Reviews with content warning for Animal death - Pako

Reviews tagging 'Animal death'

Pako by K.A. Applegate

2 reviews

c_dmckinney's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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ramiel's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional reflective sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I reread this one several months ago, so the review isn't going to be the greatest because nothing is fresh in my mind. This is the one where Marco is forced to face a) one of his morph-phobias b) a crisis of self over his role within the group and c) Eva's baaaack.

So I said, "But hey, who's worked up by some little old sharks?"
"You are," Rachel said bluntly.
I felt like she'd kicked me. I mean, maybe she didn't even mean anything by it. But I found myself totally unable to think of a comeback. My cheeks burned. I turned away and pretended to care deeply about some bugs crawling up the trunk of a tree.

The plot summary is as follows: Marco learns that Visser One, the Yeerk controlling his mother, is back on Earth. What's worse for the rest of the kids, she's been rumored to have brought some mind reading alien Controllers called Leerans with her - which could be bad considering no one's supposed to know the resistance is made up of a bunch of teenagers, most of whom are human and not Andalite. The Leerans live under water, and so that's where the kids have to go. Only... they run into some problems along the way. Those problems are some very odd hammerhead sharks.

Meanwhile, Marco's frayed down to his last nerve, dealing with a phobia of sharks, his desire to save his mom, and his desire to remain "the same".

Getting the character development, aka the most important part, out first: Marco and his role and his rapidly declining mental health.

Before the hammerhead sharks are even introduced, Marco admits to us, the audience, that he has a pretty severe (and violent) shark phobia after nearly being bitten in half by some (book 4). Then you go back to the front cover of the book (Marco morphing shark) and go "oh... Marco's No Good Very Bad Day is getting Worse". (Which, he'd already been having a No Good Very Bad Day, since his mom's in town.)

I found the focus on this to be interesting. This book's major goal seemed to be "pile a bunch of stressors onto Marco to force him to take things seriously - which only causes more stress, because That's Not Who He Is And He Doesn't Want To Change". I think it does very well. While having Marco focus on his mother is always a good way to drive his development and force him into situations he doesn't want to be in, adding in both his genuine PTSD over Shark Trauma and his crisis over his "role" on top of that was a good way to open up new sides of Marco.

I mentioned on my Twitter that "he's a late bloomer for the 'who am I if not my role' panic", which is to say most of the kids started questioning their roles in the last five-book-grouping, books 6-10... or 9, since 10 was Marco's, and that was more focused on Marco's anger and violent thoughts - while he did touch on being the "funny man" and disliking the idea of people pitying him. More focus on the latter is seen here, with him snapping at his friends and then worrying immensely over them sensing something wrong with him because he wasn't ~coming up with witty comebacks instead. Jake tries to tell him it would be in everyone's best interest if he owned up to Visser One being his mom, but Marco resists this horribly, fearing it would lead to his friends "pitying" him, and that he would "... rather have someone hate me than pity me". In trying to prove Jake wrong, he shifts gears and goes overdrive into jokester mode -

See, I was doing my job. Playing my part within the group. Teasing. Joking. Exaggerating. That was my role. Like Jake had pointed out: A Marco not making jokes just worries people.

(Honey that's not what Jake was trying to tell you.)

However, his anger and violent thoughts also make a return here - full force. In true Rachel fashion, there's a particularly disturbing scene where a bully at school says something nasty (about Marco's mom) and he literally considers biting the bully's throat out (he's morphed like, a fraction shark at the time, no that doesn't make it less disturbing).

The interaction with the hammerhead sharks also leads to another interesting situation. Marco is often considered the one who often tries to get out of fighting, making jokes about staying home and watching television. However, here we see a moment where Marco, in genuine terror, actually does run away from a fight... and similar to Cassie in previous books, he feels disgusting about it. He feels like a coward. He dwells on the idea of his friends thinking he's a coward (if only he heard Tobias's and Rachel's meanest narration moments about him). He feels like he has to prove himself and becomes slightly more reckless in an attempt to "make up" for running away from a fight.

Did I mention it was a fight where Jake had already told everyone to "run away" before Marco even did so?

This whole book actually reminds me a little of Rachel's book 7, where she morphs bear, including feeling power and strength (misplaced) in losing himself in the shark's brain.

... oh right, there was a plot. Let's talk about:

The kids enter Visser One's underwater lair or whatever in full hammerhead morph. They end up getting scanned, picked up by sensors, then have their brains drilled in and don't realize the yeerks put a chip in their brains until they try to morph fly and Marco notices it's literally bulging out of Rachel's head. We learn here that implanted devices don't morph in the most horrifying way. Which makes me wonder what would happen if someone with a pacemaker or even a stent were to try morphing something smaller than them. Also absolutely horrifying descriptions, 10/10 Animorphs worthy body horror.

The Ax/Marco/Tobias trio starts here.

Marco, in his human body, comes face to face with Visser One and she believes he's another Controller. This means Eva will spend books after this believing that her son's been captured by the yeerks - Visser One tells Marco straight up: "You must learn to control your host more completely. My own host is in here creating an awful racket [...] But I do not let her weeping and wailing disturb me." (Leading to more violent thoughts brought to you by Marco.) Marco also ends this book not knowing if his mom is alive or dead... which will become a theme.

The Leeran Controller literally tells Vissers One and Three that the kids are human and they're too busy being petty at each other to realize. This is also how the kids escape. Again. These two fumble the bag so much when they're around each other I swear. I mean, Visser Three fumbles the bag regularly, he fucked his way to the top, he fell upwards, but Visser One also definitely loses every brain cell whenever he's in the same room as her.

Rachel and Marco's relationship in this book is also very subtle but poignant to me? In the first half of the book, she's the one making all the shots at him for being afraid of sharks (iirc, I think Marco is rude to Tobias for being claustrophobic, so she might be taking pot shots at him for it?) and she's the one he seems to snap at the most as a result of their entire Relationship being Like That. Near the end, Marco admits Visser One is his mother because Rachel is about to kill her. Rachel apologizes for it (which he sees the way she starts to speak to him as being "pitying") and he becomes far more withdrawn and short with her as a result. Rachel notices the way Marco withdraws from her when she starts "pitying" him, and in their later interaction, when she tells him what she saw and he thanks her, she mocks him and "sneered in her usual Rachel sneer". I feel like this shows that she did make note that Marco didn't like the way she was treating him and understood that he just wanted to be treated like normal after everything was done, so she did. They both seem to have a very strong understanding for the defenses the other tries to throw up, and so they know how to help the other without making them feel smaller.

I want to see them team up and be mean to someone else again. Etc.

Anyway. Sharks are smooth as hell.

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