, I’ve been looking forward to this for a while. I wanted to get to know the Ellimist better and to see where he’s coming from and why he wants to help our beloved heroes. On to the review!

Blurb:

He is called the Ellimist. A being with the ability to alter space and time. A being with a power that will never be fully understood. He is the reason Elfangor came to Earth. He is the reason the Earth now has a fighting chance. And though his actions never seem quite right or wrong, you can be certain they are never, ever what anyone expects.

This is the beginning and the middle of the story. A story that needs to be told in order to understand what might happen to the future. The future of the Animorphs. The future of humanity. The future of Earth.

He is called the Ellimist. And this is his story…

GoodReads

The Review:

I gave this book four stars.

I had a really good experience reading this installment of Animorphs.

Instead of our usual POVs from the Animorphs themselves, we get a backstory from the Ellimist, the do-gooder with a lot of power at his disposal. To date, his presence and story have been shrouded in mystery, but as an Animorph faces their own mortality (I’m not considering that a spoiler since it’s in the first page), the Ellimist feels the need to explain just who he is and what got him to this point.

Starting out, I’ll admit that I had some difficulty with this book. The first 20-40 pages set the scene for the Ellimist’s early peaceful days, but the descriptions of his surroundings was too jarring. I found myself rereading certain sections and still not quite getting what they were aiming at. And if I’m confused, you better believe some teen readers are super confused. Thankfully, after the brief introduction those strange descriptions clear up and the plot gets extremely interesting.

The character of the Ellimist was fully realized and felt three-dimensional. He’s a gamer, and that really spoke to me since I love games of all kinds. It was built into his culture, which was intriguing for an alien race. The Ellimist is extremely altruistic, but he learns to keep that in check during his travels. It was really easy to root for him, which made things really difficult to read when things went wrong for him.

And boy did things go wrong for him. The Ellimist’s tale is a sad one, but it was riveting. Sometimes in order to become a force of good you have to lose everything. The plot took me to places I wouldn’t have expected it to, and that really kept the pages turning for me. Particular things I loved were all the alien races encountered and explored. I mean, this book was packed with odd and bizarre culture! I also enjoyed getting to know his beef with Crayak, although I wish Crayak had a deeper purpose than just “I want to kill everything.” It would’ve been nice to see the why behind it, and it could’ve been explained easily in dialogue.

All in all, this was a solid read that gave some great background on the Ellimist and put the Animorphs’ struggles in perspective. Their fight is considerably tiny when considering the vast universe, but it is a fight Ellimist must get involved in to defend intelligent life and preserve a natural balance. Definitely worth a read if you love the Animorphs series or just love fictional alien cultures.

That’s a Wrap!

Thanks for stopping by, and happy reading!

Have you read this book before? What did you think? Do you have a book recommendation similar to this one? Feel free to share in the comments!

If you’d like to see other reviews of mine, feel free to check out the book review section of my blog or my GoodReads. You can also follow my GoodReads reviews here. There are some great binge-worthy books on there!

Have a great day!

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