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The Empress of All Seasons by Emiko Jean

Each generation, a competition is held to find the next empress of Honoku. The rules are simple. Survive the palace's enchanted seasonal rooms. Conquer Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall. Marry the prince. All are eligible to compete--all except yokai, supernatural monsters and spirits whom the human emperor is determined to enslave and destroy. Mari has spent a lifetime training to become empress. Winning should be easy. And it would be, if she weren't hiding a dangerous secret. Mari is a yokai with the ability to transform into a terrifying monster. If discovered, her life will be forfeit. As she struggles to keep her true identity hidden, Mari's fate collides with that of Taro, the prince who has no desire to inherit the imperial throne, and Akira, a half-human, half-yokai outcast. Torn between duty and love, loyalty and betrayal, vengeance and forgiveness, the choices of Mari, Taro, and Akira will decide the fate of Honoku in this beautifully written, edge-of-your-seat YA...

Megamorphs 3: Elfangor's Secret by K. A. Applegate

The Drode offers the Animorphs a chance to stop a Yeerk from changing history beyond recognition. They follow him through time, tracing hundreds of years of slaughter, sorrow, and gore. The tone swings between absurdity and horror.

All of the Animorphs react differently to the mission and to the cost proposed by the Drode. We see a stark example of how Cassie and Marco anticipate Jake's thinking, but in different ways. Because it switches frequently between perspectives we get the chance to see different reactions to nearly the same event. I appreciate how each of them has different ways of processing similar information, and also how they each pick up on different things around them. This book does a lot to develop Cassie, Marco, and Ax, in particular, as they tend to be more difficult to read in books which they do not narrate. Cassie is still dealing with events in The Departure, clearly not feeling absolved by her later actions in The Sickness. "Cassie, the killer with a conscience. Kill 'em, then cry over 'em."

The Animorphs (Jake, Marco, Rachel, Tobias, Cassie, and Aximili) stand together

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