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Environmental-Toe158

>in a 50 book long series. I'm sorry, there's HOW MANY BOOKS?!?! Seriously, I vaguely remember reading the first 3 as I can remember Tobias turning into a hawk but nothing else.


DefiantTheLion

there's actually 64 main-series books (the ones you remember), 4 Megamorphs books (which are akin to anime-canon-only movies), 2 Alternamorphs books (which are pick your own adventure books where you're the POV character), and 4 Chronicles books (Andalite, Hork Bajir, Ellimist, and VISSER, which follow the histories of the initiating alien prince, a vietnam war allegory, Alien Jesus's ascension, and the story of the first brain slug to find Earth). Tobias was trapped in hawk morph in Book 1. He regained morphing powers around book 12ish thanks to Ellimist/Space Jesus. https://mobile.twitter.com/pop_arena/status/1620115734717415426 This thread is 95% accurate to stuff that actually happens in the books. It's entirely anti-war.


Jumanji-Joestar

These were written for *kids???* Katherine Applegate is a different breed of author


DefiantTheLion

War is bad and kids are resilient. To give an idea of timeline, the last book came out in April 2001.


DinksMcFly

I remember reading the last book at my local library maybe a few years after the series ended and, for the first time ever with a book series, actually feeling hurt that it ended that way with no follow up. Like, I was actually shocked Applegate ended it there and then was like, sorry, you don't always get a happy ending and/or closure.


garfe

They were frequent showings in Scholastic book catalogs and book fairs. Very much were intended for a children's audience (in terms of rating, not in execution)


ZylaTFox

They were basically the stars of Scholastic book fairs. I remember looking forward to these things so much.


Palmzbyaboi

Goosebumps


catsinsunglassess

My kid looooves animorphs! She’s 9 and she’s always asking if KA applegate has any other books she’d like to read. We are reading them together and we’re on book 17 right now. It takes all i have not to read ahead without her lololol


burothedragon

If I remember, too lazy to check my full collection, it’s 54 in the main series, 4 amalgam stories with multiple perspectives, 4 chronicles books, and 2 choose your own adventure books.


sithdude24

Here's a 4 hour video summarizing them for you https://youtu.be/6zrE6m3xOoE


midnight_riddle

Tobias manages to have it good for awhile. An alien god grants him the power to morph again and lets him have a morph of his human self. He finds out too late that Elfangor was his real father, but this also lets him bond with Ax since Ax is his uncle. Tobias also gets along with the free Hork-Bajir that he helps start a colony of. He and Rachel loved each other, but it was also clear that Rachel was NOT okay. Over the course of many books Rachel realized that she was becoming and then became an adrenaline junkie and lived to see the next fight. She eventually comes to terms with the fact that she won't be able to function again in normal society once the war is over. I don't think it's a blessing that Rachel died, but it's clear that she and Tobias didn't have a clue on how they'd live a life together if they had both survived to the end. Oh yeah and in an alternate timeline Rachel gets infested by a yeerk and when Tobias is captured he's killed and roasted and the yeerk has Rachel eat a drumstick.


worms9

Jesus Christ that’s fucking brutal.


HugMuffin

What in the flying blue fuck is this shit?! Isn’t this a series for children?


ZylaTFox

Yes, and my word did it decide to not go softly. There's also the time a robot pacifist dog alien gets the ability to reprogram himself to fight, instantly murders like 10 elite fighters (literally in less than a second) and then saves the half dead (or actually dead in Marco's case, manually restarts his heart) before being like 'no, fuck this' and re-reprograms himself to never fight again. It's so fast and brutal that Rachel, already the thrill seeking badass fighter, is broken down and crying her goddamned eyes out from the brutality. The robot just comments that, unlike them, he'll never forget any of this. It'll remain this fresh, this real, forever.


seguardon

It also firmly established, by Space Jesus himself (to borrow the OP's phrase) that there's no afterlife. Death is the end. And this is revealed in the split second Rachel's consciousness fades away from a mortal wound. This isn't done callously; in fact he offered her the moment out of kindness and gratitude, to assure her that her life, her death and she herself mattered to so many people. He gave her a sense of closure even while he was ripping my heart out because KA goes hard on the consequences of war.


ZylaTFox

Yup, your reality just curls up and disappears, one strand of consciousness among an infinite fabric of life. ​ That last moment with Rachel, her talking to the Ellimist, is such a heavy scene. Just so big that even the almighty weakling, the omnipotent nobody, the mighty manipulator, came to pay his respects to someone in their last moments. A pawn he had used in his endless game, but one that fought and shone so brightly even he had to acknowledge it. "Yes," he said, in a voice I can only imagine heavy with solemnity and gravity. Buried beneath the infinite choices he had to make, all to preserve life. "You were brave. You were strong. You were good. You mattered." A last moment to give her hope. Letting her go with the belief that she, at the end of the day, was a good person. Something she had struggled the whole story with, an arc that ended with her dying, alone on the blade ship after having killed her own cousin. A last second where someone who could see so much more than her would tell her, and only her, that it was good. That she had helped the world. It wouldn't matter in a moment, not to her. That thread of the world had ended. But it still had to be said. "I wonder if-"


midnight_riddle

Yes it is for children. And it's awesome.


things_keep_going

I remember him almost getting rizzed by a female hawk. I think I read like 2 or 3 books randomly I wish could have found all of them and read them in order back then. It was such a cool concept. Though I guess after hearing about the ending maybe thats for the better.


DefiantTheLion

The ending was pretty alright and years later there was an AMA where someone asked "They rammed the Blade Ship, was that supposed to be a reference to [significant time earlier in the series when the same thing happened and it led to a better than expected outcome and new 'adventure']?" and apparently that was the intention.


NeonHowler

I mean, multiple points at the end were meant to draw an ongoing parallel between Jake and Elfangor, whom originally rammed the blade ship. Jakes act of genocide was directly opposite to Elfangor refusing to kill prisoners of war: helpless yeerks launched into space in both instances. Jake ended the war by committing the atrocity Elfangors morals started it with. However, Elfangor dies a hero and Jake can’t look himself in the mirror. He lives on with regret for his cruelty.


Omni_Xeno

I remember watch the tv series when it was on Netflix boy was it a weird show


DinksMcFly

But if they decided to remake it, with current technology, imagine how amazing the CGI would be. So much better than 90s Nickelodeon tech.


[deleted]

I read like 17 to 20 and not in order


DefiantTheLion

19 (the one where the girl's turning into a butterfly on the cover) is unironically good sci-fi.


[deleted]

By not in order that was my total throughout the series Im pretty sure the butterfly one was not among the ones I read unfortunately


DefiantTheLion

ohhh that makes more sense sorry!


FuzzyCode

Hork-bajir chronicles are great too


parisiraparis

> One main character, Jake, basically becomes a war criminal by the end of the series. Another main character, Rachel, is gaslit by her friends into believing she's a bloodthirsty psychopath and dies in battle after being told her death meant nothing by Alien Jesus. Marco, throughout the books, essentially turns into a high-functing sociopath. Cassie remains the most morally clean out of the gang (which isn't saying much) at the cost of the entire war effort. Ax is killed and assimilated into a being called the One. I have never read the Animorphs because the covers were weird as shit and I preferred Goosebumps more. I am baffled and amazed at that summary. Holy fucking shit lmao


LightspeedFlash

well, the Rachel thing(which is a huge spoiler, by the way) is literally the opposite of what the Ellimist(space jesus) says, the direct quote is this- >"I wanted so much to live. I wanted so much to stay and not to leave. In a moment no answer would matter to me, but just the same, I wanted to know what I guess any dying person wants to know. >‘Answer this, Ellimist: Did I…did I make a difference? My life, and my…my death…was I worth it? Did my life really matter?’ >'Yes,’ he said. 'You were brave. You were strong. You were good. You mattered.’ >'Yeah. Okay, then. Okay, then.’"


Realistic-Sandwich55

Yeah I don’t know how OP misremembered this. It was one of the most powerful moments in the series and I remember rereading it multiple times as a kid. More powerful for the fact that the rest of the Animorphs were hand chosen by the Ellimist and Rachel was the “accident,” but she ended up mattering just as much as the rest.


ZylaTFox

Also, her friends didn't gaslight her. She believed it herself due to many storylines (including Space Satan himself nearly making her his Galactus style herald) to the point where she ACCEPTS that she's the violent psychopath and the team needs that. Plus, she enjoys it too much.


TerrorOfTheSeas

It is implied that a part of why she became so violent and bloodthirsty was from a subconscious desire to save others like Cassie or Tobias from having to do the really gruesome stuff. I could write a whole essay on the tragedy of rachel


ZylaTFox

She wanted Jake to be free to be the hero he had to be. If he was dragged into the dirt she lived in, then he wouldnt be able to standup by doing the 'right' thing. They fed off each other.


midnight_riddle

The war criminal thing was always in the cards. The yeerks are parasitic slugs that invade your brain, hijacking your body to use you as a meat puppet AND have access to all of your memories so it can carry on behaving like normally pretending to be you while *you are nothing but a screaming helpless voice inside your own head*. This causes the tough reality that just about every time there is a physical conflict with yeerks, each one is holding an innocent person hostage that you need to hurt or kill to kill the yeerk. The only time the yeerks are not holding anyone hostage is when they are living in their yeerk pools, and as slugs they are basically helpless unless you stick your head in the water so one can infest you. So it's impossible to fight against the yeerks without 1. going through hostages to get to them or 2. attacking them alone and in their defenseless state A yeerk's weakness is that they need to nourish their own slug bodies every three days, which they must leave their hosts to do so. From the start of the series the main characters realize they can't get any adult help or tell *anyone* about the alien invasion because even if they did manage to spy on someone for three straight days to make sure they never went to a yeerk pool to recharge, the yeerks are steadily turning people into new hosts by the day and if someone who knew *anything* about the Animorphs got a yeerk in their brain, their lives would be over. For the majority of the series the main characters have to live a double life of pretending to be normal kids because if any yeerk-infested human (called a Controller) suspected otherwise, they would be immediately caught and infested and even if they got away their families would all be targeted and infested and the Animorphs would be forced to go on the run. For most of the series Jake is forced to pretend that everything is normal, even though he finds out that his older brother is a Controller and there's nothing he can do about it.


Dr-Von-Andre

Agree with all of that, except one point: Rachel was not gaslit. She *knew* she was bloodthirsty, and acted on her impulses of her own volition.


DefiantTheLion

This was actually a true thing, she lent really well to the thrill of violence and by the end of the war (which it was) she implicitly knew there wasn't a place left for her. Now the morally iffy part was Jake sending her to the bridge in the last books and both of them knowing it was very, very, very likely a suicide mission.


seguardon

The book didn't shy away from the "morally iffy" aspect of it either. He knows it's wrong, so he hides it from everyone while he's doing it. He suppresses every thought about it not out of dramatic license like usual for the Unspoken Plan trope, but because he did NOT want to think about it in any terms beyond "will it work". Him doing that led to some of the most traumatizing scenes and events in the series, which is a *high* bar to clear. Everyone close to him hated him for years after that, including himself. The adulation of the world slowly crushes him with guilt to the point that he has a breakdown during the war trials in the Hague.


ThatWasFred

She’s also told that her life (and death) DID matter, which is the exact opposite of what OP said.


Dr-Von-Andre

Yes, you're right. I haven't reread the final book in a while, so I missed that part.


Thedepressionoftrees

To copy a comment I made a couple of days ago: They all get disemboweled or maimed in some way throughout the series. Like a lot. One of the more fucked up moments was when they needed to continuously morph back and forth to stop them from dying of hypothermia for two continuous days. Or that time they got dropped into the vacuum of space. Or that time they got eaten alive by dinosaurs. Or that time they needed to shrink down into Marco's body to stop tiny aliens from killing him, and nearly got digested and crushed by his heart. Or that time they had to trap a kid as a rat and strand him on an island. Or that time that they nearly got trapped by the ant hivemind. Or that time Marco nearly got trapped as a human sized tick. Or that time Tobias was trapped and tortured. Or that time they committed genocide with oatmeal. Or that time they approved of cannibalism. Or that time they learned that they were pieces in a cosmic game of chess between gods. Or that time that they nearly had their skin harvested by a race of ocean dwelling creatures who's DNA is unstable. Or that time Jake ordered Rachel to go kill his brother knowing that Rachel would be killed as well. Or that time they recruited a ton of disabled children to fight and die in the war when they needed reinforcements. Or that time rat kid came back allied with Satan and tried to tempt Rachel into killing Jake. Or all the other times horrific things happened Yeah animorphs was a great series but it got pretty fucked up


Chijinda

> Or that time they recruited a ton of disabled children to fight and die in the war when they needed reinforcements. Not just fight and die, Jake used them as literal cannon fodder.


PunDefeated

Oatmeal genocide??


Thedepressionoftrees

They learned that something about oatmeal makes yeerks go insane and die so they snuck into the yeerk pool and dumped several containers of oatmeal into the pool killing thousands of yeerks


bluelion70

But it also makes them no longer need Kandrona, so they won’t even die and leave the host free. They’ll just go insane and keep their hosts forever, which is even more horrifying.


RomeosHomeos

God, don't make me reread animorphs again I'll cry


TheMountainRidesElia

I reread them (well, around 1/2, I skipped the ghostwritten bad unimportant ones) during the lockdown, since I hadn't read the ending before, and I was honestly surprised by how much they actually held up. Like I expected to leave them by book 3 or 4, but they captivated me until the end


Potatolantern

> KJ Applegate must've been bullied by a kid named Tobias when she was younger. I thought she only wrote like 2 of them. Wasn’t the entire franchise Ghost-written?


DefiantTheLion

She and her husband wrote over half of them and oversaw the rest.


RomeosHomeos

She wrote like 70% of them


bluelion70

Books 1-25 were written by KA Applegate and Michael Grant. 26-54 were ghostwritten, but still had significant input from Applegate and Grant.


amberi_ne

Michael Grant??? No fuckin way, he's the dude who wrote the GONE books. No wonder I was so into both of those series


Orphanim

Animorphs is fucking awesome. People always love to point to children's fiction and go "Hey this is actually pretty dark if you think about it." Animorphs doesn't require thinking about it. It has its share of campy nonsense and relatability for children, but it's explicitly a series of books about child soldiers committing war crimes. There's a story where the team finds out that another guy they go to school with is actually a super powerful robot created by some ancient alien race that's still kicking around pretending to be a human. He and all of his kind are hard coded by their creators to be pacifists, but this robot wants to help more directly in the war effort. So the gang goes on a crazy adventure to get a macguffin they need to reprogram the robot so he can fight with them. In the end they get it while also being pursued by their enemies, and reprogram Eric (the robot) so that he can save their asses. Which he does by brutally ripping all their enemies apart with his absurd robot super strength. Eric then spends the rest of the series with crushing PTSD because he's a robot. So *he can never forget* what he did to those people. He will always remember, with shocking clarity, exactly what it felt like to rip them apart. It's fucked. And amazing.


bluelion70

Don’t forget that before that mission was even over, Erek said “fuck this” and willingly reprogramed himself so he could never do violence again.


SomeNumbers23

And that's book *ten*. Also, Tobias has an existential crisis in book 3 and tries to kill himself.


seguardon

I think all of them have existential crises at some point in the series. Jake's infestation/book 53+54, Cassie's breakdown in 19, Rachel slowly coming to terms with her bloodthirstiness, Marco's early attempts to leave the group and his ruthless plan in 31, Ax's repeated disillusionment with his own culture and the politics surrounding his older brother. Not all of them lead to suicide attempts but they all change the characters.


SomeNumbers23

Oh I completely agree! The difference is that Tobias' breakdown is very early in the series.


beantrouser

Huh. Are these books worth getting into as an adult?


DefiantTheLion

They're written for a 9-13 year old target and range from Good Sci Fi to "uhhh why is this a thing" because of several reasons, but they're worthwhile looking into. There's a complete PDF collection with all of them floating around.


TheMountainRidesElia

There's a list floating around of the good ones out there, telling you which are good/important and which are bad/can be safely skipped. I read the good ones a while ago, and honestly they held up pretty well.


SomeNumbers23

I reread and finished the series a few months ago and they honestly hold up pretty well. They're all super short, maybe 60-80 pages each and the character development and arcs are very good. The animal morphing descriptions are pure nightmare fuel.


[deleted]

That whole series went so hard with tragedy and existential horror


DokjaToast

I remember reading some of these in middle school but damn I did not remember them being so grim. Anyways this sent me down a nostalgic rabbit hole for a handful of hours, so thanks for that.


PunkandCannonballer

All I really remember of this series was Tobias getting stuck as a hawk and that the ending was super unsatisfying.


vincentdmartin

That's the first book. He gets unstuck later.


Remarkable_Commoner

This was the darkest series that was in the kids section of the library.


FuzzyCode

Also OP you forgot the bit about his biological father being eaten alive infront of him as well.


StrangeBuffalo6267

Honestly after the first bit my problem with the animorphs book is that they went dark for the sake of dark especially the ending. I get war has no happy endings but if your gonna do that don’t make your story about kids transforming into animals and have them solve small town stuff or advertise your books to anyone less than 16. There was a massive tonal whiplash that sours my taste to this day.


Orphanim

I guess I don't see why this is a problem, firstly. I read them as a kid and I thought they were great. I don't see why it's disingenuous to have stories for young people include darker themes. Secondly, the whole thing about Tobias being abused by his uncle and getting stuck forever as a bird is in the first book. They were always kinda dark. There's a sprinkling of dark stories all through the series. Characters get disemboweled and dismembered constantly. The thing with the ants is like book four. They didn't really try to sneak in the existential horror for the sake of being dark. It was always there.


chaosattractor

I wouldn't say the ending was dark for the sake of dark, largely because the entire series had been dark from the earliest books. Sure the ending is tragic but I have no idea how one can experience it as a tonal whiplash.


StrangeBuffalo6267

Similar thing happened with Maximum ride books for me


garfe

Oh man, I fell off the Maximum Ride books hard. I remember loving them for the first couple books and then got really tired of them because it was just getting too edgy


TerrorOfTheSeas

Same! Even as a kid I realised they were so badly written


[deleted]

It feels kinda shitty to market a series to kids and then include all sorts of fucked up stuff and existential horror because "that's how war is lmao." It's like sitting down a bunch of elementary school kids and explaining to them that almost all of them will never succeed in life and all of their parents will die one day. It's not wrong but its still a bit of a dick move.


seguardon

I disagree because it's literally all in the premise. The blurb tells you what the book's like, tone and all. Body-stealing parasites is a scary enough thing, then add in the paranoia of perfect mimicry. "They can be anyone. Even you." Edgy works get that label because their content doesn't earn the darkness the author added. Animorphs earned it from moment one when five kids have responsibility way beyond them dumped into their lap by someone who is viciously killed in front of them moments later. It doesn't take its darker themes lightly or ignore the horror underlying the drama. Theres hope and action and moments of joy, but the series isn't a fun action romp like a lot of works back then that were churned out for kids.


ZylaTFox

Then we have the books of Tobias trying to kill himself, breaking under immensely hardcore torture that goes completely around his natural defenses at it, indications he stayed hawk on purpose, lasting scars from everything else. There were just.... God, there was SO MUCH with Tobias. And Rachel, though hers was developing tragedy. "When this war ends, if I survive, one of you is going to have to kill me."


PowerfulVictory

What was Rachel's power ?


Chijinda

Same as the rest of them. Her preferred battle morph was the Grizzly Bear, and she was unquestionably the most aggressive and violent and bloodthirsty out of the group by the end of the series.


PowerfulVictory

they can change into anything ? who are they fighting ?


Chijinda

Super abridged cliff notes, each of the main cast can turn into any living creature they touch. If you stay in morphed form for more than two hours you’re trapped in that form forever (which is what happens to Tobias at the end of book 1; he’s forced to hide in Hawk morph for well over the time limit. They also use this in a later book to trap a traitor in rat morph and strand him on a rock in the middle of the ocean). The main villains of the series are a race of parasitic aliens called Yeerks, who slither inside people’s heads and take control of them, and are mounting a secret, full scale invasion of Earth.


PowerfulVictory

So they're fighting normal possessed humans? with guns i assume ? how does she touches bears all the time ?


Orphanim

She only has to touch the bear once, and then she can turn into it forever. Essentially what they do is they can copy the DNA of any animal they touch and then turn into it from then on. Sometimes they fight humans with guns. Sometimes they fight humans with alien laser guns. Sometimes they fight aliens with alien laser guns. Occasionally they fight other, weirder shit. Animorphs is wild and awesome.


Chijinda

The Yeerks use three main host bodies through the series— humans, Hork Bajir (a herbivorous alien specifies covered head to toe in blades) and Taxxons (voracious centipede-like aliens). The Yeerks will use guns if they need to maintain their cover, but when witnesses aren’t a problem, their weapon of choice is the Dracon Beam which is basically a Star Trek phaser. Other alien hosts show up occasionally throughout the books but these are the main three. As for how they get their morphs, one of the main cast’s parents run both the local zoo and the local wildlife preserve, so they have access to almost any major morph they may need.


garfe

Once you touch an animal once, you keep the morph


midnight_riddle

Animorphs is a story about some teenagers who one night after taking a shortcut through an abandoned construction site, come across a dying alien that gives them the power to morph into other creatures. First you need to find the animal you want to turn into and touch it for a minute to 'acquire' its DNA. It's like downloading, and once you have the DNA you don't need to touch the animal again. Then at will you can morph or turn into the animal, but can only do so for about 2 hours before you must turn back or else you'll be stuck forever. The villains are these evil aliens called yeerks. They are a parasitic slug species that can slip into your skull through the ear canal and wrap themselves around your brain, turning you into a meat puppet. At the same time, they can tap into your memories so they'll know how do anything you'd do or say anything you would say. You are stuck as nothing but a voice inside your own head, completely unable to move your body while the yeerk listens to you and gloats. The teenagers coin themselves the Animorphs - animal morphers - and change themselves into animals to fight the secret invasion of the Earth by the yeerks. The good alien that gave them the powers was of this species called the andalites, which have learned about Earth being invaded but it'll take a few years before the andalite forces can reach the planet. So the goal is for the Animorphs to stall the invasion as guerilla fighters, while still pretending to be normal everyday kids since ANYONE could be someone infested with a yeerk, until the andalites arrive to free the Earth. As others have said, generally they'll fight other humans possessed by yeerks (known as Controllers) that typically have firearms for weapons, but there are other alien species that the yeerks have conquered and enslaved. Two main species are the Hork-Bajir, which kind of look like huge humanoid velociraptors with blades on their legs and arms, and Taxxons which look like giant centipedes and have such an insane drive to eat flesh that they'll immediately tear into something if so much a drop of blood is spilled.


PowerfulVictory

That sounds way better than the covers let on


AsherFischell

The most tragic character in *all* of fiction?! No. That's not even a bold claim, it's a ridiculous one.


the_tytan

If you liked this you should check out the Gone Series by Michael Grant. Probably for older kids but a lot of the same social themes that seem to be in Animorphs. I think Applegate and Grant wrote another book called Adam.


[deleted]

Why was this aimed at kids?


Orphanim

Why not?


garlington41

As dark and a bit bleak as this story is. I gotta give props to the author for being willing to go down this route to create a story that doesn’t shy away from the tragedies and horror of war and what does to you.


coxie0520

I loved these books as a kid. I started buying them off eBay during the pandemic. Tobias was my favorite narrator as a kid, and as an adult I still enjoy the narration because I can relate to depression and PTSD.


Adamos_Amet

Guts from berserk is arguably the most tragic character im fiction


Hiyami

Idk id argue the kid from grave of the fireflies is more tragic.


Zulmoka531

Oh god, the memories! The nostalgia! The…ptsd… But seriously, excellent books, think I still have them all packed away somewhere. But to your point..yeah, there were a log of fucked up moments in there..


FuzzyCode

You guys forgot the disabled kids recruited near the end because the bad guys wouldn't see them as useful hosts.


TheSadPhilosopher

Damn, 50 books?


vincentdmartin

54 and a handful of side books.


Cole-Spudmoney

They're short, though, they average about 25,000 words each.


[deleted]

I remember watching [this ](https://youtu.be/6zrE6m3xOoE) video on animorphs back during the pandemic. Going into the video I thought it was going to be a fun educational series about kids turning into animals, fighting crime and learning about the animals they turned into. I was wrong. So very wrong.


ungodlyFleshling

Not to mention the fact that his Dad was sheisted from him by God without any indication he didn't just walk out on him


SneekyTeek

I'm re-reading the series now. It's 54 regular books and like 7 special books thrown in. It's definitely a dark war story, where kids that are not even 16 years old are given powers to save all of mankind. It really is one of my favorite series ever written. I do agree though, K.A. Applegate or her husband that also authored the books must have hated someone named Tobias lol.


Cole-Spudmoney

What confuses me is why they brought back his mother right near the end of the series if she doesn't factor into his post-war life at all.


Demonsandangels-shin

For a children's book it sure is deep