Category: Serena’s Reviews

Animorphs #24: “The Suspicion” by K.A. Applegate

Publishing Info: Scholastic Paperbacks, December 1998

Where Did I Get this Book: own it!

Book Description: The Yeerks are not the only invaders of Earth. Meet the new enemy: the Helmacrons. Cassie finds their miniature spaceship and donates it to a toy drive. Big mistake. The Helmacrons are tiny, but they’re far from helpless. They have the technology to shrink other creatures to their size. And until they get their spaceship back, they’re taking hostages. The Animorphs must find a way to send these pests back into space — before it’s too late.

Narrator: Cassie

Plot: Oh man, here we go. The first introduction of the Helmacrons. I had totally forgotten that they showed up in a Cassie book, which are already not my favorites of the series.  So…yeah…

At the beginning of each chapter, we get an entry from the log of the Helmacron ship, Galaxy Blaster detailing their exploits on planet Earth. Humble these guys are not.

The story opens with Cassie doing chores at home, as always, this time collecting junk to send to Goodwill. And Rachel begging her to do something about her fashion choices, as always. She’s also trying to convince Cassie to join her on a trip to the mall and then the beach, when she notices a toy space ship in Cassie’s junk pile. Cassie says she found it perched on the pump, which, coincidentally, is where she hid the blue box. Tossing it back on the junk pile, she gives in and agrees to join Rachel and enjoy the day.

Cassie hates the beach (seriously, what is wrong with this girl??), but she’s glad that Rachel is having a good time. They walk home in their swimsuits, and Cassie is mortified to see Jake waiting for them. Jake, too, is embarrassed and it’s all very twee. Cassie suddenly notices another toy aircraft perched on the pump. But it’s not the same one. Worse, it suddenly rises and flies away. Jake announces that the weekend has been cancelled, and they need to gather their forces and figure out what’s happening.

Of course, their first plan of action is to ask their resident alien, Ax. Unfortunately, Ax, rather per the usual at this point, has no ideas, so they morph seagulls to try and track down the other ship that Cassie’s dad had toted away to Goodwill. Once there, they convince the Goodwill clerk to let them in the back to search for the ship. They find it, but before they can do much, another small ship zooms into the loading bay and “attacks” Jake with two tiny laser beams. Rachel, typically, gets mad, even more so when they blow off a few strands of her hair, and takes a bat to the ship that’s flying around. But Jake insists they  back off for a bit, and they see the ship link up to the other, presumably giving it a jump start. They then hear a thought-speak voice in their head demanding they hand over the power source and they will then be allowed to live as slaves. Cassie quickly guesses that they must mean the blue box.

Cassie tries to speak to them calmly and peaceably, saying she’s sure they don’t mean to be threatening. They correct her; they very much DO mean to be threatening. They shoot her with their tiny lasers and blow back out of the door. Jake has Tobias follow them, suspecting they are heading back to the farm and the blue box. They morph  birds and discuss the bizarreness of the entire situation as they fly back. On the way, they see Tobias up ahead being attacked by the Helmacron ship. Against Tobias’s much smaller size, the ship could actually do some damage and it looks like they are trying to shoot at his eyes. Rachel is pissed and quickly attacks, followed by the others. They managed to fight them off, but the Helmacrons zip away even faster towards the farm.

They manage to intercept the Helmacrons again just as they are beginning to pull up the blue box with a tractor beam. But their bird morphs aren’t made for endurance flying, and the fight takes it out of them. Cassie demorphs as quickly as she can and chases the Helmacrons and the blue box they are towing into the barn. The Helmacrons issue more threats while Cassie tries to talk them down. Then they shrink her. Tobias flies in after her and they get him too. Marco, too, comes in and gets hit by the ray, but manages to yell over his shoulder to warn the others away before he gets too small. They do, and Jake informs them that the other Helmacron ship took off after Rachel hit it with a brick.

Cassie, Tobias, and Marco stop shrinking, but are now tiny, about the size of a small fly. Strangely, Tobias is still around the same size as each of them, rather than proportionally being smaller. (Part of me feels like this would be just as weird as the rest. From Cassie and Marco’s perspective, Tobias is now a MASSIVE bird.) Ax and Jake try to convince the Helacrons to give back the box and reverse the shrinking, pointing out that as “primitive” as they may think it is, Rachel’s brick did pretty good work of their other ship. They manage to snag the blue box, but both ships still escape, leaving Marco, Tobias, and Cassie in their tiny forms.

Ax theorizes that the Helmacrons used the power of the blue box to shrink the others. Cassie and Marco can’t be heard by the others, their voices too small, but Tobias can still thought-speak with them. Cassie tries to morph to see if that will reverse it, but when she tries to go osprey, she shrinks even further and quickly reverses her morph.

Cassie’s dad shows up and isn’t impressed by Jake and Rachel’s story of looking for Cassie. He’s even less impressed by human!Ax. After kicking them all out of the barn, he begins walking around and manages to bury tiny!Cassie under a tablespoon of dirt he kicks up. Cassie and Marco discover that, similar to ants, they have increased strength for their size, easily moving massive, to them, pieces of dirt. As they debate what to do next, the Helmacrons arrive, and now that they, too, are small, those laser beams are much more of a threat. Luckily, the Helmacrons get caught up in a bit of inter-ship politicking, debating who gets to capture Cassie, Marco, and Tobias, until the other Animrophs show up in towering, gigantic cockroach morphs. Ax has come in a wolf spider morph and is even more terrifying than the others. But they quickly realize the mistake of this when the Helmacrons cripple and seriously injure spider!Ax using the lasers from their ship. Worse, he can’t demorph to heal himself without crushing Marco, Cassie, and Tobias. Cassie insists that they surrender and escape later.

She and Marco let themselves be taken onto the Helmacron ship, and the aliens bring them to their leader. Thing is, the captain is very, very dead. Worse, it looks ritualistic, the Helmacron captain chained to the floor and speared with several swords. Once again Marco puts Cassie to shame in the “make things up” category, reminiscent of their time on the Area 51-like base. Cassie is still a terrible liar. The Helmacrons put a stop to Marco’s display of “groveling” and insist they tell them where the blue box is. They turn on their view screen and Cassie sees the others, safe back in their regular forms, with tiny!Tobias sitting on Rachel’s shoulder. Cassie and Marco claim that none of their friends know where it is, but the “other one” does. The Helmacrons reveal that their sensors can tell who has morphing capabilities, so they will find this “other one.” Cassie quickly comes up with a plan.

“There’s no point trying to hide him from the Helmacrons, Marco,” I said. “There is only one other morph-capable creature on Earth. And the Helmacrons are just going to have to destroy him.”

Suddenly, the light went on in Marco’s head. “Visser Three?”

I nodded, feeling very pleased with myself. “Visser Three.”

It turns out the Helmacrons already know about the Yeerks, and for some reason this causes a division in their ranks, with one group attacking and killing a few of the others. Cassie and Marco also learn that all of the Helmacrons they have met so far have been females when a much smaller, more docile being enters and is addressed as a male. He explains that the captain must be dead because how else could they ensure she would never make any mistakes? He informs them that they are now slaves who must obey the female Helmacrons, and then leaves.

Shortly after, they are lead back to another bridge where the Helmacrons pull up a view screen showing the Blade ship. They can sense Visser Three in a Bug Fighter that is heading back to Earth and follow it. They watch the Bug Fighter descend into an abandoned restaurant that opens its ceiling to let the ship in as a limo pulls up in front of it. Visser Three climbs in in his human morph. The Helmacrons chase after the car, firing at it with their mini lasers. Human!Visser Three roles down the window and spots the tiny ship; it is clear he recognizes what they are. The Helmacrons shoot him in the face with their lasers and another Controller pops out of the sunroof and starts shooting at their ship with a gun, a huge weapon against their small size.

The fighting continues and the Helmacrons veer into the other lane, almost getting hit by on-coming traffic. Cassie and Marco have had enough and decide to get the heck out of there. Their only option is to get even smaller and morph flies. (On this, you’d think they’d have some concerns about their Z-space mass considering what happened in Ax’s book with the mosquito morph. Yes, the passing ship was what pulled them through, but having it happen at all, you’d think it at least would be thought of when they’re now morphing something even tinier.) Once morphed, they are too tiny for the Helmacrons to catch, but they also can’t get anywhere, being too small to cover any distance. As they try to hide, the ship starts to come apart and they realize that a Yeerk Dracon beam must have hit it. Completely disoriented with no way of knowing where they are or how far up they are or anything, they decide to try and slowly demorph and get a sense of things. They find themselves on someone’s head, specifically Chapman’s.

Just then, Tobias shows up. He informs them that Rachel managed to smash the other ship with a tire iron and Jake clamped it in a vice in Cassie’s barn. He says they have things figured out, that the Helmacrons gave them their leaders to hold hostage. Cassie and Marco immediately freak out, knowing that all their friends have are dead Helmacrons. Worse, Tobias tells them that they’re currently at a meeting of the Sharing where Visser Three is doing show and tell with the destroyed Helmacron ship he hit with the Dracon beam. And Ax is there too, outside with the blue box in an attempt to get the Helmacrons to come with them and unshrink the others. Cassie and Marco quickly realize that the Helmacrons are planning on letting the Yeerks and Animorphs duke it out while they escape with the blue box. Just as they think of this, they see the remaining Helmacron ship appear, towing the blue box with them, and aim its lasers at an unhappy Visser Three, shrinking him, too.

Chaos erupts. Visser Three is shrinking, screaming at the Yeerks to grab the blue box. The other Animorphs show up in morph, also trying to get the blue box. And all the while, the Helmacrons blather on about their own power and might. Cassie and Marco can’t tell what’s going except for what they hear through thought-speak. Rachel gets hit by the shrinking ray and the others are still trying to nab the box. Cassie tells Marco to moprh, that they need to get even smaller and have the ability to thought-speak with the others. She calls to Tobias to come pick them up and he nabs skunk!Cassie and mole!Marco in his talons. Cassie has figured out that if, when they morph smaller, they get relatively smaller to their current size, than if they morph bigger, the same thing should apply. They land on the the Helmacron ship, and Cassie has them all morph bigger: Tobias to his human form, and her to her humpback whale form. This way, they will weigh down the ship, essentially disabling it.

Her plan works and the ship begins to sink under her weight, but as it does, a Controller reaches out and grabs the ship. Ax manages to cut off the Controller’s hand with his tale and grab the ship himself. They learn that Jake and Rachel, along with Visser Three and several Controllers, have all been shrunk and are currently having a standoff on one of Ax’s legs. Ax runs away, carrying the ship and blue box. Through this all, they overhear Jake and Rachel fighting Visser Three in some new alien morph along with all of the other shrunken Controllers. Cassie tells Ax to morph a bird, carry the ship and  blue box in his talons, and fly to the Gardens.

But as he morphs, the way his body melds leaves everyone all together: Cassie, Marco and Tobias, but now also tiger!Jake, grizzly!Rachel, Visser Three and the rest of the shrunken Controllers. Quickly, Cassie and Marco morph their battle morphs so the Yeerks don’t see them as humans. They prepare to do battle,  but then the Helmacrons show up and they all unanimously decide that they should be dealt with first. But before they can do anything, Ax informs them that they have arrived at the Gardens and Cassie tells them all to jump off bird!Ax.

They leap and land on something furry. Cassie quickly begins demorphing, explaining that she thought that maybe a newly acquired animal wouldn’t be affected by the shrinking (something something original DNA was shrunk but not new DNA). And for their new morph she’s chosen an anteater. Visser Three shows up and quickly sees what they’re doing, but the Animorphs are all well on their way to becoming regular-sized anteaters. Once morphed, anteater!Cassie quickly nabs a few dozen Helmcrons with her sticky tongue. Cassie begs them to surrender, not wanting to kill them, and Visser Three, who has also morphed an anteater, sneers at her.

<Sentimental Andalite fool,> Visser Three said. He had copied our trick. He had also morphed the anteater. <You can’t kill a Helmacron. They’re a fungible species. Kill one and its mind, if you can call it a mind, is absorbed into another. They never die. Even when they’re dead, they’re not dead. But when it comes to Andalites . . .>

His tongue flits out and nabs tiny!Tobias as he tries to fly away. But before he can do anything, normal-sized!Ax presses his tail blade to anteater!Visser Three’s throat. The three-way stalemate ends with the Animorphs getting control of the shrinking ray and using it to unshrink everyone, letting the Yeerks go. Visser Three is willing to concede that being shrunk again is unappealing, and it’s best to fight another day. They also convince the male Helmacrons that they should fight back against the females, and presumably they all get so caught up in this that they…leave?? The end.

Peace, Love, and Animals: Poor Cassie. It’s really not her fault that she got stuck with this stinker of a book. That said, I don’t think the book is improved by having Cassie as a narrator. For all that I don’t agree with all of Cassie’s approaches to the war, she is at her best when she is given complicated moral plot lines that allow her to fully explore her unique view on conflict. Without that, her voice is probably just the most bland of all the narrators and thus doesn’t add a lot to a story that desperately, DESPERATELY needs a strong narrator to improve it. Further, this is the first book we’ve gotten from Cassie since the whole David ordeal and it’s jarring to have that not really mentioned. Cassie was the mastermind behind that whole plan and also the one, other than Rachel, who presumably would be most broken up by the role she had to play. So it feels like a huge missed opportunity to have her very next book be relegated to, essentially, a filler story. Tobias’s made sense, he had big things of his own to deal with and also was the least involved with the David mess. But Cassie? No way we shouldn’t be hearing all about how conflicted and torn up she is about a plan that she came up with that doomed a human boy to life as a rat.

And beyond that, like I said, Cassie’s voice alone doesn’t have a lot of uniquely interesting aspects to it, other than her POV on moral issues. So when we’re given a bonkers story line like this, Cassie just kind of …goes with it. And it doesn’t help. Sure, she once again comes up with a good animal morph to solve the current problem, but the end of this story was so full of contrivances and wild leaps of logic that it’s hard to even give her much credit for that. It’s all just kind of bad, and Cassie’s narration isn’t strong enough to distract us from that fact.

Our Fearless Leader: Both Cassie and Marco bemoan the loss of Jake’s decision-making skills when they’re on board the Helmacron ship. It’s a good moment to really highlight how dependent the rest of them are on Jake to make important calls in the midst of chaos. But other than that, Jake kind of just does his thing through most of this book. Cassie talks about how cute she thinks he his, and there’s some fun awkwardness at the beginning when Jake sees her in a swimsuit and becomes extremely stammer-y.

Xena, Warrior Princess: As always my favorite parts of Cassie books are the interactions between her and Rachel. Their friendship is awesome, and through Cassie’s books we see a very unique side of Rachel, the more human, normal, teenage girl side that is our best view of what Rachel must have been like before the Yeerk invasion. The story is nicely bookended by Rachel’s teasing Cassie about her changing opinion on whether or not she likes the beach based on whether or not Jake will be there. Rachel also has some pretty funny  moments taking on the Helmacrons with various objects: a brick, a tire iron, a bat. If you need someone to hit things, Rachel’s your girl.

A Hawk’s Life: Tobias is one of the early ones to be shrunk, which is purely for convenience’s sake since tiny!Cassie and Marco can’t be heard using their regular speaking voices. For all of that, he STILL somehow ends up pushed to the side during the majority of the story. Most notably, he isn’t captured and brought on the Helmacron ship with Cassie and Marco.

The Comic Relief: I found myself wishing that this had been a Marco book throughout the entire read. Not only does Marco share in almost all the action with Cassie, but his is the exact sort of narration style that could have possibly saved this dumper fire of a story line. Sure, we get plenty of quips from him throughout, and that’s a huge saving grace, but it would have been so much better had he just had the narration to himself. If you’re going to do nonsense, put it in the hands of your most smart ass character and call it good. Marco is also probably the smartest of the Animorphs (not including Ax, but even there, it’s mostly book smarts), so he would have also been a good pick to be able to make the same leaps of logic that Cassie does. Give Cassie a book that somehow forces her to address the whole David thing, then give this book to Marco. Done! I fixed it!

E.T./Ax Phone Home: So apparently the Andalites haven’t heard of the Helmacrons but the Yeerks have? This seems suspicious, but I’ll just explain it as Ax having not hearde of the Helmacrons, probably because he was sleeping through class. During their first moments with the shrinking ray in the barn, Ax spends a good amount of time “explaining” the science behind it all. It played for comedic value, but then when the story moved on to Marco and Cassie morphing even smaller, and then morphing bigger, and then morphing regular sized, it all got super confusing. I was both too bored to want to understand the “science” of it, but then also very annoyed and confused whenever they were able to twist the shrinking thing to their advantage. It was just dumb. Also, we get another Ax’s-tailblade-to-Visser-Three’s-throat stand off. I should really have a tally for these.

Best (?) Body Horror Moment: Right after Cassie is shrunk, Jake ends up on the ground next to her and she gets a close-up view of his face and we have this description:

His eyes were like brown-and-white swimming pools, huge globes that looked as if they might pop and drain down like runny Jell-0. I stared up, transfixed by this face I had always found attractive. And I found myself staring at a zit bigger than I was.

Couples Watch!: Ok, look, this is why I prefer Tobias/Rachel’s romance to Cassie/Jake’s. Remember in the last book where we got that beautiful line from Tobias about the sight of Rachel in the sunlight making his heart ache? Well, here, the first time Cassie sees Jake, we get a line about how she “likes” him, “you know, like.” And sure, this is how kids talk, but the two of them have been saying not only a variation of this, but THIS EXACT LINE, “you know, like,”  for forever now! Given the fact that they’re all living in a constant state of warfare and tragedy, they’ve all matured way past their ages, and this is shown in Rachel and Tobias’s more serious relationship. They simply don’t have the time to be tip-toeing around things. And neither do Jake and Cassie! They might not have the bird problem that Tobias and Rachel do, but they still have the same life or death stakes every day and you’d think that at some point that would push them past some of this silliness. Regardless of what is likely an over-analysis of all of this on my part, I’m simply bored of hearing them say how much they “you know, like” each other. We do get some funny moments with the whole beach/swimsuit thing, but I still enjoyed Tobias and Rachel’s small, but more earnest, moments throughout the book when either of the other ended up in danger.

If Only Visser Three had  Mustache to Twirl:  So Visser Three does appear in this, but we’ve again got the campy, silly Visser Three ala Cassie book #9 when he gets defeated by skunk stink. The last scene where there is a three way standoff was essentially resolved in three sentences, all summarizing what happened but not detailing any actual action. This has to be because it is completely unbelievable that Visser Three would simply walk away in this situation. Especially because the blue box was SITTING RIGHT THERE!. The whole thing was nonsense. And the fact that Visser Three did in fact know about the Helmacrons before all of this and yet was still just as clueless as the Animorphs about how the shrinking thing actually works, etc. was another glaring hole.

The Helmacrons are technically the villains of this piece, but it’s clear that they were mostly written for comedic value. And, on their own, they were pretty amusing. I thought their power structure with the dead captain was pretty interesting, and their on-going infighting and complete delusions about their own abilities played for some good laughs.

<Do you think to terrify us with your pitiful morphs? We are Helmacron warriors!> They were yelling this as they hustled away at top speed.

But, again, that ending. Nothing we’ve seen so far would indicate that the Helmcrons, for all that they get easily caught up in in-fighting, would so easily just wander off, leaving the blue box behind.

Adult Ugly Crying at a Middle Grade Book: Can I cry at the sheer nosedive in quality the books took between the last four and this one? Cuz that’s all I have for this right now.

What  a Terrible Plan, Guys!: Everything. It was all bad plans on everyone’s part. The fact that Ax took the blue box to a Sharing meeting and then somehow (off screen notably!) loses it to the tiny Helmacron ship. Cassie and Marco’s completely nonsensical decision making while on board the ship (“We should stay!” “We should leave!” “Morph small!” “Oh no, we’re too small!”). The entire end of the book! Again, the blue box was sitting out in the open, Visser Three and a bunch of Controllers were there, and the Animorphs decided that now was the time to play fair and unshrink them, just trusting that they’d walk away. Sheer stupidity that only succeeds because it has to for the books to continue.

Favorite Quote: Right after Marco, Cassie and Tobias have been shrunk in the barn and the Helmacrons are poised to shrink whomever walks in next:

“I’m coming in,” Jake said decisively. “No!” Marco yelled in a voice that already sounded like someone breathing helium. “No, Jake and Ax, do not come in!” Then, as an afterthought, he said, “Rachel, you could come in.” <Marco!> Tobias chided. “Hey, the Wicked Witch gets to be full size and I’m down here singing, ‘We represent the Lollipop Guild?’ I don’t think so.”

And Rachel gets a similar jab back later:

“Okay, I’ve had enough of this battle of the alien egos here. I’m counting to three. Then I’m throwing this brick. You little insects either fix my friends . . . and Marco, too … or you get bricked.”

And:

Rachel said it first. “Oh, come on. Like we don’t have enough problem aliens?”

Preach it. No one needs any more of the Helmacrons.

Scorecard: Yeerks 6, Animorphs 10

I’m taking away a point from the Animorphs due to the sheer stupidity at the end, bringing Visser Three and a bunch of Controllers back to their real size while the blue box is sitting out in the open.

Rating: I think it’s pretty clear at this point that I didn’t love this book. Cassie books are never my favorites, but this one failed to even play to her strengths and instead left her with a story line that could have only been saved (maybe) if someone like Marco had been narrating it. The Helmacrons had their fun moments, but the whole plot was muddled and confusing, and the end just made me mad. It was lazy writing all around, and it was only made worse for having come right after four of probably the strongest books in the series. Ugh, and now I just have to dread the return of the Helmacrons, because I know it happens, even if I can’t remember the details.

Note: I’m not going to rate these books since I can’t be objective at all! But I’ll give a one sentence conclusion and you can take from that what you will!

Animorphs #23: “The Pretender” by K.A. Applegate

Publishing Info: Scholastic Paperbacks, November 1998

Where Did I Get this Book: own it!

Book Description: To Tobias, no one is who they seem. He has just heard a reading of his father’s last will and testament. That’s how he found out who his father really was: the Andalite Prince Elfangor Tobias is stunned, but can’t show it. Because Visser Three is watching his every move.

Narrator: Tobias

Plot: Tobias is having a problem: another red tail hawk is moving into his territory and food is getting scarce. Being Tobias, he’s feeling angsty about this, unwilling to fight the hawk in the usual manner OR the unusual manner (given he can morph other animals an all!) Also, obviously asking for help is out of the question! There is also a family of rabbits in his field that he and the hawk are vying for. Tobias has already ate one of the babies, and knows that humans would have a problem with that. But from his human perspective, sparing the mother gives her a chance to have more babies. And from his hawk perspective, adult rabbits can kick. Just as he’s going in for the kill on one of the babies, he has a flash from the POV of the rabbit, terrified by the shadow swooping in from above. He misses and gets whacked in the head by the mother rabbit for his trouble, while the other hawk gets the baby rabbit anyways.

We learn that this wasn’t the first time that Tobias has had a flash like this; it’s been happening for a few weeks, always just as he’s closing in on his prey. This has messed up more than one of his kills, leaving him almost starving. In a desperate move, he spots a dead racoon on the side of the road, and goes in to eat, hating himself for coming to this. In a terrible moment of timing, Rachel walks up and recognizes him, mid-feast. Humiliated, Tobias flees.

A few days later, Tobias flies to Rachel’s house. She tells him that someone has been asking around about him, a lawyer who is representing a woman named Aria who claims to be Tobias’s cousin. She’s also heard all of this secondhand, through Chapman, who was asking Melissa if she new a kid named Tobias, a conversation that Rachel overheard. Tobias is immediately skeptical. Apparently the woman was in Africa this entire time, but now is back and wants to give Tobias a home.

The next day, the Animorphs take up stations around the strip mall office of the lawyer, DeGroot.

Tobias morphs human behind a dumpster and heads into the office to meet with DeGroot. The lawyer asks where he’s been, and Tobias avoids answering. DeGroot claims that the man who died, Tobias’s “father,” may not have been his real father, and that DeGroot’s own father had an old file stating to contact Tobias on his next birthday to have his real father’s final statement read to him. He then says that this cousin, Aria, wants to meet with Tobias in a hotel the next day.

Back in the sky, Tobias flies away, wanting to be alone, not wanting to deal with the ways that he knows his friends will dissect these events. Wanting the choice, problem, hope, to be his own. Instead, he flies to the Hork Bajir valley where he is surprised to see them waiting for him. Through Toby, their seer, they relay the fact that one of the children, a boy named Bek, has disappeared from the valley. Through this story, Tobias learns more: the Hork Bajir have been raiding a nearby, secret Yeerk facility where they have been freeing more of their kind. Toby explains that this is very important, not only for her people now, but so that there are enough of them that if the world is ever freed from humans, people can’t just overrun them. Toby says that the Hork Bajir trusted the Andalites once, and look where that got them? They will trust the Animorphs, but not all of humanity. They worry that if the Animorphs know about the secret base, they will attack it and thus deprive the Hork Bajir of future opportunities to save more of their kind. Tobais says he will talk to the Animorphs to set up a search party for Bek.

Later, back in the barn,  Marco is ranting, per the usual. Rachel shuts him down, also per the usual. And Tobias feels a flash of jealously at their easy, normal interactions. The Animorphs now have a lot on their plate, and Jake has Marco get on the Internet and see if he can find any mention of a strange creature spotted nearby, hoping to get a lead on Bek.

Tobias is paired with Rachel, and again describes her morph to eagle as her becoming on the outside what she is on the inside. Together, they go to spy on Aria. On the way, Tobias mentions the other hawk, but then immediately feels stupid for letting Rachel know about problems as if he can’t deal with them. They arrive at the hotel and begin spying. Rachel notes that Aria is changing into a dress that is three to four years out of date, cuz of course she knows this. After getting a call, Aria heads out and hails a cab, making it hard for eagle!Rachel and Tobias to keep up.

<Rachel, I have a plan even you will think is insane,> I said. <See that cop car? Going the same general direction as the cab? See the lights on top?>

Rachel laughed. <0kay, that actually is insane. Let’s do it!>

They careen after the cab for a few miles, riding the the police car. But when the police get a call, it begins to veer away. Tobias spots a helicopter and has another brilliant plan.

The helicopter lifted off and headed at right angles to us. It was going

the same direction as the cab.

<l have another really bad idea,> I said.

Tobias manages the crazy stunt, but Rachel misses. Turns out the whole thing was needless, as the cab had stopped just below them. They find themselves at a dumpy little mini gold and zoo advertising a new acquisition: “A deadly midget freak!” Tobias has a sneaking suspicion, and he and Rachel go in as humans. Inside, the place is as sad and pathetic as one would expect. Further in, they spot Bek in a cage. They overhear Aria trying to convince the owner to let her take pictures, but the owner says he already has someone on the way who will pay thousands. Aria berates him a bit for the treatment of the other animals and leaves. A limo pulls up and she climbs in and drives away.

The next day the Animorphs meet in the barn and quickly decide they need to rescue Bek. They morph birds and head to the zoo. The group splits into two, and Tobias morphs Ket Halpak so that Bek will come with them willingly. The others plan to turn of the power and have elephant!Rachel knock down a wall to gain entrance.

“Hey, did Jake say knock down one wall? Or did he say knock down some walls?” Rachel asked, dripping with fake innocence.

<You know perfectly well he just wants you to get us into that place. He did not say you should knock the whole place down just because Frank is a creep and he mistreats animals,> I said sternly. <0n the other hand, it is dark. You might get confused. . . . >

The plan goes well, except that when Tobias gets inside he comes up against three Controllers, also there to nab Bek. Wolf!Cassie attacks, and gorilla!Marco forces the cage door open. A massive fight breaks out between the Animorphs and Controllers, and Tobias ends up shot in the stomach. Jake orders him to take Bek and run, but on the way out he runs into Visser Three who is morphing yet another of his alien monster morphs. Tobias feigns surrender and manages to take out several of alien!Visser Three’s legs, but as Visser Three falls, he shoots Tobias in the back with acid. In a panic of pain, Tobias rushes to a nearby lagoon, but loses Bek in the process.

Later, Tobias blames this on the human part of himself, thinking that the hawk would have been able to ignore the pain. Ax shows up and proposes that he and Tobias continue their investigation of Aria, also theorizing that they found Bek last time by following her as well. They watch her all day and note nothing of interest, other than the fact that she seems to like her hotel, and returns every few hours. Tobias thinks that it might be a “woman thing,” preferring to use the hotel toilet than public ones. On her next trip out, Aria saves a little girl from a bus that is barreling towards her. Tobias sees this as clear proof that Aria is not a Controller. Ax sees this as clear proof, but Tobias is too distracted by his excitement that Aria must not be a Controller to really ask about Ax’s tone.

Later that night, Tobias flies to Rachel’s room. He had missed a meeting of the group, and Rachel tells him they’ve decided that the Yeerks will likely use Bek as bait at their secret facility to try and lure in the other Hork Bajir. Tobias brings up Aria, and he and Rachel discuss the fact that she might be the real deal, and that Tobias could be a human boy again. They get into a fight about the tough life Tobias is leading lately, Rachel accusing him of his rather starving than asking for help. Tobias is defensive, saying that he’s a hawk and that whey they’re weak, they die. Rachel (rightly!) scoffs at this thought. She also mentions their quasi-relationship and how impossible it is now, with Tobias as a hawk the majority of the time. Tobias turns to go, but Rachel stops him, telling him that she and Marco hacked the school records and found out that his birthday is tomorrow. And to come find her after he meets with the lawyers and Aria, regardless of what he decides.

Tobias has a bad night, debating between becoming a human or staying a hawk. He is also weak with hunger, finally giving in and eating his fill of a cat that had been hit by a car earlier. The next day, the Animorphs meet up with the freed Hork Bajir. Toby comes up with the grim plan of attacking the base as a combined force, even if it means killing other Hork Bajir or losing Bek. She states that the Yeerks can’t be allowed to think they can use hostages against them. Jake is surprised by the wisdom of the seer. Ten of the Hork Bajir assemble with the group, and they head out. On the way, one of the Hork Bajir tells Tobias that he fought him once in the Yeerk pool and points to a scar on his head from Tobias’s talons. Tobias apologizes, but the Hork Bajir says he wasn’t free then, but is now, and they are friends.

They approach the base which is located in a valley that is hidden by a hologram. The base is made up of one building with a massive Dracon beam attached to the top, powerful enough, according to Ax, to take out the moon. They come up with a plan to have a handful of Hork Bajir pretend to conduct a raid and let themselves be captured, but they will have Animorphs in various bug morphs hitchhiking along with them. Once they are caught and put in a cage with Bek, Tobias demorphs, hidden in a circle of Hork Bajir.

I looked around and sighed. <No, Jara. You want to turn outward. This way it’s kind of obvious you’re shielding something.>

Tobias walks out of the cage, then hides and morphs Hork Bajir. He gets the keys to the cage and quickly he unlocks frees the others. Everyone morphs battle morphs. They plan on using the massive Dracon beam to blow up the base by aiming it down. They learn that Visser Three is expected at any moment, and soon see a helicopter coming in for a landing. Aria is inside.

Tobias is bereft, furious with himself for hoping, and for not noticing the two hour increments between her convenient “bathroom breaks” at the hotel. He feels that he, especially, should have caught on to this pattern, and retreats into anger, preferring that to the other emotions that are bubbling up. He crashes hard to the ground, completely destroyed by these realizations. Completely out of it, he isn’t able to help his friends who are fighting and is only saved when Toby snatches him off the ground and runs away with him, saying the weapon is about to explode. Toby saves him, then hands him to Rachel when they get away. At the barn, Cassie frantically looks him over, looking for the injury. Only then does Tobias confess what he’s seen and now knows about Aria.

He has no choice but to show up to the appointment, even knowing what he does, that it’s a trap. Not showing up would only confirm Visser Three’s suspicions about him, and then eventually this knowledge would lead him to Tobias’s friends. Tobias goes for a role as a tough street kid when he meets Aria and the lawyer, responding to all of their questions with scorn and indifference. But then they get to a big reveal…

I had forgotten how to use facial expressions. I was used to being a hawk and not a human.

It saved my life.

It is a letter from his real father, Alan Fangor, Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul. Tobias is shocked, but able to maintain his outward indifference and sarcasm, saying it’s just typical that his father shows up and turns out to be a lunatic who didn’t even bother leaving him any money. Aria!Visser Three and Controller!DeGroot are visibly disappointed, and Aria!Visser Three suddenly realizes that she’ll have to delay taking in Tobias because she got a sudden call to go back to Africa to reshoot some lions.

Tobias realizes what had to have happened: DeGroot was a Controller, saw the letter, realized what it meant, and brought in Visser Three. Together they had hatched the plan to try and trick Tobias, hoping that he had some connection to the Andalite bandits, since he is Elfangor’s son. Thinking about Elfangor’s time on Earth, Tobias quickly deduces that the Ellimist must have been responsible for erasing his father’s time on Earth. Tobias wonders if he should be angry, but realizes that Elfangor had to do what he did if he was to be where he needed to be to meet the Animorphs and give them their abilities and maybe save the Earth.

Through this, Tobias realizes that he, too, much do what is right and necessary, and not just what is easier for him. He must stay a hawk and do what hawks do, but he will always be both a hawk and a human. He will have to kill to eat, but he is a human, so he will also regret this. He kills the mother rabbit, but only after acquiring her. He then morphs the rabbit, and vows to keep the babies safe from the other hawk.

Later, he flies to Rachel’s room, waking her up. She’s grumpy, but then shows him the cake she made for him, lights a candle, and wishes him a happy birthday.

A Hawk’s Life:  As always, Tobias books are packed full of the feels. Through all of this, we have a lot of Tobias’s reflection on family, what that means, and the effects of not having this at all his entire childhood. We also see him beginning to lose his memory of what his life was like as a human. In the last book, he was forgetting what he looked like. Now we see him forgetting his own birthday and what his mom looked like.

We also get into the big conflict that he always has about how to balance the parts of him that are a hawk and those that are a boy. This is made worse by the bizarre flashes from the POV of his prey when he’s going in for the attack. It’s never really explained what these are all about, but I guess we’re left to assume it’s just all in his mind and is an extension of this existential crisis he’s having about feeling bad that he has to kill baby rabbits and such to live. But for a series that has so many other supernatural explanations for “visions” and such, it’s a strange leap to just have to assume that this isn’t anything more than Tobias processing his thoughts in a bizarre manner.

We also start getting the repercussions of the fact that he is now choosing to be a hawk. In his last book he received his own human morph, so he could go back to being a boy at any time, but he would lose his morphing abilities. This gets into probably my biggest issue with the whole series: why couldn’t he just get “stuck” as a human, and then they use the morphing cube to give him back his abilities? I can’t remember if this loophole is addressed later, but it always seems completely off that this wouldn’t have occurred to one of them immediately after getting the  blue box back. And then, if it wasn’t possible, that needed to be said right away!

Anyways! He goes on to have a lot of thoughts about where his duty lies vs. his personal preference. The parallels between his choice and Elfangor’s are pretty stark. Elfangor had to leave his life as a human with the woman he loved for the duty of fighting in a war. Tobias is having to choose to remain a hawk, not be a human boy who can be with the girl he loves, because he needs to be able to fight in this war.

Our Fearless Leader: At one point when they are deciding where to look for Bek after Tobias loses him at the zoo, Rachel cynically wonders if Jake’s plan to ask the Hork Bajir for the location of the base is just an excuse to find out where it is so they can destroy it. It’s a small moment, but it speaks to Rachel’s new perspective on Jake and the decisions he makes. She says that he has become more subtle in his decision making, and, from personal experience in the last book, she knows that he is willing to use people and circumstances in whatever way is necessary to win the larger war. We never find out whether this was actually Jake’s reasoning, but you have to think that it was at least part of it.

Xena, Warrior Princess: As we will get into a bit more in the “Couples Watch” section, this is a big book for Tobias/Rachel. For one, when the possibility arises that Tobias could have a home and go back to leading life as a real boy, Rachel has a very vulnerable moment with him:

Then Rachel, in a whisper, said, “What am I supposed to do, Tobias? I’m a girl. You’re a bird. This is way past Romeo and Juliet, Montagues and Capulets. This isn’t Kate Winslet and Leo DiCaprio coming from different social groups or whatever. It’s not like you’re black and I’m white like Cassie and Jake. No one but a moron cares about that. We are … we can’t hold hands, Tobias. We can’t dance. We can’t go to a movie together.”

<l . . . God, Rachel, don’t you think I know all that? Don’t you think I want to have all that? But I can’t keep changing. I can’t keep becoming something different.>

This is the beginning of an ongoing dispute between these two about Tobias’s choice to remain a bird.

Tobias also repeatedly notes the many things that he loves about Rachel. Yes, she’s beautiful. But he also notes that he loves it when she’s cranky about things, says she’s the bravest person he knows, and loves that she’s all-in on his crazy plans, like riding the cop car and trying to snag the helicopter. It is clear that Tobias regularly visits Rachel’s bedroom, and she makes him a birthday cake, regardless of what he chooses about Aria (back before any of them knew Aria was Visser Three).

It’s also noteworthy that Toby, too, recognizes the importance of Rachel in Tobias’s life, choosing to hand him to her when he’s in rough shape after learning the truth about Aria.

Peace, Love, and Animals: Cassie doesn’t have much in this book. When Tobias and Rachel first scope out the zoo, Rachel notes that Cassie would be appalled by the conditions and says that if she, Rachel, doesn’t get to destroy it, she’ll simply tell Cassie about it who will then rope Jake in and that will do the trick. One has to imagine that Cassie was more than happy to see elephant!Rachel stomp the place later during their rescue mission for Bek.

The Comic Relief: Marco, too, doesn’t have any of big moments. In the beginning when Tobias first hears about the whole Aria situation, he predicts that Marco will be the most instantly suspicious of it, which he then is. Given that in the end Marco’s completely right about it being a trap, it might be good for the rest of the group to stop categorizing him as the “overly suspicious one” and more as the “one who’s always right so maybe we should just listen to him in the first place.”

E.T./Ax Phone Home: For the book where Tobias finds out that Ax is technically his uncle, we don’t even get a scene between the two of them after this is revealed! It’s kind of a bummer. Also, we never get any follow up on the fact that it is implied that Ax is instantly suspicious of Aria’s convenient save of the little girl from the bus, which is too bad. Why exactly was he so instantly suspicious? Up to this point, we haven’t seen that many elaborate plots by the Yeerks like this, so how did he know?

Best (?) Body Horror Moment: The description of Rachel’s elephant morph was particularly bad this go around. Tobias says that her morph presented as sudden lumps of flesh just popping out of various parts of her body, like her thighs and her head. I mean, the thigh thing is every woman’s worst nightmare, and the head thing sounds particularly disgusting looking.

Couples Watch!: This is probably the biggest couples book we’ve had in the regular series so far. Cassie and Jake always seem to be still tip-toing around their feelings for each other. Rachel and Tobias seem to be well past that. In the first few pages, we get this line from Tobias:

Rachel would be beautiful in the middle of mud slides and hailstorms. On a sweet, sunny day, she made my heart ache.

Such a small, beautiful moment. But it goes to show that Tobias is very honest with himself and readers about where he stands with regards to Rachel. Further, as I highlighted in Rachel’s section, these two are even at the point where they talk openly with each other about their situation as a couple. Man, I love all the angsty tragedy of these two, and as a kid, I was always kind of smug about the fact that, in many ways, these two had things figured out way before Cassie/Jake. And, even with all of the bird-related challenges, they kind of turn out to be the most consistent, solid couple of the series.

If Only Visser Three had  Mustache to Twirl: When Aria!Visser Three sees the non-reaction on Tobias’s part with regards to the Elfangor reveal, he quickly walks back on the offer to take Tobias in, saying that “Aria” needs to go back to Africa on a reshoot of some lions. I take the fact that he chose lions specifically as yet more proof that Visser Three is a closeted cat person and secretly has an entire room full of cats somewhere on his Blade ship.

Right when Tobias goes to leave, he also says this:

“I … I knew your father. We were, shall we say, on the opposite sides of certain issues. But he was no fool.” Suddenly Aria/Visser Three smiled. It was a faraway smile, like she/he was remembering something from long ago. “Prince Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul was no fool. And the galaxy will not soon see his like again.”

Another example that Visser Three not only respects the Andalites to a certain extent (as we saw burgeoning in the “Hork-Bajir Chronicles”) but that he has particular esteem for his once-nemesis, Elfangor. It’s a nice humanizing (?) moment for Visser Three, making him more than the somewhat campy villain he sometimes comes across as, particularly early in the series.

Adult Ugly Crying at a Middle Grade Book: Again, pretty much the entire book. Tobias books are all particularly rough, not only because of his current circumstances, but by the fact that he was the most messed up before all of this happened anyways. The rest of them were leading normal, mostly happy lives (perhaps with the exception of Marco, but even he had most of his childhood spent with two loving parents). In this book, we see how deep the damage goes for Tobias, having grown up completely uncared for and unwanted by his aunt and uncle. In the beginning, he’s honestly confused by why anyone would want to take care of him.

Also, after learning that Aria is Visser Three in disguise, he goes back down a somewhat-suicidal route, similar to what was going on way back in book #3. He has a mental dialogue running about hating himself and wanting to die. It’s pretty dark stuff. Finding out that his father didn’t abandon him and his mother for nothing hopefully makes a lasting difference for him in this manner. Plus, now he has Ax as family!

But there’s also this bit, right after he left the office knowing that Elfangor was his father. He had to demorph to hawk because time was running short, but then morphed back to human.

See, I wanted to cry. I wanted to cry a lot, for a long time. And hawks don’t cry.

For those of you who have read the entire series, omg, the WORST kind of foreshadowing.

What  a Terrible Plan, Guys!: Again, mostly good plans by the Animophs. And a very elaborate plan by our favorite villain. He really committed to playing up his life as Aria, what with the set up with saving the child, and the whole performance  he put on at the zoo when Tobias and Rachel see him interacting with the zoo manager about Bek. For all of that work, it’s kind of surprising that he didn’t take a minute to demorph back to his Andalite form before racing to the complex when it was under attack by the Hork Bajir. Sure, the freed Hork Bajir had mostly attacked alone in the past, but the Yeerks know that the Animorphs have helped them in the past, so there’s always a chance that they would be there too. Kind of a strange misstep in a plot that took so much work to pull off in every other way.

Favorite Quote: Obligatory Marco/Rachel banter quote:

<We need to unlock the lock,> Marco said.

<Do you think?> Rachel mocked. <With your intellect, maybe you could be our “seer.”>

<Hah. Hah. And also, hah,> Marco said.

And a more serious quote having to do with Tobias’ reflections on war and duty:

I guess it’s true what they always say about combat soldiers. They may start out fighting for their country, but they end up fighting for the guy next to them in the foxhole. I didn’t so much care about the fate of the human race at that moment. I wasn’t human. I was a hawk. But I cared about Jake, and Cassie, and Marco, and Ax-man, and Rachel. Always Rachel.

Scorecard: Yeerks 6, Animorphs 11

A point for the Animorphs for taking out that base. Between everything else that’s going on, it kind of gets passed right over that they managed to take out a massive laser gun that was capable of BLOWING UP THE MOON.

Rating: I always love the Tobias books. He has so many internal things going on. I also love the romance between him and Rachel, and I think throughout the series, Tobias’s books are the most romantic for our main characters. Rachel is always caught up in some of her own stuff, so while it’s there, we don’t get as much as we do from Tobias. And Cassie and Jake have their own issues. I also love the fact that we finally get the reveal for Tobias about Elfangor being his dad, though I think the book would have benefited from having a scene with Ax about this news.

Note: I’m not going to rate these books since I can’t be objective at all! But I’ll give a one sentence conclusion and you can take from that what you will!

Animorphs 22.5: “The Hork-Bajir Chronicles” by K.A. Applegate

Publishing Info: Scholastic Paperbacks, December 1998

Where Did I Get this Book: own it!

Book Description: Dak Hamee, born into the Hork-Bajir tribe, is something special from the start. “Strange,” says his mother. “A seer,” says the Old One, Tila Fashat. “A seer is one who is born to show a new way. Many, many seasons pass, then our father, the Deep, and our mother, the Sky, say, ‘Send a seer to the people. The people have need.’ And so one is born who is different.” When strange and different Dak meets Aldrea, the clever Andalite daughter of Prince Seerow, they learn together of the dangerous plot of the Yeerks, and of Esplin 9466, who will stop at nothing to build his empire. Learn more about Prince Seerow’s Kindness, find out how Andalites kiss, and plumb the mysteries of the Deep in this suspense-filled story of good, evil, and interspecies love.

Narrators: Dak Hamee, Aldrea, Esplin 9466

Plot: This story marks a departure from regular Animorphs books in several ways. For one, it is a story being told to Tobias by the freed Hork Bajir. It also features three narrators: Dak Hamee, a seer Hork  Bajir, Aldrea, an young female Andalite and the daughter of the infamous Seerow, and Esplin 9466, an ambitious Yeerk. The story also jumps around through time, starting around 1966 (Earth time) when Seerow first releases the Yeerks onto the galaxy, and ending a few years later.

The story begins with Aldrea describing the moments after the Yeerks first show their true colors and attack the Andalites who have set up a base on their home world. Alloran (yes THAT Alloran) shows up and begins berating Seerow for the mistakes he has made with the Yeerks by giving them technology and a portable Kandrona.

<Stupidity,> Alloran said harshly. <The stupidity of kindness. Charity to potential enemies. You’re a fool, Seerow. A soft, sentimental, well-meaning fool. And now my men are dead and the Yeerks are loose in the galaxy. How many will die before we can bring this contagion under control? How many will die for Seerow’s kindness?>

Two years later!

Aldrea and her family (her father, mother, and brother) are traveling to far away planet that is known to have life to observe and make sure there is no Yeerk presence. It is not an esteemed mission and Aldrea likens it to be ongoing exile due to her father’s actions. The planet they land on is made up of deep valleys full of huge trees and are soon greeted by the Hork Bajir. They send Dak Hamee, a young Hork Bajir who has known he was difference since he was a child. He is what the Hork Bajir call a “seer,” a rare Hork Bajir that is born rarely and who is much more intelligent than the common Hork Bajir. He has been told that he will bring a “new way” to his people. After meeting the Andalites and forming a friendship with Aldrea, he thinks that this “new way” is simply learning the vastness of the universe and all of the secrets of life and technology that Aldrea is showing him.

In the meantime, Esplin 9466 has his first experience outside of the Yeerk pool. He reveals that many Yeerks are perfectly satisfied with their lives in the pool, and that some, even after infesting a host body, find the prefer that life, finding the infestation experience too frightening and overwhelming. Esplin, however, becomes immediately addicted, especially to the sense of sight. He quickly understands that he must make himself useful if he is to earn the privileged of gaining a permanent host body (which are in high demand), so he sets out to become an expert on their enemies, the Andalites, with the hopes that his knowledge will be called upon in the future.

Three months pass.

Aldrea and Dak have become friends, and Aldrea is continuously surprised by how quickly Dak is absorbing all of the information she is presenting him. But she is also beginning to feel bad about spying on the Hork Bajir, having not explained to Dak the truth of why they are on his planet or anything about the Yeerk threat. Her parents are too caught up in their own things to pay much attention to what she is doing. They both question the fact that Dak is truly as intelligent as Aldrea reports.

One day as Aldrea and Dak are exploring (Aldrea has acquired a local animal called a Chadoo that she uses to travel through the trees alongside Dak), Dak hears a message being sent from another valley. The Hork Bajir use the trees and a system of strung vines to communicate across the distances. He says they are confused by a strange new alien creature that has come and taken away some of their own. Aldrea quickly realizes that they are describing the Gedd and that the Yeerks have arrived. Even worse, she realizes that her father will be sending out his nightly report and that the message is sure to be intercepted by the Yeerks in orbit if she doesn’t stop him. She arrives just in time to see her father send the message.

Meanwhile, Esplin has gained a Hork Bajir host body and is reveling in its power and the possibilities that this new species will give the Yeerks in their fight against the Andalites. The Yeerks intercept Seerow’s message and quickly locate the Andalites’ camp, and see three of the four Andalites nearby. Esplin warns them to wait until the fourth Andalite appears before shooting, using his knowledge of Andalites to deduce that the fourth wouldn’t be inside the scoop, as the other Yeerks theorized, as Andalites do not like to be cooped up if they have a choice. The Yeerk leaders ignore him and fire on the camp.

Aldrea watches her family and her home explode. Dak, confused by the violence and what is happening, has to drag her away from the scene. The Yeerks land and Hork Bajir Controllers immediately go after Aldrea. This is the first time Dak sees his own and his people’s blades as weapons, and manages to cripple one of the Controllers before he could kill Aldrea. They flee.

Aldrea swears vengeance for the death of her family and looks to Dak to inspire his people to fight. Suddenly realizes that the Hork Bajir aren’t peaceable by choice but that they literally don’t understand the concepts of fighting and battle. Dak insists that she explain everything; she tells the story of her father’s mistake. Dak quickly realizes the heart of the matter: the Yeerks were content on their own, but once they saw what they didn’t have, they wanted more. Aldrea, in her arrogance, assumes this insight is simply because now, too, the Hork Bajir are going to be jealous of the almighty Andalites.

Aldrea is insistence that the Hork Bajir must become killers to avoid being slaves. Dak sees this for what it is: both a death for his people and their ways. Aldrea sees Dak  begin to look at her in a strange, new way, his face filled with contempt. As the Yeerks continue to chase them, Aldrea and Dak flee to the Deep, one of the deeper crevices on the planet’s surface that is known to contain monsters that have killed all Hork Bajir who have wandered their in the past. They have no choice, however, and run down. The Yeerks follow, but Dak and Aldrea are saved when one of those very monsters, a huge Jubba Jubba creature, attacks them and kills the Yeerks. Aldrea manages to lob off its hand and they flea deeper.

Further down they find a sheer cliff, and in the cliff an intricate city of windows, bridges and balconies. They hide in one of the rooms that has been built into the wall. There they discover a new species, the Arn who look very similar to the Chadoo animal that Aldrea morphed. The Arn, however, are an intelligent species and, while trying to get Dak and Aldrea to leave, they explain their own history and that of the Hork Bajir planet. The Arn had been there first when the planet was lush and beautiful. However, there was an asteroid that had an unstable orbit around them. The Arn know that one day it would hit, however, being biologists, they couldn’t manage to create space ships that could get them past their own moon. Eventually the asteroid did hit, and only a few Arn who had been frozen and left on the moon survived. When the woke up they found their home world much changed, now covered in deep valleys and with an atmosphere that was barely stable. To manage this they created the vast trees. And to manage the trees, the created the Hork Bajir. They also made the monsters to serve as a barrier between the Hork Bajir and their own civilization further below.

The Arn want nothing to do with the war, but Aldrea and Dak manage to convince them that the Yeerks’ threat to the Hork Bajir will result in the Arns’ loss of their gardeners. The Arn teach them how to use the mind control system they have in place for controlling the monsters.

Meanwhile, Esplin and the Yeerks have been busy acquiring more Hork Bajir, around 100 a day. They cut down one of the massive trees and turn it into an impromptu Yeerk pool to aide in the infestation process. However, Esplin knows they must still find the Andalite. But Aldrea and Dak find him first, leading an army of monsters. Aldrea also calls to the Hork Bajir watching saying “Do as he does! Do as he does!” to get them to mimic’s Dak’s fighting. While Dak and the Hork Bajir fight, Aldrea sneaks on one of the Yeerk ships and manages to send out a message to the Andalites, calling for aide and saying the Yeerks have arrived. Hork Bajir!Esplin shows up and tries to capture Aldrea to infest her. She morphs a Jubba Jubba and escapes after using the fighter to blow up the tree  Yeerk pool.

Seven months pass.

Dak and Aldrea lead a guerilla war against the Yeerks, but they are taking huge losses. Aldrea can’t understand why the Andalites haven’t shown up; it should have only taken two months. Finally, they do arrive. Immediately they call Aldrea to come speak with Prince Alloran, but dismiss Dak. Dak insists that this war is taking place on his planet and being fought by his people: Alloran can come to him. Once the Andalite higher ups land, Dak finally manages to get their attention by giving a detailed report on the terrible conditions on the planet. Not only are the Yeerks infesting thousands of Hork Bajir, but they are also building new ships and will soon be able to travel the galaxy in huge numbers. They’re even creating a massive ship called a Blade ship.

They learn that the Andalites only showed up in small numbers, having not taken Aldrea’s warning seriously. After all, she was only a young female and the daughter of Seerow at that. The entire fleet is in another sector altogether and can’t arrive for another year. Dak knows that the Andalites will only use the Hork Bajir in this ongoing war. Aldrea doesn’t want to believe it, saying that Andalites aren’t like that.

We had been created by one brilliant species, invaded and enslaved by another. And now a third was using us. 

Esplin has been promoted to Sub Visser 12. He leads an attack on the newly arrived Andalites and reduces their number substantially.

Six more months pass.

The fight is not going well. Two thousand Andalites have been reduced to four hundred and the Hork Bajir are down to only 12 fighters. There are now one hundred thousand Hork Bajir Controllers. Dak, Aldrea, and the Andalites are holed up alongside the Arn (the Arn have adapted their bodies so that if they are infested they die,  however the Yeerks have simply turned them into slaves in other valleys). Dak notices that there is a section that the Andalites are guarding. He points it out to Aldrea. She is skeptical of it being anything of note, and tried to defend the Andalites. However, the two have grown much closer throughout all of this and she tells Dak that if the choice is between him or her people, she’ll choose him. After all of the Andalite arrogance and even Aldrea’s own lies to him, Dak doesn’t believe this, though he feels good to hear her say it. Aldrea manages to acquire Alloran. When Dak is confused by how she managed to pull this off, she says that morphing is a new technology and acquiring can be quite subtle. She simply took Alloran’s hand and gained his DNA without him noticing the drowsiness. She demonstrates how easy it is by acquiring a nearby female Hork Bajir.

She morphs Alloran and she and Dak gain entrance to the guarded room. There they find a computer lab and learn that Alloran has been creating a virus that is targeted to kill Hork Bajir. Dak is enraged, but not surprised, saying that this is the obvious next step for the ruthless Andalites who know a lost battle when they see one. Aldrea, equally horrified, insists that this is beyond the pale, even for Andalites, and that Alloran has clearly gone insane. They nab the canister containing the virus and destroy the lab. Dak is impressed and touched that Aldrea is willing to stand by her word, choosing him over her own people. Aldrea morphs a Hork Bajir to escape. This draws the attention of the rest of the Andalites. They only manage to escape because the Yeerks choose this very moment to attack the valley.

Dak and Aldrea managed to leap from a high bridge onto the passing Blade ship below. However, when the leap off, they are immediately captured by Yeerk Controllers and Esplin. Esplin immediately announces his plans to infest Aldrea, but Aldrea says that in two hours she will be trapped in this body forever (this is news to the Yeerks who don’t understand morphing technology). To prevent this, Esplin abandons his current Hork Bajir host body and attempts to infest Aldrea. Just before he fully gains control, the now freed Hork Bajir kills the Controllers around them and tugs Esplin back out from Hork Bajir!Aldrea’s ear. However, a nearby Andalite ship attacks the Yeerk ship they are in and they all go down.

Later, they wake up crashed on the valley floor. Aldrea has been trapped in Hork Bajir morph. As they search for Esplin (they theorize that he may have escaped into a nearby stream), the freed Hork Bajir swings down from the tree carrying the canister that he knows must be important. It’s open. The freed Hork Bajir immediately begins showing symptoms. Aldrea and Dak flee, hoping that the fact that the wind is against them will prevent their being infected. Right when they reach the Arn valley, they see the remaining Andalite ships leaving the planet.

They know the fight is lost. The virus is loose. And the Andalites have abandoned the planet. Aldrea and Dak reflect that there are valley far away that won’t be reached by the virus for quite a long time. And at least they have each other.

The book ends with Jara Hamee concluding his tale. Tobias says that now he’s even more depressed. Jara is confused by this and Tobias says he wishes he knew what happened to Aldrea and Dak, and even Esplin. Jara explains, as if to a small child, that Aldrea and Dak had a son whom they named Seerow, who had a son named Jara Hamee. And that Tobias already knows Esplin: Visser Three. As Tobias gets ready to leave, Jara introduces him to his daughter, Toby, named after Tobias. He says that Toby is special, and Tobias realizes that she, too, is a seer.

Dak Hamee & the Hork Bajir: Dak is a great character. I love everything about him. And it is clear that he is set up as the most wise of all the characters in this book, even the almighty Andalites. Really, looking at his character, this is what Cassie should be. He is peaceful by nature, incredibly talented at reading the underlying messages in people’s behavior, easily able to predict how those same people will act, and, importantly, willing to fight, even if he hates it. Yes, Cassie gets there too. But Daks’ anger and sadness never overcome him, he never puts others at risk to save his own conscience. His relationship with Aldrea is also great. Especially given the deeper understanding he has of some of her less positive qualities. But his ability to forgive is probably his strongest asset.

As for the Hork Bajir, I had forgotten much of their history. Especially their creation story, so that was a fun bit to re-experience. And man, the Arn are kind of the worst! I think they rival even the Andalites for arrogance! And are much more self-centered at that. They could care less what happens to everyone else, as long as they’re left alone. Their plan to adapt their bodies so that they’re uninfestable is clever, but they’re so self-focused that they don’t listen to the wisdom of others when they’re warned that the Yeerks won’t care about that and will find a way to destroy them anyways. Which they do by enslaving them and putting them to work mining for resource to be used to build more space ships. However, it’s not quite clear what their ultimate fate would be. After the virus was released, the Yeerks would flea the planet to avoid their hosts dying. But would the virus wouldn’t affect the Arn. So maybe their “outlast” plan worked after all. Even if they were little jerks the entire time.

Aldrea & the Andalites: Aldrea is also a great character. Most importantly because she is by no means a perfect character. Whereas Dak learns technical things about space, science, art, etc., he’s already a wise person. Aldrea is book smart, but she is naive about her own people and  exhibits many of the flaws of her species right from the beginning. She lies to Dak repeatedly; tries to downplay the Yeerk threat as long as she can; after her parents die, she becomes obsessed with revenge, not caring that the people who will be dying in this fight aren’t her own; when the Andalites arrive she fails to anticipate just how badly they will treat the Hork Bajir, and even at the end, struggles to believe Dak when he suggests that they are hiding things. For all of this, however, her arc of growth is clear. In the end, she stands by her statement to support Dak over her own people. And of all the characters we’ve seen become stuck in a morph, Aldrea expresses the least regret. Obviously this allows her to be with Dak, but I have to also think that by this point, she’s not a huge fan of her own species. Her father let loose the Yeerks on the world and then her commander tried to commit mass genocide. Maybe being a Hork Bajir is better, even if it’s short-lived.

As for the Andalites as a whole, you can’t say that Applegate ever gets “precious” about her “hero” alien species. If anything, the Andalites are getting a rougher and rougher history. They’re just kind of…all dicks. And sexist ones at that! Alloran says they pretty much dismissed Aldrea’s first call for help not only because she was Seerow’s daughter, but she was just a young female, so probably just foolish. It looks more and more like Elfangor and Ax are outliers, rather than examples of the Andalites as a whole. Even Ax struggles quite a lot to overcome his people’s arrogance and condescension towards other species. As always, Dak says it best:

I laughed. “You almighty Andalites. There is no limit to your arrogance, is there? Well, let me tell you something: We may be simple people. But we don’t use biology to invent monsters. And we don’t enslave other species. And we don’t unleash a plague of parasites on the galaxy, endangering every other free species, and then go swaggering around like the lords of the universe. No, we’re too simple for all that. We’re too stupid to lie and manipulate. We’re too stupid to be ruthless. We’re too stupid to know how to build powerful weapons designed to annihilate our enemies. Until you came, Andalite, we were too stupid to know how to kill.”

Esplin 9466 & the Yeerks: Esplin’s story was a very interesting one. My first thought as I started reading his chapters was that he sounded nothing like the Visser Three we know and love (?). For one, he seems pretty darn smart. He very quickly understands that he needs to make himself useful to be earn a permanent host body. And he also realizes, more than any of the other Yeerks, that to win they must understand the enemy. In this case, the Andalites. The interesting thing about this is that this plan is ultimately what also becomes his downfall. He learns everything about the Andalites, but then seems to become obsessed with them, and with the idea of infesting one.

In the main books’ arcs, this obsession has become a problem. His obsession with the Andalites has translated into a conclusion that they are the only worthy enemy in the universe. He immediately dismisses humans as a threat, thus leaving him with the inaccurate conclusion that he’s fighting Andalite bandits. Not only does he then misunderstand their tactics, motivations, and methods, but he fails to do the due diligence on the enemy he’s currently facing. The guy knows practically nothing about humans and the Earth, something that Visser One mocks him for. So the guy who began his career because he knew that it was important to fully know those whom you are fighting, is now losing because he got to caught up in his obsession over this first enemy. He’s no longer using what once was his best weapon, and thus losing this fight.

Beyond Esplin, we got some interesting facts about the Yeerks. Most notably, not all Yeerks enjoy infesting a host body. And, as Dak realizes early in the book, the Andalites failed to realize that a species might be content with the lives they lead and that introducing more is not necessarily helping. The Andalites’ huge failure is to under appreciate the difference cultures and priorities of the aliens the encounter. They believe they are the ideal, and therefore either dismiss (the Hork Bajir) or try to “help” (the Yeerks) the “lesser” species they encounter.

We also learn that the Yeerks already had a Council of Thirteen system when they lived in their pools, but the Visser/Sub Visser ranking only came after they attacked the Andalites. Esplin is also one of the first to realize that the type of host body you have reflects your own importance. Another reason for his obsession to become the first Yeerk with an Andalite host body.

A Hawk’s Life: As I’ve said before, a case can definitely be made for Tobias being the main character of this entire series. We now have both Chronicles books tying back to our main characters and storyline through Tobias. In the first, obviously, we learn that he is Elfangor’s son. Here, Toby, the new seer of the Hork Bajir, is named after Tobias in honor of the role he played in helping free the Hork Bajir now living in the hidden valley. For his own bits, the few scenes we have for Tobias are fairly depressing. He ends up at the valley because he’s feeling sad and lonely, and then it’s not like this story is the most uplifting thing ever either, so he’s pretty bummed at the end of it too. Obviously, the pay off and optimism comes with the introduction of Toby.

“I Get that Reference!”:  There were a few bits in this book that clearly touched on information that we as readers can connect to other bits of the story. One of the monsters from the Deep is one of the strange alien morphs that Visser Three uses (the vine-tentacle monster that took out all of the Animorphs back in the alternate timeline jungle story in book #11). There’s a reference to Dak and Aldrea theorizing that Esplin escaped in a nearby creek, something that must be kind of his move, since we saw him pull the same trick on Ax back in book #8.

Best (?) Body Horror Moment: There wasn’t a lot of body horror in this book. For one, Aldrea is the only one to morph and she doesn’t fixate on the process all that much. It was interesting learning that morphing was a very new technology at this time. Which means that in the grand scheme of things, morphing is very, very new for Andalites, even by the time we get to our main storyline back on Earth. I always thought of it as something the Andalites must have had for quite awhile. Aldrea also mentions that she is more skilled at morphing than others, and theorizes that females might have a better affinity for this technology, which is supported by the fact that Cassie is so good at morphing herself.

Couples Watch!: These Chronicles books are also turning out to be the most romantic of the entire series, and yet again we have a cross-species relationship forming. While I love the sweetness and humor of Elfangor and Lauren’s relationship, their storyline takes place over a short period of time, so it feels a bit less fleshed out. And then we miss the years in between when they truly form a romantic relationship. Here, with Dak and Aldrea, their romantic relationship grows in a much more realistic, and more painful, manner. The differences that they carry with them simply due to their species (Aldrea: arrogant, supremely confident, a tendency to think she knows best and look down on others. Dak: optimistic, has wisdom that could be seen as simplistic, but is actually more honest) are apparent from the beginning and are something they have to spend months working through.

Their relationship also forms through a much harder set of circumstances. Aldrea’s grief and anger over the loss of her family. Dak’s grief and anger over the loss of his entire people. And the fact that 90% of their time together is spent fighting a hopeless war. It’s dark, but it also makes their relationship feel that much more true and earned in the end.

We also get to see a Hork Bajir “kiss” when Dak presses his head blades to Aldrea’s in a moment of tenderness after she’s morphed Hork Bajir. She then compares it to an Andalite “kiss” which is when an Andalite strokes another Andalite’s face with their palm.

Adult Ugly Crying at a Middle Grade Book: Um, the entire book?? While I do love this book, it’s also one of the more challenging reads for me. It’s probably the most serious book in the series so far, and even at the beginning, the reader knows that things aren’t going to end well. We know the outcome of this war. We know the depth of betrayal the Andalites commit. We know that ultimately the Hork Bajir, and Aldrea and Dak, are doomed. So while the story does an excellent job of exploring some really important and challenging stuff (the price of violence on a peaceful people, the value placed on individuals based on intelligence, the lines that can be crossed in warfare), it’s still a tough book to feel pumped about reading from the start.

On a specific note, in this re-read, towards the very end of the book there is this quote:

It was Gah [the recently freed Hork Bajir whom Esplin had abandoned]. He was in the tree above us, in the high branches. He was swinging down to meet us. He was carrying the canister. He had retrieved it from the branches above. He had known that it was important. He was bringing it to us. It was open.

I don’t know why, but the sad, simple, sweetness of this small moment just crushed me. It perfectly illustrates the sadness behind the Hork Bajir people and the loss that was their ultimate fate. Here is Gah, just trying to help his friends, not understanding any of the complexities of the situation. Just bringing something he knows they found important. And dying for it.

Favorite Quote:

This really gets at the heart of the tragedy that is the fate of the Hork Bajir. And Dak understands this really early in the story, after only his fist encounter with the Yeerks:

<We can save your people, if they will learn to fight! They don’t have to be destroyed.>

“Yes, they do,” he said quietly. “Either they will learn to fight and hurt and kill, or they will learn to be slaves. Both will destroy them. Killers or slaves. They will be one or the other. Killers or slaves.”

Scorecard: Yeerks 3, Animorphs 6

No change!

Rating: As I said above, I think this is one of the more serious books in the series and the one that tackles big topics most head-on. Dak is an incredible character, and Aldrea is a great example of creating a flawed character who experiences a life-changing story arc. It’s also incredibly depressing. Unlike the “Andalite Chronicles,” we know how this story will mostly go. So while there are surprises (most notably the history of the Hork Bajir), it’s hard not to read it with an ever-present sense of dread. I have a hard time with sad stories, so that always make this book one of the ones that I have to talk myself into more when considering a re-read. But I’m also always glad that I did re-read it. After this book, it’s hard to read the battles between the Animorphs and the Yeerks without thinking about the tragedy that are all of the Hork Bajir hosts who are dying in these fights, confused and alone.

Note: I’m not going to rate these books since I can’t be objective at all! But I’ll give a one sentence conclusion and you can take from that what you will!