When Erek approached the Animorphs with news of a secret underwater Yeerk project, it should've been just another mission. But Visser One has returned to Earth to
oversee it - Visser One, the Yeerk infesting the brain of Marco's mother, a fact he's witheld from everyone except Jake. He insists he's fine, but inside Marco is falling
apart. Part of him knows that his mother is as good as gone, that once the Yeerks enslave a host it's until death, while another part fantasizes about saving her from
the prison of her own brain. If ever the Animorphs go into battle against her...
But this is just an investigation, a quick peek to figure out what the Yeerks are up to. With luck, Marco won't even see his mother. But since when has luck been on his
side?
Review
Another "holding pattern" book, mostly notable for introducing a new alien species (the Leeran, who will figure into at least one later book) and sending Marco through
the wringer again over his mother's predicament and his own inability to help her. While little enough new ground was covered, the action kept things clicking along...
and, heck, as a pseudowriter I can understand the desire to draw out a character's suffering for maximum dramatic effect (not to mention page count.)
Ever since their fateful encouner with Prince Elfangor in the abandoned construction site, when they learned of the Yeerk invasion, Jake and his friends bore the
terrible truth alone. Who could they turn to, when anybody might have an alien parasite wrapped around their brains? Who could they trust except each other? Who else
would ever believe that the Earth was under attack?
Now, they've found something they never expected: proof that someone else knows about the Yeerks, on a website dedicated to exposing the invasion.
Jake doesn't know whether to be relieved or terrified. While he can't help suspecting a trap, part of him longs for someone else to turn to, someone else to take the
reins of Earth's pitiful resistance. But first they have to find the person behind the website, and if they're friend or foe.
Review
Never short on action, this book returns to the emotional resonance and internal conflicts that raise the series above the average sci-fi serial. Jake makes some
serious mistakes, both in battle tactics and in handling his own crew, as he's forced to quash his own reluctance beneath the mantle of leadership. A new foe is
introduced, and though less ultimately comes of this enemy than one might expect, it still adds a new dimension to the battle. Having read the whole series, I can see
some foreshadowing of events to come here. (I also see more evidence of how fast technology's progressed; Marco's 56k dial-up modem was considered top-of-the-line when
this book originally appeared in 1998.)
When the Animorphs saw the man leaping from the high-rise, they thought he was just depressed, or insane. But when Rachel's lawyer mother gets hired by his family
to formalize his commitment to an asylum, she hears that his delusions involve an alien that lives in his brain... a Yeerk.
It turns out that their enemies have a new weakness - they can become addicted to instant maple-and-ginger oatmeal. Only the addiction drives them insane, even as it
eliminates their need to leave their host to feed on Kandrona rays at the Yeerk pool every three days. If someone were to sneak some oatmeal into the food supplies at
the pool, it would seriously cripple the invasion... but at a high cost to the hosts, who would be left with a gibbering slug wrapped around their brains for the rest
of their lives. It would also mean another trip to the underground Yeerk pool, a place so terrifying that Rachel still has nightmares about it. But what kind of warrior
would she be if she gave in to her own fear?
Review
Once again, the Animorphs find themselves entangled in the thorny, shifting moralities of war, a foe every bit as devious and daunting as the fight against the Yeerks
themselves. Rachel's ruthlessness clashes with her friends' reservations about exploiting their enemy's weakness, a ruthlessness fueled in part by her own attempts to
overcome fear by pretending she doesn't feel it. How far will she really go to ensure victory, or to save her friends? Rachel has to find out the hard way here, in her
equivalent of Jake's crisis in the previous book.
Aximili's been stranded on Earth for months, but though he has a fight and a purpose, he doesn't have a home. Even among his friends, the Animorphs, he is an outsider,
an alien, on a world where he doesn't belong. But he must force himself to accept the truth: until the Yeerks are gone, or until another Andalite warship comes, he'll
never be among his own people. Or so he thinks.
While in mosquito morph, Ax and the Animorphs find themselves suddenly in Zero-Space, the nondimension where extra mass goes during small morphs... and where
faster-than-light travel is possible. They've been caught in the wake of an Andalite warship. Ax is thrilled to be back among his own species. But the ship is on its way
to Leera, to fight the Yeerks. It cannot detour to Earth to return the human Animorphs. And something is about to go very wrong with his own homecoming... something that
makes Aximili decide once and for all who his people truly are.
Review
Ax's books tend to be weaker than the rest. This one earned extra marks for moving the battle beyond Earth, a reminder that, even as the Animorphs fight Visser Three,
an entire galaxy is at war, pitting entire species against each other. That war, as Ax learns the hard way, isn't going well for the Andalites, in no small part due to
his species' ongoing refusal to work closely with its allies... not to mention a growing number of traitors in their own ranks. In his previous book (The Alien),
Ax claimed to put his faith in "Prince" Jake above the Andalite superiors he temporarily contacted, but coming face-to-face with his own kind puts that loyalty to the
test. On top of his inner struggles, he and the Animorphs find themselves pitched headlong into a war on alien soil. A high-action romp across Z-space, continuing a good
streak in the series.
The Animorphs never should've been there. It was a human crisis - a downed nuclear submarine - with no ties to the Yeerk invasion. But it's hard to have a power like
morphing and not use it to help when needed. How were they supposed to know that one of the warheads had been damaged? How could they have anticipated it exploding...
and how could they have predicted what would happen when they were hit by the shockwave?
They couldn't have known. Never in a million years... or, to be more precise, sixty-five million years.
Some combination of the nuclear blast and being in morph opened what the Andalites call a Sario Rip: a hole in time. The Animorphs find themselves stranded in the
late Cretaceous Age, facing some of the most dangerous predators ever to walk the Earth. But they aren't the only strangers to this prehistoric land... and
Tyrannosaurus Rex may be the least of their worries.
Review
It's a little hard to read this without thinking about how much has changed about dinosaur theory since this book was written. Everything from the appearance of
dinosaurs to the ultimate cause of extinction has been turned on its head in the past few years. It's also notably unlikely that, given the spotty nature of fossil
records and the fact that we know next to nothing about the external appearances of most dinosaurs, the Animorphs consistently encounter creatures they can readily
identify on sight from childhood toys, library books, and movies. Those troubles aside, this volume feels slightly less contrived than the first Megamorphs, even if
dinos are a blatant marketing tactic. It maintains the character dynamics, conflicts, and action level that the series is known for. And, marketing tactic or not,
dinosaurs are cool... cool enough to rate a solid Good, despite some plausibility issues.
Cassie has always been the heart of the Animorphs, the moral compass that kept them from straying over the line from defenders of freedom to cold-blooded killers.
But she no longer knows where that line is. Once a well of compassion, she has lost herself in the pitiless minds of predators. Once a pacifist, she has followed her
friends into ruthless battle. Once a lover of Nature's harmony, she has seen the constant struggle for survival that is the animal world. Everything's going gray and
dead inside her. Cassie cannot seem to care about anything anymore. She doesn't want to - she can't - live like this.
So she walks away. From the battle. From her friends. From the fight against the Yeerks.
But walking away doesn't undo the changes that months of battle have wrought. The emptiness stays with her. Even her hopes of burying herself in work at the family
wildlife clinic are dashed when she learns that their corporate sponsor has pulled funding. Then she finds herself lost in the wilderness... lost, but not alone. With
her is the young girl Karen - a girl who knows more than she should about Cassie, about war, about the Yeerks and the Andalites.
Karen is a human-Controller. She knows who - and what - Cassie is. And Cassie finds her wavering convictions put to their ultimate test.
Review
Having seen the mighy Andalite image tarnished so severely in Book 18, and how peacable Cassie lost herself so completely in the mind of a Tyrannosaurs Rex
in Megamorphs 2, this culminates a character transformation that epitomizes the series' strongest suit: its willingness to address the gray areas that other
series (young adult and grown-up alike) often gloss over. Not every Andalite is Prince Elfangor, but not every Yeerk is Visser Three... and even in the midst of
all-out war, there can be a time and a place - even a need - to recognize that the enemy may not always be who (or what) they appear to be. This book is less about
the fighting and more about the complex issues of the Yeerk war. It loses a half-star for a bit of a logic hiccup at the end, and the fact that the escaped leopard
subplot wasn't strictly necessary; a mountain lion or other native predator would've filled its role nicely. Overall, a beautiful tale.
Since becoming an Animorph, school has become the less-stressful part of Marco's life... or, rather, the place where stress comes from ordinary things, like pop quizzes
and girls and lunchroom bullies, instead of alien parasites and watching his own body melt and distort into animal form. But then he sees a new kid on campus with something
very, very strange in his backpack. Strange, yet all too familiar. It's the blue cube that Prince Elfangor used to create the Animorphs, transferring the Andalite morphing
technology to five human kids. They had thought that it was destroyed when the Yeerk Dracon beams reduced the dead prince's spaceship to molecular dust.
Apparently not.
Then Erek the Chee brings grim news: a top-secret world summit meeting is coming to the area, placing six world leaders within the Yeerk's grasp. Only one of them's already
a Controller... but Erek doesn't know who. Just one more helping of stress atop Marco's already-overfull plate.
As the Animorphs race to secure the blue cube before their mission to the summit meeting, the boy David - oblivious to what he's found - posts an ad online offering the
"strange box" he found for sale. With the Yeerks closing in, the Animorphs have two choices: steal the box and abandon the boy to his fate, or use its power as Elfangor
did to add David to the team. With time running out and the biggest mission they've ever faced closing in on them, they don't have much time to decide...
Review
This begins the David trilogy, one of the great moments of the series as a whole. The first book struggles a bit under the extra load of establishing a new character
and setting up a large-scale mission. It also ends on a cliffhanger. The Animorphs' early read off David is mixed, to say the least: he's a loner who keeps a cobra for a
pet and doesn't respond well to authority, but beneath it all he seems to be just as scared and lost as any of them were that first fateful night in the construction site.
While Marco can sympathize with his position, somewhere deep down he senses the trouble that's to come... but, considering his own early issues with being an Animorph,
he doesn't feel right voicing those misgivings, especially when the others seem almost relieved to have an extra pair of morph-capable hands available going into their
most dangerous mission to date. If he'd stuck to his guns, perhaps things would've gone differently... but that's for Book 21.
As a closing note, this book starts the advertizing blitz for the short-lived Animorphs TV series on Nickelodeon (from 1998.) While it featured impressive CGI
morphing effects, it short-changed the aliens - even the plot-pivotal Andalites - and the scripts dumbed down and glossed over the best parts of the books. (They also
kept bumping the air times without notice or reason.) I still keep expecting a reboot, if not a film franchise... preferably all-animated. The guts for a good show are
right there on the page, if someone could manage it.
Six have become seven. Adding David to the team, giving him the ability to morph, was as much an act of desperation as a leap of faith. With the Yeerks threatening
to infest the heads of six major world nations at a nearby international summit, they need all the help they can get... and, with his parents taken and Visser Three
hunting him down for the blue Andalite box, David had nowhere else to go. If only Jake could be sure it was the right thing to do...
David may be an Animorph now, but he's still an enigma. A not entirely welcome enigma, either. He second-guesses orders, acts on his own, and even uses morphs to break
the law when left to his own devices. Jake even gets the uneasy feeling that David thinks he ought to be the new leader of the team. Maybe it's just the impossible
stress he's been under. Maybe it's just a phase. Maybe it's Jake's imagination. Or maybe David will be the greatest mistake the Animorphs have ever made...
Review
Jake takes up the tale of David in the middle book of the trilogy, as the newest Animorph shows his ugly true colors. His job as leader of the team has never been
easy, but dealing with a traitor in their ranks - a traitor who wouldn't even be among them had he not been willing to give David a chance - twists in his gut like no
decision he has made to date. And, of course, their goal of stopping the Yeerks from infesting major world leaders only gets harder by the minute. It all sets up a
humdinger of a finale in Book 22.
They thought they were doing the right thing. They thought they were giving a scared, lost boy a chance to fight back. They took a leap of faith... and were betrayed.
David, the newest Animorph, turned on the very hands that tried to help him. Now, with Tobias gone and Jake bleeding to death after a run-in with David's lion morph,
Rachel snaps. She's already lost her normal life to the Yeerk war. If this snot-nosed, arrogant punk thinks he can take away her friends, her comrades-in-arms... he'll
pay in blood. But there's one problem with her plans for vengeance. Visser Three, with powerful alien technology and hordes of Controllers at his disposal, has spent
months hunting for the Animorphs without success. How are five kids going to stop someone with their own power to morph - someone who, unlike them, isn't afraid to
kill?
Review
The David trilogy wraps up with Rachel's tale. Even as the hate boils up inside her, she finds herself standing back and seeing just what the war has done to her, the
girl whose greatest thrill in life used to be a perfect gymnastics routine or a weekend sale at The Gap... and what the war has done to her friends. None of them are the
people they used to be, and it's unlikely they'll ever go back to their old selves. A subplot about a critically-injured relative throws these changes into stark relief,
as the cousins Jake and Rachel find themselves surrounded by "normal" people reacting to tragedy in a normal way. In light of the series finale, there's some very strong
foreshadowing here of the lives that await them when the battle's done. Despite her own horror at the thoughts she's capable of, Rachel has to make peace with herself.
With David, however, no peace or compromise is possible. I've always considered the David trilogy to be the highlight of the series, and rereading it hasn't diminished my
opinion.
Aldrea is the daughter of the Andalite Prince Seerow, whose good intentions in offering the Yeerks higher technology backfired horribly. Because of him, the parasitic
Yeerks have spread across the galaxy, enslaving millions of aliens in the expansion of their empire. Relegated to humiliating assignments because of Seerow's mistake,
Aldrea and her family wind up on the planet of the Hork-Bajir, a simple tree-dwelling species whose towering, blade-festooned appearance belies their peaceful nature.
No beings as unintelligent as these could be of any significance, which is why Seerow's family is sent to study them.
Dak Hamee is a Hork-Bajir seer, a rare genetic anomaly with intelligence to rival the Andalites. The Hork-Bajir believe that a seer is born when the people need to learn
a new way, but Dak has no idea what he was born to teach them. His joy at finding his purpose - introducing his race to the Andalites and their higher knowledge - turns
into a nightmare when the Yeerks arrive, and the Hork-Bajir look to their seer for guidance.
Esplin 9466 is the Yeerk who eventually becomes Visser Three, telling the story from his perspective. He is both excited and ambitious as his people explore new hosts
and start building their Empire... and the Hork-Bajir might prove to be the greatest find in their growing arsenal of enslaved species.
Review
Anyone who reads the Animorphs series knows how this one has to end, but it actually comes across as an upbeat tale. Dak Hamee loses his people many times over,
and not just to the Yeerks who covet their bladed bodies as the ultimate warrior hosts. Aldrea must overcome her own anger and prejudices to do what's right. Even the
parts of the story told by Esplin 9466 were interesting, filling in a side of the struggle which the series has only touched on elsewhere. Despite the darkness, hope
springs eternal. People who haven't read Animorphs probably wouldn't understand it, but I have, and I'm the reviewer here, so I gave it top marks.
When Tobias became trapped in a red-tailed hawk morph, nobody seemed to notice. His father dead, his mother vanished, Tobias had been bounced back and forth between
indifferent relatives who hardly cared about him when he was around. That's part of the reason why, when the Ellimist restored his ability to morph, Tobias remained a
hawk; even though he could morph to his old body, regaining his humanity at the cost of his wings, he had nowhere to go, nobody who wanted him.
Now someone's been asking about him at school. Some woman named Aria claims to be his cousin, and a lawyer says he has documents pertaining to Tobias's real father...
who may not be the man he thought he was. This comes just as his life in the wild takes a turn for the worse, with a rival red-tail encroaching on his meadow and prey
growing scarce. Tobias loves his wings, and doesn't want to sacrifice his ability to morph, to help fight the Yeerks, but somewhere deep inside his human self he yearns
for a family he never had. Risk death and starvation as a hawk, or risk his heart as a human - which will Tobias choose?
Review
This book seems to mostly be an excuse to relate information to Tobias that readers learned in The Andalite Chronicles, concerning his unusual parentage. It
starts a downslope in the series, with some elements feeling forced: his sudden, crippling empathy for his prey, for instance, reads like a plot device, not a natural
outgrowth of the character. Still, Tobias has always been a tragic character, the first casualty of the Yeerk war, so seeing him forced to suffer again isn't entirely
unexpected. On the whole, it's fun enough, but not quite at the level of the previous books. (Then again, the David trilogy's a hard act to follow.)
When Cassie saw the tiny spaceship stuck to the old water pump, she didn't know what to think of it. The pump was where she'd hidden the Andalite blue box, but surely
nobody could know it was there - and a ship the size of a child's toy could hardly be a threat, anyway. But the Helmacrons, petty-minded beings bent on galactic conquest,
have a few tricks up their little sleeves. For one thing, their ships can detect the "transformational energy" of a person in morph. For another, their shrink rays pack
quite a whallop. Cassie, Marco, and Tobias learn that the hard way. But being reduced to the size of an insect doesn't excuse one from stopping alien invaders, be they
parasitic Yeerks or pint-sized Helmacrons.
Review
Here, the series hits what can properly be termed a "lull." This book reads like a filler episode, full of superficial silliness and Mexican standoffs and half-funny
jokes. Cassie's usually the introspective one, searching for the moral options, but here she's just another Animorph, caught up in a goofy misadventure that doesn't advance
the mytharc or the characters in any significant fashion. While nothing outright embarrassing happens here, nothing particularly great does, either.
Marco thought his week was going bad when he totally blew a date with Marian, one of the cutest girls in school. (But, really, a Beethoven concert? How was he supposed
to stay awake?) Then Erek the Chee turned up with bad news: the Yeerks are working on a way to remote-beam Kandrona rays via satellite relays. If they can pull it off,
then their greatest weakness - the need to leave their hosts every three days to visit the underground Yeerk pool - will be history. The Animorphs have to crash that
party... only Erek doesn't know where it is, or what defenses the Yeerks have waiting for them. All they know it's somewhere remote... very remote, where alien ships
won't be noticed.
Which explains how the Animorphs find themselves on the ice-blasted shores of the Arctic Ocean. It doesn't explain how they're supposed to survive, when the weather alone
is nearly as deadly as their alien enemies...
Review
Not quite as silly and pointless as Book 24, it nevertheless continues an aimless coast in the series. Like the previous book, it's more about the "wow" gimmick - in
this case, the "field trip" to the Arctic Circle - than about character growth, or even the fight against the Yeerks. I've heard rumors that ghostwriters were responsible
for a good chunk of the series, especially this middle stretch; that might explain the autopilot overtones, but it's not really an excuse, as I'm sure there are decent
ghostwriters out there who could've managed to pep up even a canned plot like this one. Still, it's not outright embarrassing, even if there's a slight continuity
hiccup.
On an unrelated note, this book features an ad for the late, lamented Watchers series by Peter Lerangis (reviewed elsewhere), which was axed by Scholastic
after six books and never had a chance to develop as it should have. There's a certain irony in its appearance in a book that's essentially padding.
Jake and his friends thought they had enough on their plates, fighting the Yeerk invasions and the devious Visser Three. Then, the Ellimist returned. Capable of
folding space and time on a whim, his seemingly omnipotent powers bound by rules no human mind can comprehend, he has helped in the past... but never as expected. Now,
they learn that the Ellimist has an enemy, the entity known as the Crayak. The entire war with the Yeerks, it seems, is but a small skirmish in the eons-long,
galaxy-wide conflict between two forces so powerful that open conflict would tear the space-time continuum itself apart. Thus, their habit of fighting through proxies:
whole species, like the Yeerks, or even individuals, like the Animorphs. The Ellimist needs seven champions to fight against soldiers of the Crayak, to determine the
fate of an entire alien species light-centuries removed from the Yeerks. On his side will stand the five human Animorphs, Aximili the Andalite, and Erek the Chee. The
Crayak sends seven members of a species whose names the Animorphs already know, the species that slaughtered the Chee's creators: the Howlers. Winning will hurt the
Crayak, and (it is implied) the Yeerks. Lose, and the Animorphs will never have existed...
Review
This brings the series back up to (nearly) its top level. Jake finds himself risking his life and the lives of his friends for aliens who utterly repulse him, fighting
an enemy that has never lost a battle in thousands upon thousands of years, and all on the vague promise of the Ellimist that a victory will, somehow, help weaken, if
not defeat, the Yeerks. He also must deal with Erek, whose programming prevents him from harming even the murderous Howlers, and Ax, whose momentary breakdown in bravery
leads to reckless behavior. Jake resents being treated like a piece on the Ellimist's and Crayak's gameboard, but all he can hope to do is avoid becoming a sacrificial
pawn. A small yet glaring error - confusing falcon talons for fingers during a morph - hints that this might be a ghostwriter's work, but it's far closer to Applegate's
standard than the last two installments.
On an unrelated note, my first-run version of this book features a large cover sticker proclaiming the "new" timeslot of the Animorphs TV series. I remember it
airing all of two times at the advertized time; I gave up chasing it around Nickelodeon's schedule after that.
Becoming an Animorph meant sacrificing normality, risking life and limb in a fight against nearly-impossible odds, knowing that talking to anyone - a cop, a friend,
even her own mother or father - about what she did would land her in a loony bin or - worse - in the Yeerk pool, with an alien slug wrapped around her brain. But,
terrible as war is, Rachel still feels a thrill of excitement when she rips into an enemy with the claws of a grizzly bear, or tramples them under an elephant's feet.
Sometimes, she's so into the battle that she scares her fellow Animorphs.
She scares herself, too.
Much as Rachel tries to fight it, something deep within her longs for blood and danger. But even that part of her quails at the latest challenge. Something has gone
wrong with their allies, the Chee. The holograms that enable the alien androids to pass as human are on the blink, as is their ability to move. Soon, they'll be immobile
and utterly exposed... and if the Yeerks got their hands on the advanced Pemalite technology within the Chee, there would be no stopping them, on Earth or elsewhere in
the galaxy. But the Pemalite ship that regulates the Chee lies hidden three miles beneath the ocean, down where the water pressure would destroy every animal in the
Animorphs' DNA arsenal. And one thing that Rachel has always feared is crushing, smothering darkness...
Review
Had this not come right on the heels of the previous book, it probably would've earned an extra half-star. The series returns to its strong suits, as Rachel wrestles
with her changing life and the black monster within. But they just worked with Erek the Chee in the previous installment; that, plus another plot twist (which might
constitute a spoiler, so I won't go into specifics here) feel like too much of a similar note struck too close together. That problem aside, it's a fairly good entry in
a series that, more often than not, rose well above average.
Aximili has learned much about humans since becoming stranded on Earth, but much about their behavior and culture still confuses him. Even with the help of the
wonderfully educational device known as a television, he cannot figure out how one species can be so contradictory, yet still dominate their world. Now, he's about to
experience first-hand how hypocritical and brutal humans can be. The Yeerks have acquired an animal-testing facility and a meat-packing plant. Put them together, and
it's hardly likely that Visser Three is simply going into the fast-food business. To investigate, Ax and the Animorphs must infiltrate the lab... and witness the horror
that is a modern slaughterhouse.
Review
I've said before that Ax's books tend to be weaker than the rest. This is a decent example. Despite his superior intelligence, he remains baffled by simple human
concepts, though his commentary on our species makes for more than a few chuckles. This book takes on the subjects of animal testing and modern meat production, but with
little of Applegate's usual depth. Add to that the fact that the entire mission is something of a shaggy-dog adventure, and this book settles nicely into the murk of the
mid-series slump.
Incidentally, my copy contains "bonus" bookmarks, featuring the cover illustration: Aximili morphing to bovine form. If Ax were to ask just what the purpose was of
reproducing such an unremarkable image, when many more dynamic pictures have graced the covers of Animorphs books, I have to admit I wouldn't be able to defend
my species very effectively.
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