Yeah. Every book is so formulaic, everyone that hates Sonic Rush's level design would have a heart attack after reading three of these books. The books can be summed up as "Power Rangers, but written by someone that hates Power Rangers and wants to write a grittier version". The enemy is still a hammy idiot, the villainous redshirts are still pretty much worthless, the heroes are still dumb kids, and the status quo during arcs is enforced so hard, there's a scene in episode 12-ish where after a crappy slog through a rainforest, Red Ranger's friends die, then he throws a spear into the face of Bootleg Voldemort and time resets to earlier that morning because potatoes.



Here's the formula these lazy-ass books follow. While one or two books might be able to be somewhat fun on their own, the formula is so overused that if you've read one, you've practically read 70% of the plot points used in the entire series right there. It's like the writer KNEW most people would only read the 1-4 of these in their school libraries in their lifetime.



First, we get the hook: The heroes establish their characters and the tone just in time to give you exposition and whiplash, or more frequently, turn into animals to do something stupid that risks blowing their cover and dooming themselves, and since they're the planet's only hope, the whole planet and all of humanity. Like turning into an elephant to attack and scare a mean ringmaster, or turning into a Gorilla to fight off some muggers, or turning into a mouse to see why your "Make the mouse get the cheese in the maze" science project isn't working. Usually when better options that don't require morphing were available, like "Call an animal protection agency on the ringleader's ass" or "Throw your wallet in one direction and run in the other" or "Look up and see that a fan is blowing the scent of the cheese away from the mouse". If it's a Tobias book, he flies around. Take a drink every time thermals is said. Then, once that utterly pointless hook is over and done with, the narrator of the book speaks directly to you and tells you about the alien brainslugs, the world, "It's reeeeeeeal! This isn't a fictional story, it's reeeeeeal! You can put the book down now or take the red pill and realize this book is reeeeeeeeal!", yada yada daze.



The "Any human could actually contain a brain slug!" thing the story keeps hammering into you falls flat when you realize these kids regularly do stupid BS like this.



The main five (And the "Hilariously quirky" Jar Jar Binks character that is Ax, sixth ranger and member of the Obligatory Space Elves aliens. Despite how absurdly he and all other Space Elves that transformed into humans act, only the heroes get to notice what Elves disguised as humans act like) show off which ranger they are, talk about something the eeeeevil cult The Sharing (The Sharing is an evil cult) is doing this week, and they go try to foil the villain's plans of the week. Turning into a highly specific animal helps. The description of morphing is supposed to be disgusting and ugly, but Cassie the Mary Sue gets to look pretty and get angel wings or whatever while everyone else has malformed part-bird faces. When Cassie's done getting shilled for being The Best Ever(TM), and the writer is done trying to put you in the predictable stereotypical mindset of a predictable stereotypical animal... Shit goes sideways, predictably. There's gory violence that would only shock the really young kids, and because all injuries get autohealed when you transform from animal to human or human to animal, the injuries never matter. They're really just there to "Prove" the story is Not For Kids(TM), like all the scenes where one Evil Brute Alien gets disemboweled and the Evil Hungry Aliens go eat that guy's entrails because lmao what even is military discipline. If the heroes fail, they'll go back home and be sad and edgy PTSD emos and hide it well or hide it poorly depending on a coin toss, then goto 3. If the heroes succeed, goto 3.



3. The evil villain is doing something evil, like trying to chop down the forest near Cassie's home, or pumping pollution into the ocean, or using their headmaster as a puppet, or trying to kidnap people and put brain slugs in their ear. The heroes will fight the Eeeeeevil Aliens, do poorly, and they'll either fail or only sorta-succeed (like saving 2 people while letting over 30 stay doomed). If it's a Cassie episode, everyone succeeds with flying colors and we get a cliche Everyone Laughs ending. The aliens get sprayed by a skunk or whatever and everyone laughs at them for suffering because "Haha we told them grape juice gets rid of skunk spray and Bootleg Voldemort is purple now hahahaha". Nobody ever thinks to try killing the aliens while they're in this state because nobody in this series ever thinks. Especially the writer.



This series is full of plot holes, the big kind that renders the story completely meaningless because "Why don't they just X?" becomes what you think the whole time, instead of "Oh no, looks like Jake and Cassie are in trouble! They might actually die! Oh wait no they're fine, just saddened a little more". For example, there's a part where they meet Space God, who can create any animal regardless of physics or possibility. NOBODY thinks to say "Hey, can you make us some badass alien monsters to turn into, so we can compete with Bootleg Voldemort and the Fanmade Digimon he so often turns into?".



There's a Space God and Space Devil fighting in a game of Cosmic Chess, but this just exists to give bullshit asspulls an in-universe explanation, rather than exploring any deep themes. This series never explores deep themes, it only pretends to. Star Wars: Clone Wars did deep themes better than this crappy series.



Fun trivia, The Space Elves known as the Andalites look like the stupidly busy things they're described as (Blue centaurs with Greedo's head, no mouth, and a fast poisonless scorpion tail. This description somehow requires 1-2 pages every time) because in the story's first draft, the one published to Schooltastic, they looked like stereotypical The Greys aliens. Yes, really. The publisher said "Make them more original", so she made them as busy as she could to ensure, in her own words, "No TV series would ever be able to animate one". Funny, considering the fact that the TV Series based on this sucked even more than the books, but in the stereotypical "Bad live action kids show" way and not this fundamentally broken Sword Of Truth-tier clusterfuck way, and she directly insulted Nickolodeon in a later book with a character saying they could never get a TV show based on them to be good.



Fans of these books will praise anything they can about these books, because like all fans of bad serieses, they don't want to admit they were wrong all along. "Wow, the good aliens aren't perfect good guys!", they'll say, as if that's never been done before and done better. "Wow, this kid's book is scary!", they'll say, as if that's never been done before and done better. "Wow, this series is really dark!", they'll say, as if other dark kids shows weren't better. "Wow, this series does this highly specific children's plot very well!", they'll say when all else fails, because as far as I'm aware, nobody ever wrote a Magical Realm book series that integrates his or her TF, Guro, PTSD, Sadfic, Furry, Feral Furry, and Hurt/Comfort Fic fetishes so thoroughly into the plot of a book aimed at children young enough to consider "Not for kids!" the best label a kid's book could loudly and proudly give itself.