The Hork-Bajir Chronicles

By: K.A. Applegate

Narrated by: Michael Crouch, Bahni Turpin, Mark Turetsky, Natasha Soudek

Length: 5 hrs and 27 mins

Publisher's summary

Dak Hamee is a unique Hork-Bajir. His people call him a seer. He learns more quickly and completely than the rest of his docile race. Hork-Bajir like him are born once a generation.

Aldrea is a young Andalite. Daughter of the notorious Prince Seerow. It is only after she and her family are sent to the Hork-Bajir home world that she begins to fight the Yeerks—and, with Dak's help, ultimately discovers their hideous plan.

Esplin 9466 is the Yeerk that will become the feared Visser Three. He has set out to defeat the Hork-Bajir, and begin the building of the Yeerk Empire.

This story chronicles the fierce Hork-Bajir wars in a time before the Animorphs.

©1998 Katherine Applegate (P)2023 Scholastic Inc. All rights reserved.

Weird Voice Acting

They used a female voice for a male character, one that has had a male voice actor in the past no less. The female sounding Yerk is a male in case you're reading this before hand.

Unusual choice for Esplin's narrator

The narrators for Aldrea and Dak Hamee took a little bit of getting used to, but I settled in soon enough. Getting used to Esplin's narrator took a lot longer, though. Esplin is referred to as "he" in one of the final chapters of the book. Most fans consider Esplin to be male because the only female host he ever took was [SPOILER ALERT]

Aldrea, and that was only barely and never got completed before Esplin's previous host pulled him out of Aldrea's ear at the last second. All of Esplin's other hosts, before that time and afterward, were male (his first Gedd, the two Hork-Bajir, and later Alloran). I guess Melissa Ellard (the producer) wanted to do something different just for the sake of being unexpected.

My first Animorphs disappointment

Animorphs is my all-time favorite series, and The Hork-Bajir Chronicles is my favorite story among them, and I assumed the audio books could do no wrong, but I was sadly disappointed.
The only issue with this audio book is voice actors, and, sadly, it's a big issue. I got this audiobbook the day it released, but I could barely get through it. Aldrea's VA is monotonous, dull, average, and speaks in a very odd, very annoying cadence.
Dak's VA is passable, neither bad nor good. I do wish he would have done a typical Hork-Bajir voice, though, as he sounds more like an average Joe at 7/11 than an alien.
And Visser Three... what can I say? Now, don't get me wrong, Natasha Soudek is one of my favorite audio book VA's, they really brought Danielle Tozer to life for me in the Dreadnought series, and they're amazingly talented... but they just aren't Visser Three.

I simply can't understand the VA choices made here? What was wrong with the regular six VA's? Were they all busy? Or were their checks getting too big? I simply can't understand the decision to change VA's.

Why couldn't Sisi play Aldrea again? She played her already she knows the character and the voice, why not bring her back? And while I'm on that, why didn't they have Michael play Dak? He's already doing the prolog and epilog, he's already there! He does Hork-Bajir voices very well. And McCloud Andrews, he should just have been Visser Three, again. He's voiced him in literally almost every Jake book, just cast him as Visser Three!

This is the first time I won't be giving an Animorphs audiobbook a 5-star review, and it's for me favorite book in the series, and it's disappointing.
I'm disappointed in this book. Hopefully they'll stick to the main VA's for the rest of the companion books going forward.