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Having not seen the cover, and going off the title, I'm going to guess... at the peak of a very tall mountain, to minimize human contact and maximize view of the sky. ... now I'm picturing Everest as an infestation spot. Everyone who wants to climb it these days is rich, and it's isolated. Plus if anything goes wrong, the occasional accidental death won't raise eyebrows.
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# ? Jul 14, 2021 13:24 |
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# ? May 28, 2024 02:17 |
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I'll post the cover when I get home tonight. Its Marco turning into a polar bear.
Epicurius fucked around with this message at 13:57 on Jul 14, 2021 |
# ? Jul 14, 2021 13:48 |
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Desert adventure!
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# ? Jul 14, 2021 17:34 |
spotted in the wild
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# ? Jul 14, 2021 22:29 |
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here's the cover.
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# ? Jul 14, 2021 23:52 |
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San Diego Zoo, here we come!
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# ? Jul 15, 2021 00:39 |
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oh god this one should be interesting
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# ? Jul 15, 2021 00:57 |
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Epicurius posted:here's the cover. Marco's outfit dates this book more precisely than the publication info on the first page ever could.
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# ? Jul 15, 2021 01:09 |
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Chapter 5quote:I spilled the air from my wings and slipped through the trees. I landed silently on the ground, my laser-focus eyes locked on Visser Three all the way. If he showed any signs of noticing any one of us landing, we were going to take off without a second thought. That was the plan. I do have to say, I like the line "Suddenly, fingers." Chapter 6 quote:<How long until the Visser’s dust-off flight arrives?> Jake asked Ax. I do sort of wish we knew more about the inner life of Taxxons. Obviously, the only slave races of the Yeerks we see are the Hork-Bajir and the Taxxons (and the Gedd and humans, I guess.). We're told in an early book by a Yeerk that they conquered some other aliens, but they're never referred to again and are forgotten about. The thing is, though, with the exception of humanity, none of these species would likely ever make it to space on their own. The Yeerks are intelligent enough, but they're semiautotrophic filter feeders who are confined to their spawning pools without and because of those limitations really can't develop technology. With the exception of the rare seers, the Hork-Bajir will never come up with anywhere near the knowledge base to develop a society that can understand rocketry. The Taxxons while they're both intelligent and dexterous, are so trapped by their overwhelming hunger that on their own, without Yeerk willpower to control it, aren't able to concentrate on developing it, because they're spending all their time trying to find enough food. I really have no idea where I'm going with this thought, but I find it interesting.
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# ? Jul 15, 2021 03:54 |
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Three hours seems like a long time to get anywhere for a space-capable craft, especially when realistically, all of this is in southern California. Is it too much to hope that Visser Three has learned his lesson and is just having the Bug ship fly in circles to make it harder for morphers to infiltrate?
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# ? Jul 15, 2021 05:47 |
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Epicurius posted:The thing is, though, with the exception of humanity, none of these species would likely ever make it to space on their own. Along with thermals, the authors also wished to educate their readers on the Fermi Paradox
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# ? Jul 15, 2021 08:46 |
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Tree Bucket posted:Along with thermals, the authors also wished to educate their readers on the Fermi Paradox How the Andalites survived the Great Filter is one of the series' greatest mysteries.
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# ? Jul 15, 2021 09:13 |
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nine-gear crow posted:How the Andalites survived the Great Filter is one of the series' greatest mysteries. The Ellimist did it. I have no idea if he actually did or not, but it seems like his kind of bullshit. We've also seen that the Skrit Na apparently made it into space on their own.
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# ? Jul 15, 2021 13:16 |
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Chapter 7quote:<Three and a half of our hours! Where are we going, the moon?> Tobias asked. So, fun fact....iron maidens are probably not actually real, or at least not real as medieval torture devices. They don't first really get talked about until the 19th century, as proof of medieval barbarism. There was, in the late middle ages, a device used in Germany called the Schandmantel, or coat of shame, which was this wooden or metal device that criminals had to wear in public to humiliate them (and it was heavy and tiring). No spikes, though. Chapter 8 quote:We’d cleverly come up with two plans. Plan A involved Visser Three leaving the room voluntarily while the rest of us stayed behind and did a quick demorph followed by a remorph. But as time passed and the Visser made no move to leave, it looked more and more like we were going to have to implement the much riskier Plan B. So Visser Three really likes his privacy, and once again, his management skills need work.
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# ? Jul 16, 2021 03:37 |
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As much as people talk about quality decline with the ghostwritten books, so far, I have not really noticed a difference in the writing with this book. This author seems to have the style down, and the series concept.
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# ? Jul 16, 2021 09:30 |
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Love Tobias disapproving of blonde jokes then just being disappointed that he already heard it.
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# ? Jul 16, 2021 11:28 |
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I remember this was the first time I had heard of dirty blond hair
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# ? Jul 16, 2021 17:34 |
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Chapter 9quote:Rachel’s change was especially weird. At first, she just grew. Before my eyes she went from being a little speck to a five-foot-tall, thousand-eyeballed insect, with blond hair sprouting from the back of her head. I assume that Visser Three knows the Animorphs are on board are because of all the dead bodies? They really need to be more careful. Chapter 10 quote:Ax found the storage bays and led us there like he’d been born and raised on that Blade ship. I'll point out that this chapter is noteworthy, because it's the first time Ax paid attention to something in school.
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# ? Jul 17, 2021 04:57 |
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Terror Sweat posted:I remember this was the first time I had heard of dirty blond hair Same. Not this book, though; it was mentioned in the first few books, then after the earliest ones were published and the covers were made (with a model who wasn't exactly), that descriptor got dropped for a while.
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# ? Jul 17, 2021 06:55 |
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Epicurius posted:I assume that Visser Three knows the Animorphs are on board are because of all the dead bodies? They really need to be more careful. Or just the assumption that Visser Three knows exactly how many people he has personally killed on this flight up to the Pool Ship and that since there's more bodies laying around than he's personally dropped, it means the Animorphs are here too.
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# ? Jul 17, 2021 08:23 |
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Chapter 11quote:I stopped breathing. Hork-Bajir were everywhere. Everywhere! Once again, limbs are lost. Chapter 12 quote:We landed about twenty feet below in a pile of fur, claws, wings, and hooves. I hit hard, facedown. I was under hundreds of pounds of morphed humans and one alien. No thermals. Also, more seriously, this is bad. In a temperature this cold, unprotected, you die, and you die fast.
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# ? Jul 18, 2021 05:04 |
Just morph whale
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# ? Jul 18, 2021 08:25 |
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I must have read this one because most of the chapters seem familiar, but I have no idea what happens.
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# ? Jul 18, 2021 13:16 |
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They all die, the remaining books are about Visser Three feeding 90s pop stars to Taxxons
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# ? Jul 18, 2021 22:23 |
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pile of brown posted:They all die, the remaining books are about Visser Three feeding 90s pop stars to Taxxons Visser Three isn't the hero we need, but he's the Hero we Deserve. "Gentlemen, I'm afraid that you will no longer be n synch." "Sadly, those boyz never had the opportunity to grow II men."
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# ? Jul 18, 2021 23:44 |
<Spice up your life! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!>
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# ? Jul 18, 2021 23:51 |
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<Soon, your bodies will be 0 degrees! Kelvin! MUAHAHAHA>
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# ? Jul 19, 2021 02:12 |
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Chapter 13quote:<We need to get moving,> Jake said. His tiger morph was doing fairly well, I guess. Or else he was just refusing to complain. Which was fine. I’d complain for both of us. Marco comes close to death a lot in his books. You ever notice that? Chapter 14 quote:<Marco!> So they might not have the chance to freeze to death.
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# ? Jul 19, 2021 02:54 |
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I realize I've been saying this too often, but I don't remember anything from this book. But, I've owned it all along, too.
Fuschia tude fucked around with this message at 03:52 on Jul 19, 2021 |
# ? Jul 19, 2021 03:47 |
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I was thinking that a Siberian tiger would do pretty good in the cold but Jake has the orange-and-white stripes of a Bengal tiger, then was googling and realised that all this time I've assumed white tigers are the Siberian types when in fact they're a genetic anomaly that can occur in either kind, and both Bengals and Siberians are orange and white! And looking at a Siberian's historic range, it includes Manchuria, south-eastern Siberia and parts of central Asia... maybe not as cold as Alaska or Nunavut or wherever they are, but still pretty drat cold.
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# ? Jul 19, 2021 03:57 |
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Fuschia tude posted:I realize I've been saying this too often, but I don't remember anything from this book. But, I've owned it all along, too. it's so weird how stuff sticks with you, I remember the strips of coloured lights as guidelines, and the description of rachel's fur freezing and Marco ripping skin off, but nothin else. unless we get there and my brain goes "actually, you do know this"
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# ? Jul 19, 2021 05:30 |
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I really remember the ending lines of the book
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# ? Jul 19, 2021 06:27 |
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I don't think I read this book. I'm guessing the Yeerks have gone all Jurassic Park and cloned the Venber to be hosts, maybe specifically for arctic conditions and ice worlds.
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# ? Jul 19, 2021 20:32 |
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Cythereal posted:I don't think I read this book. I'm guessing the Yeerks have gone all Jurassic Park and cloned the Venber to be hosts, maybe specifically for arctic conditions and ice worlds. While that seems likely, it also seems like that might have some difficulties. For example, how is a Venber-controller going to go to a caldrona pool? Venber temperatures are too cold for the slug to survive outside the host, and apparently, based on what Ax said, above 0 C temperatures would be fatal to the Venber. You'd need, like, a little slug ear-canal airlock or something.
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# ? Jul 19, 2021 20:41 |
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Mazerunner posted:it's so weird how stuff sticks with you, I remember the strips of coloured lights as guidelines, and the description of rachel's fur freezing and Marco ripping skin off, but nothin else. unless we get there and my brain goes "actually, you do know this" I definitely remember Rachel losing a whole foot to nitro freezing as one of the grislier combat moments in the whole series. Up there with Cassie picking a sliver of Hork Bajir flesh out of her teeth long after demorphing.
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# ? Jul 20, 2021 00:57 |
I could absolutely hear Alloran using Robin Sachs - the VA for Zaeed Massani. That kind of gruff, take-no-poo poo voice. Pity he dead.
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# ? Jul 20, 2021 03:22 |
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Chapter 15quote:We crouched low, skulking wolves So what Marco said in that chapter about wolves being able to run forever is true. Wolves (and people, too, although most people don't take advantage of the fact anymore), are what are called endurance hunters, able to run for a really long time without getting tired. Lets say you challenge a horse to a sprint. The horse will win, any time. Horses run a lot faster than people. Now, lets say you challenge the same horse to a marathon. In my case, the horse would probably still win, because I'm slow and clumsy, but a horse would lose a marathon to a person. Horses, even though they can run fast, get tired really fast. We're built, and so are wolves, with the ability to run for a really long time. If you're interested, here's a segment David Attenborough's Earth, where a group of San from the Kalahari (one of the only groups of people to still do endurance hunting) run an antelope down over an 8 hour chase. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=826HMLoiE_o Chapter 16 quote:We trotted along the shoreline in the fading light. Sometimes we ran. Every once in a while I’d look back in the direction of the Yeerk station. I couldn’t see anything. But now and then I caught a smell that I was pretty sure I recognized. One of the things we've learned about polar bears is that they do eat plants...grasses and berries, when they can't find anything else. They don't get a lot out of them, though, calorically, though.
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# ? Jul 20, 2021 04:46 |
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Horses are pretty good over long distances too. There's an annual horse vs human race that was started to settle a bar bet, it is a little shorter than a marathon though. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_versus_Horse_Marathon
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# ? Jul 20, 2021 06:15 |
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I like how any idea of the mission has just been immediately dropped in favour of sheer survival. Don't think they've really been in a situation like that except the dinosaur book, and it's always interesting to see how they cope with it when literally their only asset is their morphing ability. But the thing to do with that polar bear would have been to all go elephant/grizzly/rhino, gently caress him up, and keep him alive long enough to acquire. Sorry buddy but it's for the greater good.
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# ? Jul 20, 2021 06:18 |
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# ? May 28, 2024 02:17 |
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Chapter 17quote:We dug a lair in a snowdrift on top of some rocks looking out over the ice. And by “lair” I mean a big hole. A big, wet snow hole. I get to add two more species to the list of genocides. And man, that's a depressing story. Melting down a sentient species for superconductors. Chapter 18 quote:Throughout the long, long night we demorphed and remorphed one at a time, time and again. We were so much more than exhausted. Good line by Ax there. Also, good use of the word 'mordantly', which you don't see a lot. Also, some people have complained that the ghostwritten books oversimplify the characters and their motivations, but this book, I think, gets Cassie right. She loves animals, she doesn't believe in cruelty, and she thinks that people have a moral responsibility towards animals, and will go to lengths to protect them. But she's not a fanatic, and she realizes that sometimes you have to do what you have to do to survive, even if it means eating cute little seals. And she's not a morning person. Honestly, so far, my only complaint about the book's characterization is that Marco has been a little too Marco, if you know what I mean? But I know it's a judgement call.
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# ? Jul 21, 2021 04:17 |