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The Message

Animorphs, Book 4

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About this listen

It all started with the dreams. But Cassie didn't pay much attention to them. She and her friends have been having nightmares ever since they acquired the power to morph. But when Cassie discovers that Tobias has been having dreams too - the exact same dreams - about the ocean, and a voice that's calling to them for help, she decides it's time to start listening. Now, she and the others have to figure out if the dreams are a message, or a trap.

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The Animorphs audiobooks have been outstanding so far, really nailing the personal stories of each POV character, a fantastic way to rediscover the series I LOVED as a young teen. This story was always one of my favourite of the early Animorphs books, introducing a fan-favourite character, taking the kids to a new environment and raising the stakes somewhat. This audiobook production continues the high standard of the previous titles, however there were a few things that bothered me about the narrator. She does an admirable job of portraying Cassie as the animal-loving, nurturer she always was, but her portrayal of other characters is often both lacking and over the top. Marco was always the comic-relief character to an extent, but the narrator has an annoying habit of reading his lines in a squeaky, almost irritating voice, really destroying the tension in a lot the scenes. He’s meant to be sarcastic and slightly annoying at times sure, but he’s not a toddler. The narrator also has issues with other male characters, making Jake sound like a man of 40 with a gruff deep voice and making Tobias sound like he’s constantly high or practising for a period drama. Another character who I won’t mention by name here due to fear of spoiling things is made to sound...just wrong. I guess it’s a personal thing, but I just felt disappointed. These are meant to be kids of around 13 if I’m not mistaken, yet she portrays them much older and just doesn’t seem to grasp the characters at all. She also has a strange habit of emphasising the wrong words in sentences, for seemingly no reason, leading to temporary confusion or simple irritation and really breaking the flow of the action. For example there’s a scene where the group are discussing where to hide something and she says ‘I think we should go to MY farm’, where she’s the only character who owns a farm. Surely the emphasis should’ve been on ‘my FARM’. Anyway, it sounds nitpicky and petty (and it is) but there are multiple other instances of stuff like this throughout and other issues with dialogue being read in what I perceived as not the way the author intended. I found myself having to almost translate how it should’ve been read in my head a split-second behind the audiobook. I don’t know, I just felt like the other narrators in the series so far have really made the books feel like an actual personal account read by the character, whereas this one was the first where I felt as if it was simply a narrator reading a story. It got better as it progressed, but yeah, just lacked something from the previous three.
This being said, I still gave the book 5 stars as it more than deserves it for the story and these issues I highlight are only really momentarily distracting if anything, they don’t detract too much from the overall experience. Plus, that was always one of the (many!) great things about Animorphs. If you weren’t as keen on a given narrator, you were only ever one book away from a new one. I’m sure the narrator here will improve with time, and hopefully this series continues long enough for her to continue growing along with the character of Cassie. The series deserves to be completed.

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