Category: Serena’s Reviews

Animorphs #44: “The Unexpected”

Publishing Info: Scholastic Paperbacks, August 2000

Where Did I Get this Book: own it!

Book Description: The Animorphs have been split up before. And they’ve had to fight battles without one another. But this time is very different. Not only is Cassie totally alone. She’s managed to find herself in Australia. In the rural Outback. The other Animorphs and Ax don’t even know she’s there.

Cassie doesn’t have any idea where she’s going, or if she can even survive the rugged terrain. But she does know she has to get to a town or village and contact her family and friends. Because she’s just realized that there’s someone else who is also new to the Outback.

Visser Three.

Narrator: Cassie

Plot: Well, we’ve reached what is almost unanimously known as one of the most useless books in the series. Not the most hated. Not the most controversial. Just the most…useless. Again, I had very few memories of this book, but it’s not because I actually blocked anything out this time. Just not very much happens!

Cassie and co. are on a mission at the airport to try and capture a chunk of a broken Bug Fighter that the military has gotten its hands on. Of course, the Yeerks are there too with the same thing in mind. Everything goes south, however, when a gun fight breaks out between the Marines and the incoming Controllers. Jake calls for a retreat, but seagull!Cassie doesn’t want to leave the innocent Marines behind. She tries to get involved (ugh, by pooping on a Controller), but ends up shot and having to partially de-morph to make an escape using a luggage cart. Chased by Yeerks, she ends up hiding beneath a pile of luggage and trying to make herself demorph as she passes out.

An unknown amount of time later, she wakes up fully human, but freezing and still under the luggage. She then realizes that she’s on a plane, and what’s worse, the plane is in flight. While trying to figure out what to do, the plane suddenly stops moving and a green scanner sweeps through. She ends up partially paralyzed and realizes the Yeerks have followed her, knowing that an “Andalite bandit” is stashed somewhere on the plane. She decides to go Rachel’s route and morphs a polar bear. When the Yeerks open the cargo bay door, she attacks. She manages to take out several Hork Bajir and forces them to retreat, blowing up a Bug fighter on the way. However, she knows they’ll be back. She scratches up the inside of the cargo bay, hoping to make it look like she fell out with the Hork Bajir in the fight. When the green light strikes again, she hides and makes her way up to the passenger level.

Unfortunately, the Yeerks have a monitor that tracks movement and they are able to spot something going up. As a human girl, she quickly sits down in an empty seat and pretends to be frozen. This mostly works until the Controllers decide to start tazing the passengers, looking for a flinch. Cassie times her attack of the Hork Bajir doing the tazing in an effort to escape. She manages to get away and dives out one of the emergency exits, morphing osprey on her way down. In a deep canyon, she finds a crevice and hides out as flea. After waiting as long as she can, she emerges and demorphs, only to realize she’s been spotted by a local boy named Yami.

Yami is unphased, saying that his grandfather has taught him about the spirits of the Outback that can change their forms, so a girl who can turn into an osprey must be special. He also informs Cassie where she is: Australia. Yami offers to take her back to his place where she can make a plan from there. On the way, they pass a mob of kangeroos and Cassie sees a mother and joey that have gotten stuck in some fencing. She manages to release it while also acquiring it. Yami sees her ability to calm the wild animal as further proof of her supernatural origins. They head back to Yami’s home where she meets his family and the aforementioned grandfather.

The next day, she wakes up and knows she needs to find a way back home. It turns out that the Bug fighter she took out in the air had crashed nearby and taken out the radio transmitter that Yami and his family use to communicate with the outside world. Without it, she’ll have to a wait a week for the mail delivery people to come by. She forms a plan to morph the kangaroo that night and make her way to the nearest city, which is is about 70 miles away. During the day, Yami and his grandfather gift Cassie a boomerang and show her how to use it. While they are practicing, she sees several small airplanes flying overhead. Yami says they are tourists and they usually fly out in the morning and will fly back over later that night.

As the practice, Yami’s grandfather suddenly collapses. Cassie and Yami bring him back to the house where they discover a badly infected cut on his leg that Yami’s grandfather says came from a strange piece of metal he found out in the wilderness; Cassie recognizes it as part of the downed Bug fighter. The leg worsens throughout the day until finally, near the end of the day, Cassie realizes that they have no choice but to amputate. She morphs Hork Bajir for both the blades and strength to complete the task. Yami looks on with fear, but helps Cassie perform the surgery. Yami’s grandfather quickly starts to look better. But before she can think of a next step, the Blade ship arrives and she hears Visser Three’s voice booming out insisting that the “Andalite” show itself or he will destroy everything in sight.

Cassie morphs the kangaroo and tries to lead the Yeerks away. Hork Bajir and Taxxons give chase. She ends up in a mob of other kangaroos all of which also attack the Yeerks, some dying in the process. She manages to take out a few herself before becoming injured. Yami, his family, and his dog come to the rescue, killing a few Hork Bajir with their boomerangs. However, it won’t be enough. Luckily, the returning tourists are spotted and Cassie hears Visser Three calling for a retreat and speedy clean-up of the area. She manages to demorph just as familiar member of the Chee shows up, saying he caught a ride with the Yeerks and is here to take Cassie home.

Back home, Cassie and the rest meet up at the zoo. Cassie had wanted to go “shopping,” which Rachel was disappointed to learn meant “getting a postcard from the zoo.” The team tease Jake about his frantic search for Cassie while she was missing and he asks to see the postcard she purchased: it is of an osprey an on it she has written two words: “No worries.” It’s a phrase that Yami repeated many times throughout her stay, and she knows that he will recognize it and know the card is from her and that she is safe.

Peace, Love, and Animals: For all of its rather boring plot and lack of contribution to the larger story, I actually liked this book for what it had to offer for Cassie’s character. Again, we have Cassie on her own. (I still really don’t understand why this is a repeated theme for this character. It’s rarely a good thing for ANY of them, but I also think Cassie in particular is less suited for it.) But throughout the story, we see her evaluating her options against what other members of the team would do: Rachel’s penchant for action, Marco’s deliberation, Jake’s caution, etc.

We also get to see some clever thinking on her part when it comes to escaping the Yeerks on the plane. I think there might have been a few better options to be had, but on her own, she did fairly well. She also has to fight one-on-one with several Controllers and, while she does struggle with this (especially the fact that she shoots a Hork Bajir with a Dracon beam that was set on high and instantly killed him), she also doesn’t get too caught up in things.

It’s also always fun seeing her doctoring abilities come out, and she’s given a great platform for that with her amputation of the grandfather’s leg using her Hork Bajir morph. Again, not sure that that was the only option there and that using actual knives like a real doctor wouldn’t have been better. But it was a cool combination of morph mechanics and Cassie’s medical abilities.

Our Fearless Leader: We see Jake abort a mission early in the book, something that doesn’t come around that often. But it does lead to the interesting idea that there are a lot of missions that could have happened between books that just went down as failures and wouldn’t be written about. Like this one, if Cassie hadn’t, you know, ended up in Australia.

Xena, Warrior Princess: There were some good bits of dialogue for Rachel both in the first part of the book when she makes fun of Marco’s driving and in the end, when she bemoans Cassie’s definition of “shopping.” There’s also a really interesting moment about halfway through the book where Cassie is reflecting on her past choices and how, as a whole, they don’t all make sense, but she just had to make up her mind with each individual situation, without knowing what new horrible choice would come from that first one. Ultimately, she notes that she might be more reckless than Rachel, even though Rachel is the one with the reputation for rashness. Rachel’s recklessness presents as bravery to the point of foolishness and a preference for action above all. But Cassie realizes that some of even her more deliberative choices ultimately are more reckless than Rachel’s “go get em” attitude. It’s a really interesting character moment. And it speaks to one of the annoyances I’ve had throughout the series both with regards to the increasingly bad reputation that Rachel has gotten for being reckless and the free pass that Cassie has also been given for making what are ultimately way more dangerous decisions. It’s nice to have the book acknowledge this, as well as Cassie herself.

A Hawk’s Life: Tobias really had nothing in this book. He jumps on the “tease Jake” bandwagon with Rachel in the end about the fact that Jake was behaving “like a zombie” when Cassie was missing. His description of Jake’s behavior was pretty funny, and it’s always nice to see Tobias’s snarky side come out.

The Comic Relief: Gorilla!Marco ends up careening around driving a luggage truck in the opening mission in this book. It’s a nice nod to the fact that somehow Marco always ends up driving (not just when he’s in gorilla morph either!). And apparently he hasn’t improved at all, which is a bit surprising because you’d think they’d all be coming up to driver’s ed about now in the timeline.

E.T./Ax Phone Home: Ax, too, has very little, other than the fairly typical scene of him trying to eat the popcorn carton when they’re all hanging out at the zoo in the end of the book.

Best (?) Body Horror Moment: We’ve seen the Animorphs use partial de-morphs as a way to disguise their identity in the past, and it’s almost always sure to land in this section of my review. There’s no way around the sheer horror factor of what most of these half-morphs look like. But…I also have a deep fear of birds, so the idea of half-human, half-seagull Cassie lurching around on the tarmac…truly, truly horrific.

Couples Watch!: There were a few interesting things in this book. For one, we have the continued evidence that Rachel and Tobias are the more acknowledged, steady couple in the series. In the brief scene at the end of the book, we see them sitting together and teasing Jake and Cassie together, very confident in their own relationship. Jake and Cassie, on the other hand, are still nervous about even sitting next to each other and are still doing awkward things like putting their hands near each other and hoping the other one touches them. Jake even asks Cassie to stick around to “talk” and Rachel and Tobias jump on that saying he just wants to kiss Cassie.

The other notable bit is that while Yami is teaching Cassie to throw the boomerang they have a bit of a “moment,” enough of one even that Cassie feels mild guilt about it when she gets back and the others are teasing Jake about his freak out while she was gone. She worries that she was essentially flirting while he was worrying.

Knowing what we do about the end of the series, both of these things are kind of interesting: the fact that Cassie and Jake are still, after several years at this point, kind of awkward and uncomfortable with their relationship and the fact that Cassie had this small connection with this other boy.

If Only Visser Three had  Mustache to Twirl: The Yeerks really commit to chasing down this one Andalite. I mean, given how often they run into conflicts with the Animorphs and they all end up going their own ways without extremes taken to chase each other down…this all seems a bit much. Especially after Cassie gets off the plane. There’s really zero reason that Visser Three should know to show up at Yami’s house thinking the “Andalite bandit” will be hiding out there. Why would they be? A rogue Andalite could have morphed any animal and be anywhere, most likely heading towards a major city to get back home (like Cassie’s plan is anyways). Really, the last place an Andalite would go would be to hang out with a bunch of humans on a ranch. It’s very strange.

Adult Ugly Crying at a Middle Grade Book: The closest I came was probably the descriptions of the poor kangaroos that got taken out by Hork Bajir and Taxxons. And my extreme concern in that same fight when Yami’s dog got involved, and I couldn’t remember whether the dog survived.

What  a Terrible Plan, Guys!: I actually found the explanation for how Cassie ended up on the plane fairly plausible as far as strange things that happen in these books go. I do think she could have managed to get off it a bit easier, mostly be morphing a bug right next to the airlock so that when the door opened, even if they gassed the plane, she would be out in no time, and the Yeerks would have had no way of knowing.

It’s not so much a terrible plan, but the explanation of the Chee randomly showing up and getting her out of there has to be one of the most blatant examples of lazy writing. They literally show up out of nowhere, with no explanation for how they even knew to follow the Yeerks to Australia, and then there is still no explanation for how they really get back. I mean, Cassie’s still a minor with zero documentation off in Australia. It’s all pretty weird and best not think about, in the end.

Favorite Quote:

This was the main chunk of the bit where Cassie is reflecting on her past choices, and I think it’s pretty good. Just too bad that it got stuck in such a nothing book where I think many readers forget she even reflected on some of these things. Same thing goes for her comparison between herself and Rachel with regards to recklessness.

I’m not trying to be some kind of martyr, or say that I’m always a screwup. I’m not. In my world, making hard choices is part of the deal. Sometimes I’m right, sometimes I’m wrong. Sometimes I just can’t tell, even when the mission is over and we’ve all come out alive, at least. Leave the Animorphs. Come back. Trust Aftran, the Yeerk. Trust her again. Take responsibility for the never-ending, always unfolding consequences of those decisions. Say, no, I can’t be part of this mission, can’t be part of a mass killing of innocent people no matter what the ultimate goal, I won’t. Get involved anyway, commit acts maybe much worse. Why? To save some lives, not others. A choice. There’s always a choice.

There’s also a good line from the grandfather when Cassie is freaking out that she lead the Yeerks right to them, and it’s a good line for not only Cassie to remember, but all of them, at one point or another.

“They’re here because of me.”

“No.”

Yami’s grandfather touched my arm. I looked down, startled. He drew a sharp breath. His face twisted in pain, but his eyes stayed bright and alert.

“They’re here because they’re evil.”

Scorecard: Yeerks 11, Animorphs 15

The Animorphs literally call this one a tie themselves, so I’ll stick with their rating.

Rating: There’s no getting around the fact that this book is incredibly slow. Cassie doesn’t even get to Australia until almost over halfway through the story. And for a book that is marketed completely on her adventures in Australia, that’s pretty disappointing. It’d almost be more realistic for it to be “Cassie’s adventures at an airport and on an airplane.” Beyond that, any book that separates one character away from the others is almost always worse. It’s even more depressing in this one because not only is Cassie not the strongest character on her own, but the brief bits we get of dialogue from the others is great, so the ghost writer clearly had a good handle on the group dynamics (something that is not always a given at this point). And, of course, this book does nothing to advance the ongoing story. Not to mention the hot garbage that is the explanation for how she gets back with some weird “the Chee did it!” handwave-solution.

But! As far as Cassie herself goes, there’s actually a good amount that I really enjoyed. She addresses her own past decisions and how a lot of the times they were contradictory and even more reckless than Rachel’s, and that adds a really nice layer to the character. She has some shining moments of having to choose to fight and accept that, as well as the great scene of her utilizing her badass medical knowledge.

One last thing, however, has to do with Yami and his family. With Cassie sending the postcard in the end, it’s assumed that Yami and his family are safe and well in the end. But…why would they be? Not only is the idea that the Yeerks just left them alive pretty out of place with our knowledge of how Visser Three and the Yeerks operate, but really Yami and his family are a massive liability for Cassie and the others! While they might think she has some strange spirit animal thing going on, a quick infestation of Yami or any of them would quickly bring down the whole house of cards. And, even more so than just kill them, again, why WOULDN’T the Yeerks infest these people? They know that Yami and his family were hiding the “Andalite,” so it seems like a pretty obvious source of information, at the very least. Oh well, chock it up as another “just don’t think too hard about it” moment, I guess.

Note: I’m not going to rate these books since I can’t be objective at all!

Animorphs #43: “The Test”

Publishing Info: Scholastic Paperbacks, July 2000

Where Did I Get this Book: own it!

Book Description: Tobias, the other Animorphs, and Ax have seen things so bizarre that no sane person would believe their story. No one would believe that aliens have taken over Earth, and are in the process of infesting as many humans as possible. No one could believe the battles and missions and losses these six kids have had to deal with. And it’s not over yet.

Tobias has been captured by the same human-Controller that nearly tortured him to death once before. She claims that she’s now a part of the Yeerk Peace Movement. That she just needs a favor. Tobias isn’t sure what to believe, but he knows that if the Animorphs and Ax don’t find him soon, what he believes won’t matter anymore…

Narrator: Tobias

Plot: Our favorite Yeerk psychopath/torturer is back! Taylor shows up once again and is ready and able to make Tobias’s already generally miserable existence that much worse.

On one of his usual fly-overs above the woods, Tobias stumbles upon a search and rescue attempt for a small boy who’s been lost. Communicating through thought-speak with the father, Tobias successfully leads rescuers to the kid. But he’s quickly taken out by a golden eagle. Luckily, the human rescuers save the “superhero hawk,” and Tobias awakes in a cage in the clinic. He sees on TV that his rescue has become a news story and knows that odd animal behavior like this is sure to attract the Yeerks. And sure enough, soon Hork Bajir barge into the clinic and nab his cage. On their way out, they’re attacked by the Animorphs who are there on a rescue mission. In the madness, Taylor, Tobias’s torturer/nemesis from several books ago, shows up and manages to knock out Tobias with a gas and steal him away. During the madness, however, Tobias manages to acquire Taylor.

He wakes up in a grimy trailer. Taylor proceeds to try to convince him that she is on the outs with the Yeerks, and that she and other Yeerks have decided to form a rebel force against leadership that they see as failing them. They want the “Andalite bandits” to help. She then opens the cage and lets Tobias go free. He immediately heads to Rachel’s house and the two decide to meet with the others.

At Cassie’s barn, after discussing the likelihood that Taylor is cray cray, Jake leaves the decision to Tobias. He decides that they need to hear more. Using a janky computer set-up that Ax has devised, they log in to a webpage that Taylor had given Tobias and leave a message board comment agreeing to meet up. They do so at  Borders bookstore where Tobias comes in his new Taylor morph while the others take up positions around the store. The two Taylors sit down and the real Taylor begins detailing her mission: she wants the “Andalites” to morph Taxxon and tunnel down to the Yeerk pool. Then she will release a natural gas pipeline leak that will explode, killing tons of Yeerks. In exchange for their help, Taylor will get them access to Visser Three. During the meeting, however, the real girl, Taylor, briefly breaks through and tries to warn Tobias off.

At the mall, the group meets up once again to decide whether to go through with Taylor’s plan. While expressing various levels of disgust and ruthlessness, they all decide on the mission, except for Cassie who refuses to participate. She briefly mentions that large number of human hosts will be killed, but focuses mostly on the idea that the Yeerk Peace movement might also be hurt by this action. She compares it to blowing up the mall that they’re all sitting in now. This makes everyone uncomfortable, but the others see the strategic advantage as too high to miss out on.

The next day, Ax and Tobias (in Andalite morph) meet up with Taylor to acquire a Taxxon she has captured. It goes about as well as expected, with Ax having to kill the Taxxon but both still managing to acquire it. They then meet up with the other Animorphs near the natural gas station to begin tunneling. Cassie is there to see where they will be working, but will be leaving, still refusing to participate.

Tobias morphs first and struggles to control the Taxxon morph. After almost killing his friends, he realizes that he will never be able to completely control the Taxxon’s all-consuming hunger, but instead can only direct it towards tunneling, eating the dirt as he goes. As he comes up against the two-hour time limit, he is just able to regain enough control to demorph. Then it is Ax’s turn. Ax, too, manages to gain cautious control of the Taxxon and begins tunneling. However, again, close to the two hour limit, the others realize that he’s lost some degree of control because he is not responding and has not returned to the surface to de-morph. They go after him, only to discover him almost passed out at the end of the tunnel. Turns out that Taxxons, in their crazed hunger, will literally kill themselves through exhausted eating of things that don’t contain nutrients, like dirt. They manage to get him to demorph, however, and Tobias once again takes over tunneling duty.

At last, he breaks into the top of the Yeerk pool. Looking down, he sees the usual chaos of weeping hosts and the horrible pool. But he also notices a large group of humans that look oddly calm, even determined. Before he has a chance to wonder too much about this, Taylor shows up and begins taunting him and trying to convince him in joining her attempt to take over the Yeerk Empire. When he refuses, she jabs him with her paralysis gas again and runs back up the tunnel. He tries to call out to warn the others, but they respond that they’ve already been paralyzed and are helpless to do anything.

Tobias manages to drag himself back up the tunnel. He catches up to her just as she reaches the gas line, but isn’t able to stop her before she blows a hole in it and toxic gas shoots out, knocking out the air and pushing them all back down the tunnel towards the Yeerk pool. The Animorphs all manage to catch on to each other through various holds and bites, and Taxxon!Tobias scrambles to keep hold on the tunnel walls, breaking off many legs in the process. Tobais’s Taxxon body is more able to handle the lack of clean air, and he manages to drag his barely conscious friends back up the tunnel to fresh air. They realize the gas has been turned off and all demorph.

They get to the main gas building and find  Controlled!humans laying on the floor, badly injured. In a back room, they find Cassie crying. She had turned off the gas and was struggling with having to viciously attack the people in the gas building to accomplish it.

The next day, Tobias and Rachel fly to a private beach that they have discovered. Once their, Rachel demorphs and Tobias morphs his human body. Rachel confirms that Jake had told Cassie that she could warn the Yeerk Peace group, and once she had, she discovered that all of the Yeerks in the movement had organized to feed at the pool on the same days. And one of those days was the day of Taylor’s attack. Taylor had been working with Visser Three the entire time and the plan had been to take out both the “Andalite bandits” and the Yeerk Peace movement all in one hit, pinning the disaster on the Yeerk Peace participants to boot. Rachel tries to reassure Tobias that they couldn’t have known, that they operated on the best information they had, and that through their actions they saved the Yeerk Peace group. Tobias wonders if Taylor survived. But, in the end, he and Rachel hold hands and agree that they can’t worry about what is done, but only move forward.

A Hawk’s Life: Per the usual, this Tobias book deep dives into all of the issues. I think this might be a reason why Tobias, Marco, and Jake books are often listed as the most popular by other fans. Each of these three have ongoing challenges that they face throughout the entire series, and it’s a rare book for any of them that doesn’t touch on one of the main themes important to that character. Marco’s, of course, is his mother. Jake’s is his struggles with leadership and his own growing ruthlessness. And Tobias has…a bunch! And, unlike Jake and Marco, every single Tobias book has one of these issues, if not multiple, at its heart.

Not only does he have the challenges of his life as a hawk, and with it, the biggest question of all “who is he?” But he also struggles with what lead to his life as a hawk. And then, after his book before this one, he continues to feel the psychological repercussions of his capture and torture at the hands of Taylor. These last two, cowardice and the PTSD from torture, are a big focus for him in this book.

Throughout the book, Tobias struggles with his ongoing reaction to being tortured by Taylor. He sees his own reaction as one of cowardice and weakness, one that only Taylor knows. Whether she actually thinks of him this way or not, we do see her clearly taking advantage of his insecurities on these points throughout the book. In response, Tobias also insists on being the one to interact with Taylor the most. All of these thoughts come to a head when he comes up to the Yeerk pool and is looking out over it with Taylor whispering her evil words into his ear. At the same time, he sees the spot where he hid out way back in book one and became stuck as a hawk. He questions whether this, too, was a form of cowardice. That he could have done more to avoid this fate, but some part of him was too scared to go back to the challenges of the life he had before.

There’s a lot of great exploration of all of these topics, and less than what one could hope for as far as resolutions go. There are a couple throw-away lines towards the end where Tobias resolves once again not to fret about the past, but we’ve all heard that before. However, even without reaching any grand conclusions, I really enjoyed the deeper look into Tobias’s psyche and the fact that the events from his torture session are still playing large in his mind, even before Taylor shows up.

Our Fearless Leader: Jake’s got some typical “big leader moments,” what with knowing that Tobias ultimately needs to be the one to decide whether to go forward with working with Taylor, to accepting the fact that Cassie disagrees with their plan to the point of refusing to participate, but decides that the group will go on without her. There’s also a pretty dark moment, pretty important in the grand scheme of things, that if Tom is a victim of this attack, that is a risk worth taking for the larger advantage.

For all of that, this book sits very oddly with the last Jake book being the one that handled the topic of terrorism so thoroughly. Throughout his entire last book, Jake struggled with the question of terrorism and its role in warfare. He also was routinely horrified by it and saw it as one of the biggest markers of how wrong things had gone in that alternate reality. But here, in what is clearly the biggest act of terrorism the Animorphs would have ever participated in (hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent humans and Hork Bajir, and others, would die in this attack), he doesn’t seem to have any thoughts on the matter or references to his past struggles. Perhaps if his terrorism book had come earlier in the series, it would be easier to buy that he had hardened himself since then to making decisions like this. But…it was literally two books ago. It reads as really strange.

Xena, Warrior Princess: We see Rachel operating as Tobias’s primary support system throughout the book. She’s the one who constantly turns to him to see how he is dealing with the whole Taylor business, and she’s the one to talk him around in the end.

But we also seem some interesting shifts for herself throughout the book. It’s no surprise that she’s one of the first ones to be on-board for the mission when they are discussing next steps in the mall. Action is always preferred to inaction for Rachel, and she (with Marco and often Jake) is more likely to fall on the ruthless side of things as far as necessary sacrifices in war. But we also see her have a pretty major breakdown about three-fourths of the way through the book, questioning whether they are doing the right thing. It’s a really nice moment that serves as a reminder that a well-drawn portrayal of Rachel’s character can, and should, include more than just her ruthless (often shown as “mindless”) streak.

Peace, Love, and Animals: There’s some pretty good stuff for Cassie’s character in this book. One thing I did find very strange, however, was the focus of her objections when they all met to discuss Taylor’s plans in the mall. From a reader perspective, it seems pretty clear that her focus on the Yeerks Peace movement was a not very subtle way for the author to hint that that was going to come up as a thing later in the book. This group isn’t referenced too often, so it makes some sense to bring them up early on. But…as far as characterization goes, it ends up playing very oddly for Cassie herself. She gets out maybe one line about the innocent humans who will die in this attack before switching the entire rest of her argument to the  Yeerks Peace movement. And as a natural thought process or argument, it reads very oddly and makes Cassie seem to have strange, if even condemnable, priorities towards the “good” Yeerks over innocent human victims. Beyond making it seem like her own values are out of line, this argument is always going to be a harder sell to the rest of the Animorphs, who, while impressed by Cassie’s ability to form a connection with a Yeerk, have no personal attachments of their own. As a character who we know is a keen manipulator, a Cassie free from needing to do authorial work with foreshadowing would have known that pressing the innocent human line would have been a better route to convincing the others.

There’s also the moment in the end where Cassie saves them all by taking matters into her own hands. This is the kind of story that would have been great to read from Cassie’s perspective! She would have had some great insights into the humanity of choices like this with regards to the larger mission, but then would have to challenge her own values with the choice to attack human Controllers to save the Yeerk pool and her friends. Really, the more I write about it, the more I can just envision this as a Cassie book and wish we had it, especially given the general weakness of most of her books.

The Comic Relief: Marco doesn’t have a whole lot in this book. Even the number of jokes he has is pretty tamped down. This kind of makes sense since Marco is definitely one of the characters with a more peripheral relationship with Tobias.

E.T./Ax Phone Home: Ax is the other Animorph to get to experience the joy that is morphing Taxxon. He manages to discover that the Taxxons have a hibernation state that allows him to gain more control over the morph, but then, in the end, he, too, succumbs to the morph and almost dies/passes the time limit when he gets stuck at the end of the tunnel. There’s also an interesting little bit where he cuts off some of Andalite!Tobias’s fur in an effort to make Tobias look less like an identical copy of Ax when they go to meet Taylor. He explains that cutting fur is a form a discipline that serves as a reminder of wrong-doing until the fur grows back out and the offense is forgotten. Just another interesting little tid-bit of Andalite society!

Best (?) Body Horror Moment: Obviously all of the Taxxon stuff. Not only morphing the disgusting Taxxon body, but the entire experience. Looking at it, though, I couldn’t help but start to wonder how Taxxons even exist, biologically speaking. The hunger thing seems to strong that it would override every other natural instinct. As we saw with Ax, Taxxons will literally kill themselves through futile eating of non-nutrient rich things, like dirt. We’ve seen them cannibalize themselves at the slightest injury as well. How are they not extinct??

Couples Watch!: We get a handful of sweet, little moments for Tobias and Rachel throughout the story. For one, the first thing he does when Taylor releases him in the beginning of the book is to fly to Rachel’s. Together, they decide what to do from there. Thoughts of Rachel are also the only thing that breaks through the hunger-haze when he first morphs Taxxons. He gets caught up in the hunger and imaging eating his friends, but when he gets to Rachel, it stops him up short and gives him just enough of a break to regain control. And then, obviously, at the end we have the two of them on their private beach, holding hands and talking themselves through what could have been a huge disaster of a mission.

If Only Visser Three had  Mustache to Twirl: Taylor is the real villain of this book, even if the plan behind it all is laid at Visser Three’s feet. Taylor is a very interesting villain in her own right, as she was given quite a bit of page time and backstory in her first book. Here, we get further glimpses into her madness. However, many of these glimpses ultimately ended up just being frustrating teases. We get the brief break-through from the real Taylor at the bookstore, where she warns Tobias away (why this isn’t given more weight when they’re all considering what to do would also fit under the “Terrible Plan” segment). And Tobias himself wonders several times about the breakdown between Yeerk and girl. Before, Taylor was a willing host, having chosen this reality to restore her beauty. But clearly something has gone wrong since, and she’s fighting against her Yeerk. This is really interesting! And it goes…nowhere. We never get any answers to this and it’s the kind of frustrating add-on that I wish had just been cut out. It doesn’t add anything to the story as it is, but instead just leaves annoying questions in its wake, making it feel like there was much more story to be had here than what we are ultimately given.

Adult Ugly Crying at a Middle Grade Book: As we know, Tobias books are often big on the tears. This one’s discussion of cowardice and Tobias’s fears that he’s a coward at heart is pretty rough. Not only does he feel that he somehow “failed” while be tortured, exposing his “true nature” to his torturer, Taylor, but he also worries that he’s always been a coward. And that this cowardice was part of the reason that he ended up trapped as a hawk; he was too scared to approach life as a boy any longer. Beyond the obvious horrors of his human life (like living with his terrible aunt and uncle and the constant bullying), he even worries that part of him was scared of the joy, too, like being with Rachel. In some of the previous books, we’ve seen him deal with the fact that his hawk form has allowed him to keep careful control on that relationship, both to Rachel’s frustration and to his own shame. The moments when he’s hanging out above the Yeerk Pool looking directly at the spot where he hid so long ago are pretty heart-wrenching.

What  a Terrible Plan, Guys!: There are a good number of awful plans in this book, both on the part of the Animorphs and the Yeerks. For one, as I mentioned in Jake’s section, it’s hard to buy that there weren’t more objections to the general terrible nature of the plan and the high human collateral it would entail.

Beyond that, they are all very willing to go along with a plan given to them by Taylor, someone they have a terrible history with. Not only does Taylor’s host break through at one point and literally warn them away, but they have no evidence that her plan is part of a larger revolt. They never meet any co-conspirators or see any proof that she’s not just operating on her own. What’s more, part of the carrot that is given for their cooperation is some vague promise that she will get them Visser Three. But..how? The whole explanation for her mission is that she’s on the outs. How exactly is she going to get them access to someone like Visser Three? And the Animorphs never even question this!

And then from the Yeerks’ perspective, the entire plan is very high risk, questionable reward. We know that Visser Three is happy enough to off Yeerks that displease him, but loosing the entire Yeerk Pool seems a bit much, even for him. Sure, he’s wiped out the Yeerk Peace movement, but he has to report back to the Council of Thirteen that a guerrilla group managed to blow up the entire Yeerk Pool under his watch…and bizarrely took themselves out with it? Not only does it not make sense, but it doesn’t paint in him a very good picture, and as we already know that his methods have been coming under question, it’s hard to see how this would benefit him. Beyond that, through Taylor’s successful contact with the Animorphs, there were much easier ways to simply lead that group into a trap. The successful capture of the “Andalite bandits” would do a whole heck of a lot more for him than taking out some Yeerk Peace movement members while losing the entire pool. And would have been super easy to pull off, considering how “all in” the Animorphs were with Taylor’s plan. I mean, at one point they were all lying paralyzed on the floor! How easy would it have been for Visser Three to swoop in and simply gather them all up?

Favorite Quote:

This book had a lot of good ruminations on a variety of topics, but I think some of the better parts had to do with fear and evil when Tobias was analyzing what makes up the heart of the Taxxon psyche and evil in general:

Yes, a fear. . . grossly exaggerated … beyond anything humans experience .. . a desperate fear of not having enough .. . a terror of starvation .. . a horror that your essential needs will go unfulfilled .. . a horror demented and contorted by the Taxxon mind until it became a sick, murderous evil.

Evil, even the worst evil, has banal origins every human can understand. Weakness. Fear. Insecurity.

Ax hooks up a janky computer set-up in the woods to contact Taylor initially, and the event ends with this utterly quotable line:

<The computer has, as you say, crashed,> Ax announced coolly.

Scorecard: Yeerks 11, Animorphs 15

No change! Both the Yeerks and the Animorphs had terrible instincts and plans in this book. I could easily justify taking a point away from each of them, but as that makes not overall difference, we’ll just leave things as they are.

Rating:  For all that it falls apart if you really start looking at things closely (like both the Animorphs’ and the Yeerks’ reasoning for all of these events, and the biological impossibility of the Taxxons), I really enjoyed this book. As I’ve repeatedly mentioned, Tobias books are always good for a deeper look into a variety of pretty tough topics. And, unlike Cassie books, usually avoid coming off as preachy or self-righteous. For that matter, as I mentioned in the Cassie section above, this book would have succeeded tackling many of these topics AS a Cassie book. But I particularly enjoyed the analysis of fear and cowardice, and Tobias tying all of these various factors together in his worries that he is a coward: his being caught as a hawk, his handling of being tortured by Taylor the first time, how he has handled the events of this entire book. Just a lot of good stuff!

Note: I’m not going to rate these books since I can’t be objective at all!