Analysis: Animorphs

[Ahriman238]

Book 42: the Journey

We start on our Animorphs, once again in the middle of a pitched battle for a mission that has no bearing on the rest of the plot, but somehow seems it would be almost more interesting. Yes, this is really going to be a thing they keep doing, but I sort of like it. Books 30-39 had a lot more bizarre transformations and traumatizing stuff (Marco's mommy issues, Jake going to kill Tom to save his dad, Tobias' torture, hearing the Andalite Fleet will be at least another year) than the series had previously had, and now the books get a bit disorganized. I don't think it was strictly intentional, but it contributes to the feeling of how the Animorphs are getting burnt-out and feeling mission-drift. The war was never really "fun" but there was an optimism to the earlier books that is now absent, and I can't nail down when exactly it disappeared.

This week, the Yeerks figured that Ford was on to something and began mass-producing those one-shot Kandronas the Yeerk higher-ups use. Their secret factory is a Dunkin Donuts. When the Animorphs leave, a kid in the same alley sees them demorph and gets a picture. Tobias follows the kid home, but when the Animorphs meet to discuss what to do, the Helmacrons show up and demand that the Animorphs give them the Escafil device and live as their debased slaves (unlike all the other giant aliens who will be anihilated completely. The Helmacrons are like a funnier Invader Zim.) It seems they ran into some engine problems and couldn't make escape velocity, so here they are again, even though in the real world it's been almost 2 years since they left.

The Animorphs decline to turn over the device, and we get a slapstick scene with them chasing the Helmacron ship around the barn. Marco gets knocked out, but Rachel smashes the ship. The crew bail and climb up Marco's nostril, but Ax is able to very carefully jury rig some of the ship's major systems with a pair of tweezers, enough to use the shrinking ray. So, since we haven't done that yet, it's time for Fantastic Voyage. All the Animorphs save Marco are shrunk down to experience the wonders of the human body from the inside.

They catch up with the Helmacrons still in the nostril, but those devious little Helmacrons have anticipated the Animorphs and sabotaged the controls! Ok, at this point I think it more likely they're taking credit for a misfunction. Anyway, the Animorphs are now 1/1600th of an inch tall! Rachel's elephant morph is about kitten sized to the Helmacrons, who are appropriately patronizing. Marco sneezes a couple of Helmacrons out.

On a scale we're more comfortable with, Marco is sitting aorund since everyone explained the situation to him when he came to. Jake strictly commanded Marco to not go anywhere or do anything, and especially not to morph until they come back, but Marco is bored sitting around waiting for news. So he decides to go after the kid with the camera solo. This ends with Marco getting the camera, but getting bit by the kid's dog and cowering in the closet. :slow clap:

By things inside Marco have migrated to his stomach, where the Helmacrons hold a debate on physiology. See, they've promised to find and still the giant alien's heart, but have no idea where the heart is in relation to them. After slaughtering half their number for being wrong, they burn a hole through the side and hop into a vein to get carried to the heart. Pursuing, the Animorphs morph sharks, to get the novel experience of being sharks in a river of blood. Well, they can't really breathe normally, but discover they can harvest oxygen from blood cells by brushing against them (this makes no sense whatsoever.) Rachel sees a strange spiky thing that Cassie believes is probably a virus.

Outside, Marco has enough and morphs a cockroach, almost killing his friends while his innards are shifting. It turns out to save his life however, for the Helmacrons reach and shoot up his heart, the Animorphs (who are now big neough to effectively attack the Helmacrons) failling to stop them. But Marco lives long enough to complete the morph and restart his heart, then gets out of the closest, tricks the dog into a containable area and makes off with the camera.

The book ends with Rachel googling around and learning the virus she saw was in fact rabies, so Marco wasn't in a proper state of mind or responsible for his actions when he almost killed them. She resolves to tell Jake. First thing tomorrow.

Yeah, this was sort of another stinker. The scaling of the shrunken Animorphs is absurdly inconsistent from chapter to chapter, plus Marco, experience guerilla and tactician, gets schooled by fido. Not the Animorphs finest hour, and not what I'd what have chosen for the last Helmacron story.

Book 43: the Test

Tobias is still feeling shaky and having flashbacks from being tortured by Taylor in his last book. Good. Well, not good forh im, obviously, but good that they didn't have that one story and have it never matter again. Seeing search parties in the woods, Tobias swoops down to overhear that a little boy is missing. Tobias quickly dins the boy, trapped in a pit slowly filling with rainwater, and guides the kid's father to him via thought-speak.

Tobias is shortly after captured by scientists, who would have been content to tag and release him, but a handful of Hork-Bajir storm the place escorting Taylor, who once again hits Tobias with paralyzing gas from her cyborg arm. The Animorphs show up to rescue Tobias, and he acquires Taylor in a desperate effort to stall her. But the Hork-Bajir hold of the others long enough for Taylor to escape with Tobias her captive again. She stuns him.

Tobias wakes up in a trailer park. Taylor makes coffee and discusses things like his anomalous ability to morph after the time limit has passed ("... You're not the only ones with scientists.") Taylor claims to have been disgraced following her failure to break Tobias, nearly killed by Visser Three, and to have subsequently joined the Yeerk peaceniks. Well, the militant arm of the Peace Movement. She wants to destroy the Yeerk Pool, but needs the help of the 'Andalite Bandits.' She lets him go, and he morphs a flea to check for tracking devices, but finds none.

The general consensus of the group is that Taylor is going to try to take out Visser Three and then set herself up as conqueror of Earth. They agree that she can't be trusted, but that this is too great an opportunity not to take advantage of. The exception is Cassie, who refuses to have anything to do with the mission on moral grounds.

They set up a public meeting with Taylor. To try and throw her off-balance, Tobias morphs her, though the others are kind of disturbed at the psychological possibilites of Tobias turning into the person who tortured him. Taylor explains she wants to dig a tunnel connecting a natural gas pipeline to the Pool. When it's ready, they will rupture the pipe and her people inside the pump station will reline everything, putting through as much gas as quickly as possible. The result once sparked off, will be something like a FAE.

Problem is, they have no Taxxon controllers, or Yeerks willing to control Taxxons. Taxxons being worth a lot of digging equipment for a job like this. So Ax and Tobias (the ones who can look Andalite) acquire an example of the biggest, meanest Taxxon in the solar system and get digging while the others provide security. Taxxons tunnel by eating dirt and secreting a slime as waste, and they can consume their own body weight of almost anything in seconds. Plus, those teeth and jaws may not look like much, but they can gnaw through concrete. There's the usual horror of being a Taxxon, the never-ending hunger and the need to stay in constant control to avoid eating one's friends. But after a hard day of digging, Tobias breeches the cement dome over the Yeerk Pool.

So naturally, Taylor gasses them and ruptures the pipe, going flying past them laughing as a huge rush of gas threatens to blow them into the Pool cave. Just as the dug-in Animorphs are staring to black out and lose their grips the gas stops. They fly over to the pumping station to find Cassie sobbing over a heap of bodies. It seems she warned the peaceniks, who disavowed any knowledge of Taylor, and were holding one of their irregular meetings at the Pool today. Taylor was working for Visser Three the whole time, hoping to eliminate the Animorphs and peaceniks in a single strike, and perfectly happy to sacrifice tens of thousands of innocent Yeerks to get them both. Nice guy.

This was a very well written book, the Test is question being how Tobias will stand up when confronted with his tormenter again. Tobias overcomes his fear, survives her scheme, and no longer has any reason to doubt his own strength or resolution. This is the last book with Taylor, and we never learn if she lives or dies. That is good, her part in the story was done with Tobias facing her down again, and keeping her as a recurring villain afterwards would have been tacky. Also, she freaked me out.

Book 44: the Unexpected

Book 44 in a 54 series, a lot of ground in a short time. Also, a pretty silly book, but at this point a break from the grimdark was welcome.

Government agents recover some wreckage from a Bug Fighter, and are shipping thepieces to Washington for Analysis. Since the Yeerks control the hospital, police, and media in this city you can be sure a quick and effcient coverup is already in the works... Ah hell, they just send a couple truckloads of controllers with guns to recover the wreckage by force. The Animorphs work to protect the people trying to get the wreckage away, and a freewheeling running battle breaks out on the tarmac. Cassie pulls some pretty ballsy stunts trying not to be spotted between morphs, but gets stunned and falls into a plane's baggage hold.

She wakes up on the plan, which is going to Sydney. She steals some warm clothes and food from the baggage while she tries to figure out where she's going and how to get back (silly girl, she sees SYD on all the luggage tags and decides that means South something Dakota) she's just resting when a green stasis beam flashes through the plane (Cassie is shielded by a metallic crate) and freezing everyone. A pair of Bug Fighters seize the plane in tractor beams and a couple of Hork-Bajir board the plane to search it. Cassie grabs a blanket to pose as a frozen passenger, then grabs the nearest Hork-Bajir's dracon beam and shoots her way out. The Bug Fighters break off from the plane, and the sudden pressure differential sucks Cassie out. A Bug Fighter dives for her, and she takes it out with the dracon beam before going bug to survive the fall. She burrows into the sand to escape all the flaming debris.

She gets caught demorphing by an aborigine kid, Yami. Yami is suprisingly cool with the exploding spaceships and the bug who turns into a girl. He says "no worries" a lot. It gets old very quickly. Yami shows Cassie a herd of Kangaroos, and she finally guesses that she maybe isn't in South Dakota. Yami takes down a Kangaroo with a boomerang (we get it! He's Austrailian! Please move on) just to show her how it's done, and she acquires it.

Yami takes her to his house, where his grandfather caught some shrapnel from the exploding Bug Fighter in his leg. Despite the fact that his leg is already selling up and faintly radioactive, he thinks it's the best knife he ever had and a gift from the gods or spirits or whatever. Cassie eventually amputates his leg.

The Blade Ship shows up and Visser Three demands that the Andalite reveal himself or he'll blast the charming aborigines. Cassie morphs a Kangaroo and leads him on a merry chase, into the herd (Kangaroos herd?) from before, and actually taking down a few Hork-Bajir by kicking them and clawing them when they follow her into the water (Kangaroos can swim?) but when all hope is lost, Yami's family shows up on the ridge to drive the Yeerks away with their mad boomerang skills. A Chee within the Blade Ship manages to smuggle Cassie on board for the flight home, and Visser Three leaves the people who humbled him and his forces alone because he's such a live-and-let-live kind of guy.

We end on Cassie relating her adventures down under to the others at the Gardens. A chee was naturally impersonating her the whole time she was gone. She snags a post card to send to Yami, no return address, just "no worries."

I'm sure most or all of the depictions of Austrailia are hilariously wrong, but this is actually a pretty light fluffy and fun book. It's filler of a sort, but it's entertaining filler. That's good, since the next book will be the first major shakeup to the status quo. I do like that the Yeerks can stop and earch a plane without anyone one board being any the wiser, though I wonder how they deal with radar, air traffic control and the plane's own schedule.

[Mr Bean]

Wait... he had rabies? That's pretty much fatal, did morphing get rid of it otherwise Marco should be stone cold dead inside half a year when he's not a raving lunatic as the virus eats his mental facilities causes delirium and muscular ticks followed by heart failure and death.

[Ahriman238]

Yes, morphing apparently cures rabies. Seriously, it seems to cure every injury, illness or ailment you weren't born with. Even those could be dealt with by trapping yourself in a morph of someone like yourself in all major respects, except without a congenital condition. But Andalites have this big honor deal about not doing that.

Seriously, the medical benefits of morphing may actually outweigh the utility of being able to fly where you want, blend in anywhere, and generally sneak your way though any security not specifically designed to stop every living thing.

EDIT: I'd be more worried that they A.) used the revelation that Marco had rabies to set up a joke and B.) as far as we can tell never did anything about the middle-school student living in an appartment with a dog they know to be rabid.

[Mr Bean]

EDIT: I'd be more worried that they A.) used the revelation that Marco had rabies to set up a joke and B.) as far as we can tell never did anything about the middle-school student living in an appartment with a dog they know to be rabid.

Thank you for reminding me but the only reason that rabies is not up there with the T-Virus is how long it takes to kill you and how often it can lapse into dormancy before the full infection takes hold. Seriously the only thing you would need for rage zombies is shortening that three month window to a two week window and upping the aggression factor (Humans who have rabies don't tend to bite unlike animals meaning human to human spread is very rare).

So there's a rabid dog in the apartment, I don't care how long you've known and owned it, it's going to bite everything within reach within days of the virus manifesting the slathering jaws. The building should be in lockdown with all the people getting rabies shots if it's to the point it's biting people.

OAN as I just said rabies does not work that fast in humans, it takes WEEKS before even the sensitivity to light and sound start manifesting before muscle pains, cramps and the heighten aggression kick in.

[bilateralrope]

Even if morphing doesn't cure rabies, wouldn't regular morphing keep repairing any damage it does ?

Though morphing doesn't need to target diseases. Simply morphing into a form that doesn't provide an environment in which the disease can survive should cure almost everything.

The medical applications of morphing goes some way to explain the Andalite attitude to cripples. Unless someone is unable to morph, it is simply impossible for them to suffer any lasting injury, leading to cripples being either very rare or people who don't want to be cured.

[Ahriman238]

EDIT: I'd be more worried that they A.) used the revelation that Marco had rabies to set up a joke and B.) as far as we can tell never did anything about the middle-school student living in an appartment with a dog they know to be rabid.

Thank you for reminding me but the only reason that rabies is not up there with the T-Virus is how long it takes to kill you and how often it can lapse into dormancy before the full infection takes hold. Seriously the only thing you would need for rage zombies is shortening that three month window to a two week window and upping the aggression factor (Humans who have rabies don't tend to bite unlike animals meaning human to human spread is very rare).

So there's a rabid dog in the apartment, I don't care how long you've known and owned it, it's going to bite everything within reach within days of the virus manifesting the slathering jaws. The building should be in lockdown with all the people getting rabies shots if it's to the point it's biting people.

OAN as I just said rabies does not work that fast in humans, it takes WEEKS before even the sensitivity to light and sound start manifesting before muscle pains, cramps and the heighten aggression kick in.

Yeah, Rabies is not a fun disease. The dog in qustion wasn't really foaming at the mouth. Nor is it entirely out of character for a dog to bite an intruder who immediatly becomes defensive on seeing a dog. The only reason they know it was rabies is Rachel's research after the fact. But I'd have appreciated a throwaway line about calling the CDC or something.

The medical applications of morphing goes some way to explain the Andalite attitude to cripples. Unless someone is unable to morph, it is simply impossible for them to suffer any lasting injury, leading to cripples being either very rare or people who don't want to be cured.

I'm thinking very rare, though there are SOME Andalites who can't morph, like Mertil. And isn't it great that they go and fight despite not having the ability to heal themselves from most anything short of death? But if they get injured enough, they get no respect.

Something maybe related, in 43 Ax explains the Andalite concept of unschweet basically when an Andalite cadet or warrior (but usually a cadet) screws up in such a way that a mere chewing out can't cover it, but criminal charges are too extreme, they shave patches off the Andalite in question's fur. This makes his shame visible to all, but by the time his fur grows back he is completely forgiven. Of course, if you morphed you'd undo the haircut.

Of course, the Andalites discourage morphing for frivolous purposes.

But yeah, medical possibilites. At least five times in the series, Marco survives getting disembowled because if he can just finish the fight and escape, he can demorph and be all better. Jake gets disembowled once to, and he didn't have hands to hold it in. And Tobias. Everyone by this point has regenerated many limbs, though Mean Rachel clubbing Hork-Bajir to death with her severed bear arm stands out in my memory. Jake almost had his eyes pecked out, morphing would have healed them. There are too many broken bones to contemplate that get fixed this way. Rachel survived a broken neck in polar bear morph. Jake had his throat bitten by a lion (David) and fell through a glass skylight and 2 stories down. He was unconcious, but when he woke he was able to demorph. Rachel was bisected, though I prefer not to dwell on the weirdness that followed. No body ever seems to morph a pachyderm without taking several bullets to the face, though that's more painful than dangerous.

As far as trauma medicine goes, accept no substitute.

[bilateralrope]

I'm thinking very rare, though there are SOME Andalites who can't morph, like Mertil. And isn't it great that they go and fight despite not having the ability to heal themselves from most anything short of death? But if they get injured enough, they get no respect.

What do Andalites think of people who aren't pulling their weight ?
If they don't like slackers then that, combined with the attitude every other Andalite has towards non-fatal injuries, and I can easily see why someone incapable of morphing would get stuck in just as much those that can. Especially when fighting enemies that know how easily any non-fatal wounds can be healed.

But that same attitude against slackers is going to be a serious problem for anyone who gets crippled. Especially if morphing reduces the number of cripples down enough that they can be hidden.

Was it ever stated if Andalites had other ways of healing Mertil or not ?

Though if I was in charge of a military with access to healing on the level of morphing tech, I doubt I'd accept any recruits who were incompatible with it if there were enough morphing capable recruits. When they get a serious injury, they are going to pull others out of combat to treat them for injuries that everyone else can recover from in minutes. And treatment is going to use resources that only the non-morphing require, removing the need for those resources simplifies logistics.

Something maybe related, in 43 Ax explains the Andalite concept of unschweet basically when an Andalite cadet or warrior (but usually a cadet) screws up in such a way that a mere chewing out can't cover it, but criminal charges are too extreme, they shave patches off the Andalite in question's fur. This makes his shame visible to all, but by the time his fur grows back he is completely forgiven. Of course, if you morphed you'd undo the haircut.

Did the animorphs ever have any trouble with their hair length ?
Hair/fur length is probably something the morphing tries to leave alone because of how much trouble the wrong hair length could be to anyone trying to infiltrate via morphing.

[Ahriman238]

What do Andalites think of people who aren't pulling their weight ?
If they don't like slackers then that, combined with the attitude every other Andalite has towards non-fatal injuries, and I can easily see why someone incapable of morphing would get stuck in just as much those that can. Especially when fighting enemies that know how easily any non-fatal wounds can be healed.

But that same attitude against slackers is going to be a serious problem for anyone who gets crippled. Especially if morphing reduces the number of cripples down enough that they can be hidden.

There are two comparisons you can't help but make with the Andalites, the Federation/Starfleet and WWII Imperial Japan.

Like Starfleet, the Andalites are very humanistic (Andalitistic?), optimistic, focused on maximizing growth and potential, with a beefer up liberal arts education, and a love of the sciences. Until the war with the Yeerks, they were big believers in peaceful exporation in heavily armed starships. They have something like the Prime Directive, though not so much to prevent exploitation of primitive cultures as to reflect that Andalites don't trust anyone but their own. Also, they claim to have no money and all work for the common good, but there is a black market for Aloth to sell organs to.

Which is where it sort of falls apart, Andalites are kind of xenophobic, in that they don't trust other species and consistently treat humans, Leerans and Hork-Bajir as very junior partners in the fight rather than equals.

They are like Imperial Japan in that they are very focused on the concept of honor, fixated with the image of themselves as enlightened warrior-poets (warrior-scientist-poets) which is a very... optimistic view of the average warrior. In truth, the image is more propaganda than reflection of reality. They are hidebound traditionalists with a very regimented, hierarchical, ultranationalist militaristic culture that fetishizes duty and personal sacrifice. Andalite fighter pilots occasionally engage in kamikaze attacks, and their warriors invariably suicide to prevent capture. Sound familiar?

Hell, here's Ax's explanation of an Andalite warriors duty:

<Every warrior must follow a Prince. Every Prince must follow a War-Prince. Every War-Prince must follow a Great Leader. The Great Leader is chosen by the People to speak for them. And everyone, everywhere, obeys the law.>

Well, that last part is certainly a lie, though Ax wouldn't know better at that point. But replace "great leader chosen by the people" with "emperor chosen by the gods" and you're pretty much there.

Was it ever stated if Andalites had other ways of healing Mertil or not ?

Not really, no. The Ascalin (ship from book 18) had a sickbay large enough to hold all the Animorphs, and a doctor, so it seems they have some medical technology besides morphing. Possibly for use when someone is unconscious or dying and unable to morph.

Though if I was in charge of a military with access to healing on the level of morphing tech, I doubt I'd accept any recruits who were incompatible with it if there were enough morphing capable recruits. When they get a serious injury, they are going to pull others out of combat to treat them for injuries that everyone else can recover from in minutes. And treatment is going to use resources that only the non-morphing require, removing the need for those resources simplifies logistics.

Well, they relaxed the "2 parents-2 children rule" to allow replacing of war losses, which seems a pretty radical departure for them, given what little we're told of it. The Andalites have never colonized or made permanent homes on other planets, they seem content with their one world, and don't want to deal with overpopulation.

On the other hand, they still don't allow females to join the military, because they have far smaller tail-blades. So maybe they're not that desperate, or that tradition is more ingrained. Hard to say.

Did the animorphs ever have any trouble with their hair length ?
Hair/fur length is probably something the morphing tries to leave alone because of how much trouble the wrong hair length could be to anyone trying to infiltrate via morphing.

I seem to recall a one-off gag about Marco getting a new haircut and ruining it by morphing. Then again, every time you morph you completely restore your body from it's DNA template, with no enviromental factors. Why didn't all of them change radically the first time they morphed? Plot reasons, of course.

Really, the standard Andalite grunt seems to be given morphing just in case, shown how to use it in a single afternoon class, then told not to abuse it by morphing anything fun. Mostly it seems to be an intelligence agent/assasin's weapon. I wonder how much of that is the relative lack of biodiversity on the Andalite homeworld, and how much is their own culture biases? You're already an Andalite, why would you want to become anything else?

Or maybe they just scare the recruits to keep down the number of nothlits.

[Darmalus]

...and their warriors invariably suicide to prevent capture.

Did they do that before the Yeerks, or only after the war started? The idea of having a slug crawl in my head and mind control me into a weapon against my own friends and family is enough to make suicide instead of capture far more attractive than just a PoW camp.

[Ahriman238]

...and their warriors invariably suicide to prevent capture.

Did they do that before the Yeerks, or only after the war started? The idea of having a slug crawl in my head and mind control me into a weapon against my own friends and family is enough to make suicide instead of capture far more attractive than just a PoW camp.

Unknown, with the way their honor system works, maybe, maybe not. It is true that captivity at the hands of the Yeerks opens up horrors beyond the norm.

[Ahriman238]

And here we go...

Book 45: the Revelation

Marco's dad, Peter, is an engineer. That's only been remotely important twice before in this series. Once, when Ax messed up his software for a radio telescope, and once when Marco's dad almost took a job for a Yeerk front company. This is different, however. While Marco is enjoying actually having dinner with his family instead of running out on a mission, his dad reveals that he has been involved with a historic event. He was working with some physicists who discovered Zero Space.

Well, Peter gets called in to work, Marco after calling Rachel for reinforcements (she lives closest) follows. The Yeerks are waiting there to take all the scientists as controllers and suppress their discovery. Marco and Rachel yank Peter out of the grasp of the Hork-Bajir. Marco, despite yelling at Jake for taking stupid risks in 31, loses his cool when HIS father is threatened.

Then, at a cheap truckstop diner, Marco tells his dad everything. Elfangor, the Yeerks, morphing, Visser Three, Visser One, time travel, visiting other planets, everything. Peter is understandably skeptical, so Marco demonstrates morphing when they get back to the truck. Peter is disturbed, and agrees to let Marco make some phone calls before going home.
So when they're telling Marco's new stepmom what happened, and a pair of controllers burst into the room to disintegrate them both with dracon beams, it's just more holographic chicanery, courtesy of the Chee. Marco's stepmom just smirks at the place their bodies would be, revealing that the Yeerks beat them home. Well, yeah, they were at that truckstop a while.

After stowing his dad with the Chee, Marco and Rachel fill in the other Animorphs on their busy night. Jake is very much not amused. Rachel points out they could use a Z-Space comm to intercept Yeerk transmissions, but the Yeerks already have the prototybe. Ax, however, can build one with Marco's dad if the old man knows a way to create the transponder element with terrestrial rsources. Well, it gives Peter something to do in the Chee's underground park other than play with the dogs and meditate on how shitty his life is.

It only takes Ax and Peter a couple of days to throw together the Z-Space comm, and first time out they pick up chatter indicating that the Anati campaign has gone seriously south (apparently without the intervention of the Andalites) and Visser One has been brought back to Earth to be executed in the same ceremony that will promote Visser Three, making him Visser One. They're just waiting on a witness from the Council to proceed (better luck than the last guy the Council sent, mate.)

Marco calls 911 and claims to have captured an alien, describing a Hork-Bajir in decent detail. Within five minutes a Bug Fighter shows up at the address he gave, and the Animorphs ambush the crew and steal the ship. I guess that means the Yeerks have the police all infested. They fly to the hidden entrance of the Yeerk Pool hangar, which is now inside a sunken ship, since Rachel wrecked the last one. Bug Fighters are submersible to a depth of a few thousand feet, though Yeerks and Andalites can build better dedicated watercraft.

They get to the Pool to find the ceremony-thing has already started. Along with gloating Visser Three unveils his new elite formation: the Blue Band Hork-Bajir, so called because they all wear blue armbands. They seem like Hork-Bajir on steroids, but it's never made clear whether they're genetically-engineered, selectively bred, actually on steroids, have cyborg enhancements or if they're just really buff and well-trained. There's a lot we don't know about the Blue Bands. I guess the idea was to make the hork-Bajir scary again, since some Hork-Bajir are allies now, and the Animorphs are probably averaging twenty HB kills per book. If that's the case, they were severely under-utilized. In any case, really. They get tacked on at the tail end of the series, there are no stories about them, we're told they're there one day, and give a couple of good fights. That's it.

Anyway, unable to push through the crowd, and unwilling to engage Visser Three and his new elite directly, the Animorphs fall back to the hangar and take the Bug Fighter for a daring aerial rescue. Well, Ax and Jake wind up dogfighting another Bug Fighter and Visser Three who morphs some sort of giant multi-winged bird-thing large enough to swallow their fighter whole, while Marco and RAchel jump down to secure Visser One. The Blue Bands are a lot tougher, faster and better trained than any Hork-Bajir the kids have fought to date. They also appreciate the value of teamwork and don't get in each other's way in a melee. Marco and Rachel barely survive that first fight. But they do win.

Seeing a death of slow starvation in Marco's (gorilla) eyes, Visser One bails from Eva (Marco's mom) and almost makes it off the pier and into the Pool. Marco stomps on the helpless Yeerk without hesitation or remorse, in fact, with relish. Ax and Jake overcome their opponents and swing around to pick them up.

Eva recuperates in the Chee underground park. Peter is thrilled to have his dead wife back, but takes a moment to ask Marco if he could have, should have, tried to save the stepmom nobody else cares about. Marco crosses his fingers and says no, she was probably always a controller sent to watch him and his work. Eva spends hours regurgitating all the military intel she picked up as host to THE ranking Yeerk General to Jake and Ax. When both Marco's parents are as physically and emotionally sound as they're likely to get, the kids pack them off to the Hork-Bajir valley, where Toby has had a small log cabin built for them, far away from the war.

In the final short chapter the Animorphs gather at night, on a lonely beach, and use the Z-Space comm to call the Andalite Homeworld. The book ends with a pissed-off Andalite on the other end demanding to know who's calling and Jake saying "This is Earth." Which is technically the first FTL communication made by humanity, but kind of lacks the weight of "What hath God wrought."

A lot of the series' status quo died a quick and messy death in this book. Visser One is dead and gone, Marco has his mom back, the Animorphs secrets have been shared with one of the pople they were most desperately trying to hide them from, one of the kids' parents. Visser Three is now Visser One, and it always annoyed me that the kids immediately take to calling him Visser One, while i sort of stumbled with it. By this point I'd known him as Visser Three for four years.

Anyway, that neat little order I told you about when I started? Jake narrates books 1,6,11,16,21,26,31,36, etc. ? Gone from here on out. On the final few books Applegate had a countdown to the end of the series, but to my mind the countdown started here. 9 books remain.

[Ahriman238]

Book 46: the Deception

We pick up right where we left off, the Animorphs calling the Andalite Homeworld to pass on the military intelligence they got from Marco's mom. Including about the devious trap the former Visser One turned the Anati system into. But the Andalite on the other end isn't buying it. In fact, he outright accuses them of making up the intel to move Earth higher up the fleet's priority list. Whoa there, shouldn't you, the guy who answers the phone, leave analysis of new intelligence to actual intelligence analysts? Ax tries to talk to the Andalite, who accuses him of forgetting or confusing his loyalties. I really wonder if instead of fleet headquarters they just made contact with the Andalite equivalent of a redneck fiddling around with a HAM radio.

The kids have to go before the Yeerks find the source of the transmission, but Ax keeps an ear out for useful intel. And what do you know, it seems Visser Two is coming to Earth to visit his old friend (the new) Visser One. Also, Visser One has decided to skate around the Council's orders not to openly invade and slaughter the majority of humanity by inciting a nuclear war. Hardly his fault if the stupid primitives blow themselves up, and if that means he can get the invasion done and rejoin the greater war sooner, well that's just a silver lining in a situation he couldn't possibly have forseen.

I can't help but think this plan would have gone a lot smoother if they'd been there to try it even 20 years earlier.

Anyway, Visser Two is going to be taking the lead on this plan, leaving Visser Thr- One with plausible deniability. Visser Two will be conducting this operation from the USS George Washington (CVN-73.)

So the Animorphs steal a fighter jet, Ax and Jake morphing the pilots while the others hitch as fleas. Remember the days when they didn't morph people without permission? Neither do they! For some reason they aren't intercepted and shot down, but crash the plane half-a-dozen miles short of the GW, bailing in bird morph, the others still hanging on as fleas.

Much of the rest of the book is the kids sneaking around the GW, trying to identify Visser Two. Jake gets to geek out a bit, showing that he memorized all the official stats for a Nimitz class carrier, because it's his turn to have useful information.

Eventually they find Visser Two (he's the only Admiral on board) and he's a fanatical patriot of the Yeerk Empire, but since he's a high-ranking Yeerk who ISN't the old Visser One, he has a real problem with gloating and giving away his plans. It seems there's a Chinese sub out there crewed entirely by Taxxons (I imagine there's a story there. They said in books 20-22 that one of the G8 leaders is already a controller, perhaps that would explain this?) and with Visser Two controlling the GW task group, they could stage a completely believable sequence of agressive posturing and escalation that ends with the sub launching it's nukes on the US.

Of course, in the abscence of instructions from Visser Two and proper reactions from the task force, the Taxxons will just proceed to a certain point, then launch. It won't be as neat when the Council or whoever investigates after the fact, but should still get the nuclear war they want. The kids try to persuade Visser Two to call off the sub, but neither pain nor threats will move him (fanatical patriot) and he manages to trigger a panic button.

Half a dozen Bug Fighters pop out of the ocean, where they were submerged, and drops platoon of Hork-Bajir on the flight deck. While suprised by the sudden attack of aliens, the sailors and marines aboard the GW do rally and begin to kill off the boarders, with help from the Animorphs. I guess when aliens are attacking, you just roll with it when large dangerous animals show up and a voice in your head tells you they're on your side.

In the confusion, Ax throws Visser Two in the back of another fighter jet, morphs human, throws on a flight suit and takes off with him. New plan, since Visser Two does not care for personal danger, Ax informs him the F-14 has a single nuke and if he doesn't call off the sub, Ax will nuke the Yeerk Pool, crippling their invasion and killing tens of thousands of Yeerks. Visser Two says Ax would never sacrifice all the people in the city above the Pool. Ax prepares his launch, and Visser Two blinks. As they return to the carrier, Visser Two asks if Ax was bluffing, and he has no answer.

So yeah, Ax may or may not have been serious about nuking the Animorphs' home. And it's never made clear what happened to Visser Two after they landed, or to all the men aboard the GW who are going to call home because they were attacked by aliens. That seems like the sort of thing that could really screw up your scret war, but the war apparently doesn't go public at this point.

Ax maybe would have nuked the city, he does disobey a direct order from Jake to stop (Jake figured out what he was doing) and Ax and Jake morph humans despite previously being very anal about never doing that. It contributes to the whole mission drift theme they have going on in these last books, but was definitly a departure from their normal characterizations.

8 books remain...

[Mr Bean]

In the confusion, Ax throws Visser Two in the back of another fighter jet, morphs human, throws on a flight suit and takes off with him. New plan, since Visser Two does not care for personal danger, Ax informs him the F-14 has a single nuke and if he doesn't call off the sub, Ax will nuke the Yeerk Pool, crippling their invasion and killing tens of thousands of Yeerks. Visser Two says Ax would never sacrifice all the people in the city above the Pool. Ax prepares his launch, and Visser Two blinks. As they return to the carrier, Visser Two asks if Ax was bluffing, and he has no answer.

The stupid... it burns us
Let me count the ways

1. I'm pretty sure (not 100%) that the F-14 would not be carrying a Nuke to begin with as they were not cleared to carry drop or stand off versions, the F-15 yes, the F-14 no
2. No plane is going to be left alone fueled and ready to go with a nuke onboard
3. No plane is going to be sitting on the deck with a live nuke to begin with
4. Live nukes require control codes and sign-off codes
5. Chinese nuclear armed submarines do not go missing! Unless the entire Chinese chain of command was Controller filled the simple fact a submarine with nukes on board given the Chinese has less than a handful is a instant shitstorm. It's like if America lost one of it's carriers and had no idea where it was oh and the entire crew (120 odd men) went missing as well. The military would hit the roof and there would be other Chineese ships hunting it while screaming at the top of their lungs that there's a rogue nuke submarine out there.

Don't let the movies foil you, there is DoD plans for just this event (Minus the aliens) and the Kremlin has identical plans as do the Chinese, scream for help and warn everyone what has happened, have the other subs run hot and find and kill it before it gets in range of anything important.
Funny enough the military likes to watch movies about itself and thus thinks about these things ahead of time and plan for them


And last, how do they manage a cover up as I don't know if you know this but... aliens attacking the Washington, we have corpses on the deck and I assume it's Escorts saw and fired at the Bug Fighters meaning there is between 7 to 24 watch stations tossing out FLASH level messages at the least (If I remember my training attacks are Critic level meaning Washington and every DoD facility in range will know about this within the hour)

[Ahriman238]

I could be wrong about the fighter being an F-14. This is one of three books from the series I don't physically have in my collection. I did try to confirm the details through the two specialized series wikis I'm aware of, but they were pretty vague.

Similarly, Ax did take part in the general melee a few minutes while having a couple of flight techs prep the fighter. I don't think they ever said if the techs fueled and armed it or not. But I'm not 100% on that.

All your other points are absolutely valid. Two things that really lept out at me the first time I read this (IIRC, I was twelve at the time) were A.) how the hell does the world not know about the Yeerks after this? Maybe not that they're parasites infiltrating the world's governments, but at least that there are unfriendly aliens about. B.) how and why did they crew a sub specifically, exclusively with TAXXONS?!? Ten-foot centipedes? Can they even manipulate the controls with their hundred-odd lobster claws? Can they even get around the sub? What happens when two taxxons are going opposite directions down one of those narrow halls?

[Ahriman238]

Book 47: the Resistance

Jake is going through some old stuff in his basement when he finds an old journal belonging to his great-great-great-great uncle, one Isaiah Fitzhenry who fought in the Civil War. After this the, the book is split up between Jake's story and Isaiah's, comparing both. I like that they had a framing device like this, I feel a lot more ambivalent over all of Jake's distant relatives being military heroes. I mean, his great-grandpa won a silver heart at the Battle of the Bulge and now this? Any way, I'm going to run through their stories seperately.

Isaiah was a 20 year-old lieutenant commanding a platoon after the major and half the men die of fever. The platoon was holding the (apparently fictional) town of Sinkler's Ridge, Tennessee, an otherwise insignifigant speck that was junction to two minor railroads. Their telegraph wire gets cut by a Confederate saboteur. The man is captured, and Isaiah tricks him into revealing that Nathan Bedford Forrest (who is gratifyingly real) is closing on the town and outnumbers them 20 to 1. With this information, Isaiah decides to arm and train 3 dozen escaped slaves who showed up asking to work and fight, whom he already had digging breastworks. This alienates the only weakly Pro-Union townspeople. But after Isaiah thrwarts the first probe, the townspeople decide that they'd take their chances with armed Negroes than Forrest.

Everybody joins up just in time to die together in the real attack, surrounded and more outnumbered than the saboteur had said. Isaiah himself is shot just below the heart and falls alongside Jacob, the leader of the freedmen.

In the present, the free Hork-Bajir lost one of their own during their periodic raids against the Yeerks. Lost as in "the Yeerks captured and reinfested a free Hork-Bajir, so now they have a guide to the valley." Jake tries to evacuate the Hork-Bajir, but all of them (including Toby) insist on staying to fight for their home. Marco's parents and Rachel back them up.

While the Hork-Bajir start digging tiger traps, assembling camoflauged platforms in the trees and start very efficient mass production of spears and arrows (hey, every Hork-Bajir is covered in blades, and they're experts at stripping bark and branchs off of sticks) Jake works a different angle. He has the Animorphs morph beavers and start seriously building up a beaver dam at the blocked end of the valley. With a day or two for the water to rise, they'll have enough to flood the valley held back by an assembly Ax can take part inside ten seconds.

Tobias doesn't take part in the great digging but does some recon. He already knows where there's a decently concealed valley the Hork-Bajir could evacuate to, but he wants to see the enemy. His report is not promising. A full company of Blue Band Hork-Bajir, as many Taxxons, and Visser One is personally leading. Oh, and there's a bunch of campers between the Yeerks and the valley.

Jake tries to bluff and scare off the campers, but winds up telling them everything. The group is apparently the local chapter of the offcial Star Trek fan club, and easily accept a secret war between aliens. In fact, they're eager to help. Jake figures why not, and when Marco gives him flak about it he mentions Marco's dad, and all the seamen on the GW. Cassie is optimistic about "the first volunteers" to join the fight. Toby is just surprised there are humans besides the Animorphs who don't scream and run when they meet a Hork-Bajir.

The battle goes fairly well for the good guys at first, they ambush the Blue Bands from the trees with all the spears and arrows they can manage. Then the Animrophs, and all the able-bodied Hork-Bajir engage in ferocious melee while the young, old, wounded, and campers continue with the spears and archery. First time we see Toby fight, and she fights like a 90 lbs girl in a Joss Whedon movie, dancing around her opponents and anticipating their every move.

After a couple minutes of this, the Blue bands fall back while the Taxxons and Visser One enter the valley. Many Taxxons are killed by the tiger traps, but they charge over heedless of losses, only pausing to eat their dead, and not all of them do that. The Blue Bands, once out of spear range, turn around and start incinerating everything with dracon beams. In a nice callback, Visser One morphs the same eight-headed fire-breathing monster from the first book. Jake and Tobias engage him, and very nearly die before Ax rips up the dam and all the Yeerks are washed out of the valley.

Toby concedes now is a good time for a tactical withdraw. She says the Hork-Bajir had to have a chance to fight for their freedom, and the valley is there's forever now that they've paid for it with blood. Someday, they'll come back. One of the trekkers dies, and his wife and two kids grieve. Jake goes home to find Isaiah took the time while dying in the mud to puill out his journal and record what dying in the mud feels like. Jake meditates on his final words "I hope I have done my best."

Ok, first large-ish land battle since Leera. Crap, that was a while ago, but the Animorphs do a lot more sneaking around then pitched battles, and most of their pitched battles are smaller-scale. The free Hork-Bajir lose the hidden valley given to them by the Ellimist, but move into a new valley, so it makes little material difference to the story. Now it's simply possible to find the valley without already knowing where it is (the Ellimist set something like that up over the valley the first time.) This feels a bit like filler, with half of the book being Civil War stuff, and the rest are things that don't really offer character insight or have much impact on the plot.

This book is where the coutdown to series conclusion officially begins. Speaking of, 7 left.

Book 48: the Return

Rachel has a series of very strange dream sequences/hallucinations. Including one where she and the others are part of a White House tour and the Yeerks attack, and two where she gets attacked by swarms of rats, once with Cassie in her barn, and once in school. Between these, and throughout a couple is a strange red light. There's also a bit with the Animorphs finding several accounts of the Yeerk invasion online and speculating if the knowledge will move from conspiracy-theorist chatrooms to the public, and another with Rachel admitting to recurring dreams of fighting and killing Jake, but those could also be hallucinations.

She wakes up in a plexiglass box barely large enough to hold her curled up. She's in an underground matinence area of some kind, and Cassie is nearby in another box. There are two punks, who Rachel mentally dubs Tattoo and Grease. Oh, and a small white rat.

David. If you don't remember who he is, scroll up to when I did books 20-22.

It seems since we last saw him David has become a bit more insane, and very pissed off. His game is simple, Rachel will morph a rat and remain a rat for longer than 2 hours, or Cassie will die. Rachel complies and David gloats about his master scheme. He claims to have developed his intellect to superhuman levels on that island (long periods of isolation are good for the human mind, right?) and learned to control the rats. He says he has an army of rats, has stolen large amounts of money a few dollars at a time, and is poised to steal sample of bubonic plague and decimate the human population, especially the Yeerks, then rule the world through the threat of more plague. It... really doesn't work that way.

Rachel's not at her best though, so it takes her a moment to realize the idea of rats carrying out complex plans or organizing is ridiculous. So David enters her cage through a convenient little locking hatch and they have a rat-fight until David's backer, the Drode appears. This day just keeps getting better. I'm just glad they didn't bring Taylor back for this one.

It seems Crayak has gotten tired of waiting for her to accept his standing offer of "Kill Jake for meand become my godlike minion to spread pain and death throughout the universe. I'll even let you wipe out the Yeerks." So he's decided to offer this inducement. Become a being of godlike power, or go back to being a rat in a cage, losing a fight with David and a ticking clock until you can never be human again.

To help her choose, he jerks her back and forth, letting her play with and explore her vast powers, then back to the cage and the fight. He even summons Visser One for her to test her powers against, then yanks him away the moment before she woul have killed them.

Rachel has probably been the most inconsistent of characters across the multiple authors. Frequently, she's shown as a semi-psychotic berserker, sometimes she's the one willing to do the dirty work so the others (especially Cassie) don't need to get filth on them. The most consistent element is her growing darkness, she's found she enjoys the fighting and the killing, she understands that good guys aren't supposed to like it, and she doesn't know what that says about her.

Here she proves that whatever else she is, she's loyal to Jake and her comrades. She turns Crayak down. When he leaves her in the cage with David on top of her, she talks to Tattoo and Grease, saying she can find David's stash of money, and will give them a much bigger cut.

It's enough to convince them to open the door. She demorphs, then goes grizzly and tells the punks to walk away. She demorphs and frees Cassie, sending her to the surface. She then pursues David, who ran into the sewers while she was busy with the thugs and Cassie. He's found a dead end and is curled up, mentally weeping. He begs Rachel to kill him rather than send him back to the island. Alone in the dark, tears in her own eyes, Rachel picks up a rat.

Then the book ends. We're never told what she did with David.

This is a seriously heavy character piece on Rachel, and the Drode and Crayak have a way of making omnipotence seem rather tempting. A pity the first third of the book is bizarre hallucinations and the second is setting up the situation with David and Rachel believeing his crazy ramblings. The ending to this book is highly debated, but then, it's highly ambigious. Did she kill him? Take him back? Take a third option?

6 books left in the series, not counting the Ellimist Chronicles.

[Mr Bean]

Jake is going through some old stuff in his basement when he finds an old journal belonging to his great-great-great-great uncle, one Isaiah Fitzhenry who fought in the Civil War. After this the, the book is split up between Jake's story and Isaiah's, comparing both. I like that they had a framing device like this, I feel a lot more ambivalent over all of Jake's distant relatives being military heroes. I mean, his great-grandpa won a silver heart at the Battle of the Bulge and now this? Any way, I'm going to run through their stories seperately.

Tell that to my own Captain Grandpa, Naval Aviation 2nd WWII or Great Grandpa Commander(Or Lieutenant I don't know about Great Grandpa) who fought in the Spanish American War, or Great Great Granpda Captain who fought in the Civil War. Military families tend to attract repeat customers so to speak it's quite understandable to have family in WWII and the Civil War.

[Ahriman238]

Jake is going through some old stuff in his basement when he finds an old journal belonging to his great-great-great-great uncle, one Isaiah Fitzhenry who fought in the Civil War. After this the, the book is split up between Jake's story and Isaiah's, comparing both. I like that they had a framing device like this, I feel a lot more ambivalent over all of Jake's distant relatives being military heroes. I mean, his great-grandpa won a silver heart at the Battle of the Bulge and now this? Any way, I'm going to run through their stories seperately.

Tell that to my own Captain Grandpa, Naval Aviation 2nd WWII or Great Grandpa Commander who fought in the Spanish American War, or Great Great Granpda Captain who fought in the Civil War. Military families tend to attract repeat customers so to speak it's quite understandable to have family in WWII and the Civil War.

This is known to me, my own family has been involved on and off with the Navy for a very long time, though I don't think there are any conspicious gallantry medals floating around.

I don't know, it probably shouldn't bother me, but I couldn't help but feel like the last ocuple of Jake books were pushing the idea that he was always special, destined for great acts of valor, scion of a long line of military heroes etc. Like everything was leading up to his being the leader of the Animorphs. That feels cheap somehow, even if you accept the idea from MM4 that the Ellimist carefully picked the Animorphs.

[Mr Bean]

This is known to me, my own family has been involved on and off with the Navy for a very long time, though I don't think there are any conspicious gallantry medals floating around.

I don't know, it probably shouldn't bother me, but I couldn't help but feel like the last ocuple of Jake books were pushing the idea that he was always special, destined for great acts of valor, scion of a long line of military heroes etc. Like everything was leading up to his being the leader of the Animorphs. That feels cheap somehow, even if you accept the idea from MM4 that the Ellimist carefully picked the Animorphs.

If he had multiple generations with Medal's of Honor or a chest full of medals then maybe. But a Silver star as my grandfather explained medals that he and his friends had earned was just doing something clever or hard headed and it working. Bronze Stars are for doing your job well in combat and the Captain/Admiral/General sees it and wants to thank you. The Cross (Navy/Distinguished/Air Force) was for Hero's, specifically people playing Hero or who were actual Heros who pulled off some crazy stunt and killed a bunch of damn Germans doing it or saved a bunch of people doing it.

The Medal of Honor he then told me, that was reserved for the people who did the really stupid shit and it worked, the people who walk into gunfire upright to get to the wounded faster. The guy who has sixteen grenades tossed in his foxhole and rather than move just thanks the Japs for the free grenades and stays there. You don't just have to be good to earn a Medal of Honor, you also have to be stupid... and most important of all you have to be Lucky. Most MoH awards are for people who's Luck is so amazingly strong as to give them the few minutes they need to do the seeming impossible or at very least greatly improbable.

To quote the MoH's wonderful website for a typical example

For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty in action against enemy aggressor forces during the early morning hours. Participating in a fierce encounter with a cleverly concealed and well-entrenched enemy force occupying positions on a vital and bitterly contested outpost far in advance of the main line of resistance, HC3c. Charette repeatedly and unhesitatingly moved about through a murderous barrage of hostile small-arms and mortar fire to render assistance to his wounded comrades. When an enemy grenade landed within a few feet of a marine he was attending, he immediately threw himself upon the stricken man and absorbed the entire concussion of the deadly missile with his body. Although sustaining painful facial wounds, and undergoing shock from the intensity of the blast which ripped the helmet and medical aid kit from his person, HC3c. Charette resourcefully improvised emergency bandages by tearing off part of his clothing, and gallantly continued to administer medical aid to the wounded in his own unit and to those in adjacent platoon areas as well. Observing a seriously wounded comrade whose armored vest had been torn from his body by the blast from an exploding shell, he selflessly removed his own battle vest and placed it upon the helpless man although fully aware of the added jeopardy to himself. Moving to the side of another casualty who was suffering excruciating pain from a serious leg wound, HC3c. Charette stood upright in the trench line and exposed himself to a deadly hail of enemy fire in order to lend more effective aid to the victim and to alleviate his anguish while being removed to a position of safety. By his indomitable courage and inspiring efforts in behalf of his wounded comrades, HC3c. Charette was directly responsible for saving many lives. His great personal valor reflects the highest credit upon himself and enhances the finest traditions of the U.S. Naval Service.

[Ahriman238]

It still bugs me a bit, not that I think it's a big deal either way.

Well, one more for tonight.

Book 49: the Diversion

The Sharing is organizing a community blood drive. Gasp! Monsters! Mosters with needles!

Seriously though, they're pushing this awfully hard, Tom is literally bugging everyone he knows to give blood, and this makes Jake suspicious. The Animorphs infiltrate the high security facility where the blood is being stored through the simple expedient of morphing Hork-Bajir and ripping up Marco's shirt to make a bunch of blue armbands. Nobody questions or challenges Visser One's elite stormtroopers, even when they're a full head shorter than they normally are.

Small hole in their security methods there.

Anyway, after getting to a lab with a lot of blood testing equipment, they find the secret objective. The Yeerks have discovered forensic science at some point, and they're looking for people with bits of animal DNA in their blood, or people who could be related to the human DNA they found in animal blood post battle.

I'm kind of curious when it occured to them to test this. The Yeerks haven't really had a chance to collect blood samples in the last 3 books, and there wouldn't be any reason to save the blood from previous battles.

ANyway, the Yeerks have found a match- Loren, Tobias' mother who is apparently still alive, but whom he's never met. Ax is starting to delete everything when a scientist and some real Blue Bands turn up, and immediatly notice that a match was found. The kids, per usual, have to fight their way to the door and barely escape with their lives.

Afterwards, the group discusses the situation. The Yeerks figuring they're human has always been a worst-case scenario, and serious thought is given to evacuating their families to the Chee's basement or the new HB valley. Jake tells everybody to sleep on it and they'll make a final decision in the morning.

Tobias goes to stalk his mother, hurt that she lived within 6 blocks of his uncle's but never visited or checked up on him. It seems since the Andalite Chronicles, Loren was in a car accident that both blinded her and kicked loose her memory. Not all of it, not even enough to make sense of it. But she could remember seeing a heap of dead Hork-Bajir, the horror that was the Taxxon homeworld, the patchwork Twilight Zone world she, Elfangor and Visser Three made, and a blue blur that made her feel like everything would be ok.

Blind and doubting her sanity, she didn't consider herself a fit mother, and so gave up Tobias. Now she lives off welfare in this crappy neighborhood, and volunteers at the crisis/suicide hotline. She is also being followed by controllers, who for some reason don't move on her right away, like you'd expect if they knew she was the match. Ax and Tobias act like a pair of dropouts (Ax is hilarious) making trouble in a corner store, all so Tobias can swap out some expired milk in her basket for fresh milk.

Anyway, the Animorphs decide to come clean with their families and fall back to the Hork-Bajir valley. With Cassie and Rachel's families it goes off reasonably well, introduce them to their good friend Ax, put across the basics and stress that they really need to leave now. Marco has to carry Rachel's struggling mom to the car, while her two kid sisters are convinced Ax is a Pokemon.

The plan they called for was to pull out Jake's family last, so everyone could get back from guiding their families to the valley and they'd have lots of firepower on tap for dealing with Tom. But Jake's family isn't home. They wait and wait, and when the car finally pulls into the drive, Tom and the parents all pull dracon beams and start shooting up the place.

There's a bizarre moment where Jake decides to morph a bird and escape right in front of his parents, so they'll know that he was always fighting, will always fight, and is coming back for them. The result is he just stands there in plain sight and for some reason doesn't get shot.

Anyway, Tobias watches his mom some more. Then actually confronts her as the son she abandonded. He concocts an elaborate plan to smuggle the Escafil Device to her, give her the morphing ability and direct her to a hawk she can acquire and she can fly away form her watchers. It all goes pear-shaped of course, and ends with a death-defying chase (I'm sure Loren missed those) then agian, she's so happy to be able to see again.

They get to the valley safely. Tobias thinks bitterly that she still doesn't show him as much affection as she did when he morphed her dog (to stalk her) but then remembers when she risked her life to save him during the death defying chase. Jake is incredibly down over not being able to save his family. Tobias thinks it's funny that he gained a family at the same time Jake lost his. The he thinks of how kind Jake was when their positions were reversed, and promises Jake that they will never give up and they WILL free his family.

Another big status quo changer. Now ALL the Animorphs parents are aware of their secret, and they mostly do not take it well. How would you react to learning that about your kid? Jake is going to be very depressing til... well... the end of time? Still, the Animorphs are known to their firends and enemies alike now, there's no cuteness about scret identities, no going to school and having a normal life by day. They're now all Animorph, all the time. Soldiers on constant alert, because they were all so very stable before...

49 books down, 5 more to go.

[Ahriman238]

Book 50: the Ultimate

Surprisingly, the Animorph's dependents are not adjusting well to their new reality. Rachel's mom in particular has decided her daughter has become involved in a "loony fringe cult" or especially paranoid militia and splits her time between ranting, being passive-agressive, and trying to escape and summon the authorities. Cassie's parents are convinced that if they could just talk to Visser One, they could come to reasonable terms. Almost all of the parents develop an annoying condescending attitude towards the Hork-Bajir and treat them like small children even Cassie's parents try to baby and protect them. Oh, and Jake is still in a deep funk, the kids are stressed and at each others' throats and no one has a workable plan for the near future. Even visiting Erek of the peaceniks for intel has become a dangerous chore, now that the Yeerks know what they look like and are actively searching for them.

Not that thir normal intelligence sources are much help. Visser Th-One has gotten a lot more paranoid about security, so the CHee have nothing, and the peaceniks have been driven underground.

Cassie arranges a meeting to manipulate everyone into accepting Jake as their leader, especially Jake. Eva is very helpful, claiming that Jake is now the only leader Visser One respects and maybe fears.

Jake holds a smaller meeting in the morning. He's decided they're officially desperate enough to use the blue box and recruit new Animorphs. Rachel and Marco are very much against it, reminding everyone about David (I'm sure they needed that.) They get overruled, but the question lingers of who to recruit. The parents won't work, in fact, they decide to go ahead and veto all adults because they're mentally inflexible and too grounded in reality to accept the things they've seen and done. Nor the Hork-Bajir, and it will be a strain on their resources to put every possible recruit under surveilliance for 3 days. But they'd have to, kids are a serious target demographic to the Yeerks, second only to people in positions of real authority, because kids are overlooked and underestimated.

Ok, so who don't the Yeerks want as hosts? Why that's easy! Yeerks don't infest the blind, the deaf, the mute, the lame, the paralyzed, or the dying! So it's decided, a new generation of Animorphs will come from the ranks of handicapped kids!

...

That sounded a lot less despicable in my head. Cassie thinks this is wrong, but Jake points out that the Yeerks are a threat to everyone, they're just giving the kids a chance to fight for their lives rather than die in their beds. For Cassie's arc here, she's eventually going to realize that she was acting the same as her mom, patronizing the disabled kids, trying to protect them from the war and the world rather then letting them meet it on their terms.

Marco finds a children's rehab clinc (not that kind of rehab!) in a nearby town, one which is distinctly not the Animorphs' home city. They go out, and after am inute on the street, three controllers chase them down. The Yeerks really are getting their fingers everywhere.

Anyway, they get to the clinic and meet James, a wheelchair-bound kid who's the de facto leader of the ward. After convincing James, they give five kids morphing capability, have them morph pidgeons and fly to the garden for more transit, stealth and battle morphs. The new auxilirary animorphs, in a nice touch, bludgeon through all the original animorphs' initial problems (grossed out by morphing, losing control of the morph) through sheer force of will.

Five more nights of training and selecting from James, and there are now 17 auxiliaries arranged in 3 teams, though all answer to James and Jake. By this point, they decide to leave the rehab center and do their recruiting at a school for the blind.

The school is a trap, Tom and 10 Blue Bands show up and take the Animorphs prisoner, all save Cassie who couldn't shake a gut feeling something was wrong and morphed a fly. Cassie flies off and summons the auxiliaries, who show up just before 2 'battalions' of Blue Bands, a truckload of Taxxons and Visser One.

Slowly out team formed a line. Grizzly. Gorilla. Tiger. Andalite. Hawk. Wolf.

Then James's team. Lion. Crocodile. Bobcat. Bull.

Then Craig's team. And Erica's.

Slowly, the visser's attention was caught. Maybe I imagined the look of fear that flitted across his enigmatic Andalite face as he surveyed our forces.

Maybe not.

But for the first time since this war had begun, it looked like a fair fight.

The auxiliaries are also great at teamwork, and they do pretty well for themselves. The tide swings when Visser One morphs a giant squid-monster with 20 thorny 'bullwhip' tentacles. Visser One engages Jake, while still disrupting the others. Jake nearly dies but one of the Blue Bands (presumed to be a peacenik) cuts off a tentacle, and the Taxxons bull-rush the Visser.

All the Animorphs pull out, but in the confusion Tom gets the Escafil device and runs. Jake goes to chase him, but Cassie, unable to bear the thought of Jake killing his brother, attacks Jake and buys time for Tom to escape. Jake is exceptionally pissed off, and we close to the book to Cassie saying (to herself) that she may never be able to explain it to anyone, but she knows she did the right thing.

So yeah, the Animorphs almost quadruple in number, but James and the auxilirary animorphs are even more underutilized than the Blue Bands. Also, the Yeerks get their paws on morphing technology, and Cassie and Jake (source of the big 'will they-won't they' romance) have a fairly major negative incident. Cassies actions here are, full-stop, the most hotly debated issue of the series, with some people attributing her actions to innate nobility or foresight, and some saying she's the dumb bitch who almost doomed the earth to satisfy her moral code. Take whichever side you feel is appropriate.

The status quo take another knife-wound, and form here on out at least one major, unassailable fact of the setting will be challenged per book.

There are 4 books left.

[Ahriman238]

Book 51: the Absolute

We open to Marco and Tobias overflying a train carrying National Guard personnel and equipment. It seems the Guard is being called up in vast numbers to the Animorphs' home city. At first they though it would be good news, but when they reach the city they fill out paperwork, stand in line at 7 "processing centers" and walk in one by one to be infested. Smooth operation.

Marco and Tobias get attacked by almost twenty birds, who turn out to be morphing controllers. To escape, they hijack a tank and drive it off the train, and swing about the turret some when the birds try to land on it. Before ditching the tank, they fulfil Marco's ambition of many years and wreck Chapman's house with it.

Jake has a plan: He, Cassie and Rachel will take the auxiliraries and disrupt the processing centers by cracking heads. Marco is to take Tobias and Ax to the state capitol (Sacramento, it tuns out) and brief the Governor on the invasion.

They head to the Gardens to pick up duck morphs for long-distance flight, but are again recognized, and this time we have controllers pulling dracon beams or morphing to attack the Animorphs in broad daylight. How is this invasion still a secret anyway? They overcome their opponents, by which I mean killing them, Marco even uses a dracon beam to destroy a helicopter before they morph and bug out.

They make it to the Governor's mansion, and follow her to a black tie fundraiser of some sort. They get her alone to explain things, but her husband turns out to be a controller and half a dozen armed men show up, necessitating a running battle across the city. After a deadly game of tag with car chases and attackers on a boat to do an action movie proud, they finally get her to the Mansion where they have time to fully explain everything.

Warned by Marco that she can't trust any of the National Guard that have had leave or been unsupervised in the last 3 days, she calls in a regiment (IIRC) that has been on desert exercises for the last 2 weeks. Before they can get there, Visser One shows up leading a company of HIS National Guard to arrest the Governor. However, this Governor turns out to be Marco morphed as the Governor as a decoy, and Ax and Tobias rescue him before the Humvee he's loaded in gets 2 miles. In the meantime, the Governor's redoubtable bodyguard smuggles her to safety.

Though it happens off-page, the Governor's reliable colonel and his command showed up at the eleventh hout to free the Guardsmen being held for infestation, and killing the infested Guardsmen who resisted. The Governor appears on the evening nationa news to say this:

"I won't beat around the bush." she said "I have declared a state of emergency. I repeat: a state of emergency. This is not martial law. Our police, and even our National Guard forces, cannot be trusted." She glanced at the reporter. "The news media cannot be trusted. You may not even be able to trust your friends, or your own family."

She explained about the Yeerks. About how, like an invisible disease, they have been infesting and slowly taking over the population.

"I know this sounds fantastic." she said "Like something out of Hollywood. But by now you've seen the news footage. You know what I'm telling you is true. Our state, our nation, our entire world is under attack. But we are already fighting back. I have requested help from Washington, and the President has agreed to send U.S. troops.

The governor shuffled her notes. Looked into the camera again. "This is not the time for panic," she said. "It is the time for each of us to reach into our souls and pull out the courage we may not even know we possess. Our enemy is strong. But we are stronger, because we are fighting for our lives and our freedom. For our very existence."

The end.

The news footage in question refers to the footage of the Animorphs fighting the infested Guard, and the uninfested Guard showing up. Plus some highlights from the chase scenes around the city, like the Hork Bajir jumping onto the roof of her limo.

Yeah, this book the Yeerks infest a large portion of the National Guard, and the masquerade gets blown wide open. Which really should have logically happened a lot sooner. It was pretty entertaining, though if it seems short that's just because I glossed over all the fighting and running they do.

And then there were 3.

[Ahriman238]

Book 52: the Sacrifice

Officially, various politicos and experts, many of them Yeerk mouthpieces, deride the Governor and her broadcast as insane. More, I think, from a desire to muddy the waters than any real hope of maintaining secrecy. On the streets however, controllers are rounding up people from all over and around the Animorphs' city at gunpoint and herding them into the subway, which some industrious Taxxons have rerouted to run to the Pool, right up to the infestation pier.

Alright, so Marco (with technical support from his dad) comes up with a plan. Never before have they had such a swift, relatively security-light way of getting to the Pool. He wants to load up the train with 10 1000 lbs bombs, enough to destroy the Pool entirely. Cassie objects to the killing of doubtless thousands of innocent Yeerks in the Pool, and hosts. A compromise is reached where they'll send the bombs on a five minute timer, and she can ride the train in and warn the Yeerks what's about to happen, then free as many hosts from the cages as she can.

Cassie also owns up to letting Tom go two books ago. The others are mad, Rachel yells at her, but they all forgive her before leaving, except Ax who is rattled. Cassie's actions, attacking their leader and letting the Yeerks get the most flexible weapon known, are clearly that of a traitor. But he can't conceive of Cassie betraying the Animorphs, and he has no idea how the others are so accepting of this.

That. That right there is something the series needed more of. Ax is from a radically different culture, a whole different world, he needed more of a different mindset, like they occasioanlly showed with the disability issue. He has trouble with the idea of anyone being so individualistic and self-assured they'd act counter to the group's interests because it "seemed like the right thing to do." He has a different idea of loyalty, even though he also went against Jake with the nuke in 46.

Speaking of loyalty, and differing views thereof, Ax sneaks off with the Z-space comm to report to the Andalites. The Andalite High Command is most displeased with the plan to destroy the Pool, and order Ax to surreptitiously sabotage it. You see, it doesn't fit in with their current strategic goals. They have dispatched the Dome Ship Elfangor to Earth and anticipate it's arrival within a couple weeks. When it gets to Earth, a nearly-conquered world where the Yeerks are gathering in vast numbers, it will destroy that world, burning away the atmosphere with it's main shredders.

As for the primitive humans, their sacrifice will be honored. Privately. Maybe. But this is a once-in-a-lifetime target, billions of Yeerks gathered to infest the humans, a blow the Empire couldn't recover from. It may even be the turning point of the entire war. But if the Pool is destroyed, the Yeerks will get the idea that Earth isn't as secure as they thought, they won't flock in such great numbers, and the sacrifice of Earth could be largely wasted. You wouldn't want that, right, Cadet Aximili?

The others become aware of this, at least to the extent that the Andalites are coming, and not to help. Tobias learns this by following Ax, Eva because she knows Andalites and the others because they aren't idiots. But first Ax has a long conversation with Cassie about why she did what she did, and with Tobias about Cassie.

Cassie reminds him of Aftran, and the mad impulse she had to trust that Yeerk. How Aftran founded the Peace Movement and eventually became a whale. Now that the Yeerks have morphing technology, they don't have to be parasites. They could acquire humans, or hork-bajir or birds or fish and live out their lives in that shape. Provided they were willing to give up on their culture and identity as Yeerks. Tobias thinks Cassie is right, and if she isn't then she at least acted from the best of intentions.

The kids have their parents pretend to be lost hikers in distress to get them inside the nearest National Guard (and the books do feature them a lot now) base. They load up the bombs into an impromptu truck convoy, but get caught red-handed leaving the base. Rachel is ready to fight her way out, but Jake explains who they are and what they want the bombs for, and the Captain there gives them a quick tutorial on safe handling and setting of explosives, and sends them on their way.

By this point, Ax has decided not to sabotage the mission. In fact, he agrees to accompany Cassie on the death-train to the Yeerk Pool. Surprisingly, so does Marco. They take out some guards, free the group of people who were going to be loaded up, then Ax sets the timers and they go for a ride.

After they come out the other end going to fast and derail the train into the Pool, Cassie starts 'shouting' with thought-speak that the whole place is going to blow and they need to run now. Then she helps Ax open all the cages containing hosts whose Yeerks are in the Pool right now. Visser One shows up and starts to morph something with a lot of tentacles, but Marco just explains the situation again, and the visser decides discretion really is the better part of valor.

All the Animorphs make it out in time, and the bombs blow. Several thousand, likely tens of thousands of Yeerks die, and the entire downtown area of the Animorphs' city collapses into a giant sinkhole. Naturally, Visser One escapes to, but many do not.

Ax privately reaffirms his vows of loyalty to Jake, and everybody flies back to the Hork-Bajir valley for a celebratory dinner.

Another book destroys another long-held conceit of the series- that the Yeerks have an underground stronghold that is inviolate. They may be able to sneak, and do a bit of damage, but they can never overcome that place. The war continues to become more open and more nasty. Despite Cassie's objections, they kill a very large number of Yeerks who were chilling in the Pool, a majority of whom have never taken a host outside of education/training. Some were given the chance to escape, but most died.

Oh, and there's the idea in the series that "If they can just delay and thwart the Yeerks long enough, the Andalites will come and save them." In case anyone hadn't read the Hork-Bajir Chronicles and gotten a pretty good idea of how the Andalites go about "saving" primitive aliens.

[Mr Bean]

Now I'm sad I skipped out on this series and that the TV show died such a quiet death because this is good stuff for a children's series even if it took fifty two books to get them here. It's also a demonstration that for all their efforts the Animorphs were losing the war. They won battles often enough in denying the Yeerks a quick win with wonderwaffen tricks but the end result was still the same. Every single book more and more humans were acquired. More and more hosts in more important positions were created. If Visser three turned one was not the universes biggest idiot the aliens could have had this thing wrapped up solid forty books ago via simply spreading their efforts around more. Sure they had captured what 50% of the adult population of this city are controllers but since they had a hard and fast number of "Andalite bandits" simply letting the Visser mwhaha hah hah to them about his main objective while hitting four more places would have been successful.

Not once did the Visser even think to set up one of his lieutenants as a fake loyalist to feed the Animorphs a diet of true information before switching to false information and objectives that would help out his own ends.

[Ahriman238]

Now I'm sad I skipped out on this series and that the TV show died such a quiet death because this is good stuff for a children's series even if it took fifty two books to get them here. It's also a demonstration that for all their efforts the Animorphs were losing the war. They won battles often enough in denying the Yeerks a quick win with wonderwaffen tricks but the end result was still the same. Every single book more and more humans were acquired. More and more hosts in more important positions were created. If Visser three turned one was not the universes biggest idiot the aliens could have had this thing wrapped up solid forty books ago via simply spreading their efforts around more. Sure they had captured what 50% of the adult population of this city are controllers but since they had a hard and fast number of "Andalite bandits" simply letting the Visser mwhaha hah hah to them about his main objective while hitting four more places would have been successful.

Not once did the Visser even think to set up one of his lieutenants as a fake loyalist to feed the Animorphs a diet of true information before switching to false information and objectives that would help out his own ends.

To his credit, he did set up one of his lieutenants as a fake loyalist to sucker the Animorphs to a particular location and kill them. But then, patience and subtlety are not Visser Three's strong points. From the first day of his command of the Earth invasion, he argued for a swift and open campaign. It's never stated as such, but I get the impression he sees Earth as an irrelevant sideshow to his real war with the Andalites, and is eager to have the hwole thing over and done with.

Visser Three is the Yeerk's greatest expert on the Andalites, and he was so long before he took Alloran as a host. Visser One (Edriss, not Visser Three/One) was their greatest expert on humanity. So it makes sense that Three would be assigned to the invasion of Earth and One to fight the Andalites at Anati.


Hmmm...

You asked me when I started this, Bean, how much of the series I thought was planned in advance, and how much was made up as they went along. On reflection, my answer is "a lot of both." There are books that are clear filler, "Cassie goes to Australia" all Helmacron stories and a handful of "plot of the week" like books 25 and 28 where the Animorphs foil a routine plan by Visser Three to win the war in a single masterstroke, but have no real character growth and insight.

On the other hand, a lot of the latter books in particular have very tight interconnected stories. And most of the character arcs work very well, with Jake and Rachel as the exceptions.

And then there are all the world shaking plot threads that are raised, but hardly followed up on, if ever. There are a grand total of 4 stories where it's important that Jake seriously hacked off an evil entity with godlike powers. There's a conspiracy of some sort with Andalite traitors and Visser Three maybe visiting the Andalite Homeworld, but nothing comes of it. They tell us in the David trilogy that a major world leader is a controller, but they never have a follow up story. You can't raise that one and not do a follow up story.

There are a few off-hand mentions here and there that the Yeerks are winning and the Animorphs are just delaying the inevitable. But the first time I really felt it was in book 38, when we hear that the Andalite fleet they were counting on to eventually save them is not coming. After that, we have a string of stories about how burned-out the Animorphs are getting, and how they're not really making a difference, MM4, 41,42, and 43 all came one after the other, each stressing how close to the ragged edge they're getting, and in each their major accomplishments aren't striking back at the Yeerks but not dying/getting exposed. Except for 41, which is all a dream, but hits hard on the hopeless feeling.

[Mr Bean]

Just consider who the Yeerks converted to their side and who they had access to. The first West Point grad of Lieutenant rank or above could have gotten them the entire US military (And from there the entire US Government) in a few weeks. Book nine should have been about President Yeerk. The American power structure in the military is based on the patronage system in large part for the officers. We are not yet to the point where being a good officer gets you stuck at a Commander spot, in fact making it to Captain requires competence and skill but you can make it to Lieutenant Commander on birth alone.

The point is however that leaves lots of interconnected trees that are not just based on family but on favors and obligations. If you get Genna's little grandson then he can introduce you to Genna who's holding a lovely garden party next month of which the wives of a dozen former and current admirals and the admirals themselves will be attending. From there you can easily and quickly start getting government civilians as hunting and hiking are both popular pastimes. And within your three day window your talking about from one person getting you hands on two hundred easily and all of them high ranking to boot. But then our security protocols are not designed around preventing mind controlling space alien slugs from getting charge of things.

Sure nabbing the President himself is tricky what with his two hundred man security detail at all times but nabbing the Speaker of the House would be a hundred times easier as would be engineering the loss of the VP and President, or if you were willing to wait four years you could simply invite all the potential Presidential runners to private fundraising dinners full of controllers when its still months out from the Iowa votes and get President Yeerk that way. No need to fool around with the national guard or any such low ante stuff.

Being flashy and going for the wonder weapon of the week turned in much less useful outcomes then simply slow and steady expansion... virus like.