I have just finished the Everworld series and I have to talk about it

Ever since I finished the Animorphs series, I knew I had to read the other two series that K.A. Applegate wrote along with Michael Grant.

Unlike the animorphs series, I don't think I saw any of these covers in Scholastic or on store shelves – but if I had they didn't impress me. Truth me told, they don't impress me now – they're weird but not in the memorable way, and I wasn't really a fan.

Ugh, it's so hard to put my feelings on this series down into words. And I can't help but try to compare it to Animorphs, but that's just not fair. There really is no comparison. If I had to pick between reading 54 books of Animorphs (filler and all) vs these 12, I would take the animorphs, no question.

But, Everworld is not without it's charms. For starters, I think its greatest strength is the five protagonists, and how real they feel as people. Having read some of Grants solo work, I see a LOT of him in the series, and it comes across in how fleshed out these people feel. The Animorphs teens were like Saturday Morning Safe Cartoons in comparison to these 5 teens. That's not to say the Animorphs didn't face BRUTAL emotional moments, and handle the topics well – but these 5 just felt like they acted like real teenagers in comparison. They're complicated, have hangups, damage. They're horny. Each of them is an island, and you enjoy visiting each one.

Maybe that's what I should talk about first. What the story is about. It's about a group of teens, all drawn to this sexy, dangerous, mysterious girl named Senna Wales. The other four protagonists, David Levin, Christopher Hitchcock, Jalil Sherman, and April O'Brian all have their own unique connections to Senna – and they're all complicated relationships. They are all drawn together when Fenrir, Loki's son, appears in the real world, and steals her – drawing the four of them along with. But it is a half-life – They are drawn to this world where the old gods of the world fled, into medieval fantasy, but when they fall asleep, they return to their own bodies in the real world as well. They swing back and forth, updating one side of their consciousness on the updates of the other, torn between mundane reality and pantshitting terror.

That's the other thing – the setting. The horror in this setting is ramped up in different ways than the author's previous series. There's a few times, for example, where April is told (in the real world) that she's missing after being captured, and suddenly there's the very real possibility that she's being raped at that moment, and any time she could get updated and have to pretend like nothing is wrong. On top of that, they are in a world ruled by cruel, selfish gods, and magic is everywhere, incomprehensible and dangerous. For a solid half of the 12 books, they are mostly just running for their lives from deeply messed up situation to the next, and for the second half, they have a goal, and are still constantly moments from horrific, possibly eternal, hells. Special shoutout for when they get to actual 'Hel', that book is especially horrifying. These books specialize in fantasy horror, and very vivid descriptions, as well as focusing much more on the inner turmoil and motivations of each character – better, in some ways, than animorhps handled it.

I don't think that in all 54 books of animorphs, sex is even brought up once – but damn if it's not brought up a lot in Everworld, in a variety of contexts. The way each books series handles the premise it begins with, and the ways it plays with being a hero, is also treated vastly different. For example, in Animorphs, Jake is the defacto leader because everyone knows and trusts him, and even though they know they're being selfish by putting that role on him, he takes it up because he has to. In Contrast, David takes of the role of leader because he's such a coward that he feels like he constantly has to prove himself – and the others not only take advantage of his hangups by letting him take the lead so they can blame him for everything that happens, but they spend half the books bitching about and resenting his leadership too – and he lets them, because if he gives up the facade of a brave leader even for a moment, he'll have nothing. As for the premise, in most YA fantasy novels, the protagonists usually fall into a deadly situation, have a mysterious guide which is quickly removed from them, and they grow to be heroes. Not in Everworld! They get tricked, used the entire time and they know it, are a literal wrecking ball plowing through Everworld destroying civilizations in their wake, and the most heroic they ever get is supporting each other.

The problems, though. There's so many problems. The series was OBVIOUSLY cut short – cut SO short that it stops basically right before what would be (in another series) another book or two, finishing off the main conflict. It's annoying because they spend the first 6 or so books just faffing about, almost dying, and once they finally get a plan, spend the next 6 books trying to live long enough to enact said plan. There are two main antagonists, and only ONE of them is PARTIALLY dealt with. How the series ends is instead shifted to focus on choosing what kind of life each of them wants to live, deep down. It's a terrible, terrible shame to see all these interesting plot threads that looked like they were leading somewhere just get left dangling, or resolved too quickly. Aside from that, the setting itself is just far less compelling than it should be. The series starts off strong, and just doesn't quite live up to its potential.

I am glad I read it, though. To me, the series is like one of those movies that you know isn't good, but you somehow love it all the more for it's flaws? It's dark, vivid, and fascinating, in a way wholly unique to itself – it revels in its horror in ways that I've never seen in teen fiction. Even if it is flawed – I think it deserves attention.

Now, As I move on from Child Soldiers, to Fantasy Horror – I now move on to their final series, the Sci-fi Body Horror extravaganza – Remnants.