Analysis: Animorphs

[Ahriman238]

Maybe. Remember when they had a convoluted scheme to hit the Deputy Director of the CIA with a car so he'd be hospitalized and they could infest him, then either use him to get to his boss or arrange a suitable accident to make him the Director?

Or during the David thing, Visser Three captures and acquires the White House Chief of Protocol in order to set up the room for his infestation scheme. I'd assumed as a kid that the fact they didn't infest him either meant a.) that they didn't think he could feed through all the security, or smuggle a portable kandrona in or b.) the President was already the controller and they didn't have to infest "Tony" to get to him. Looking back, I think it more likely this is a case of c.) Visser Three is a control freak who does not know how to delegate.

Using the Sharing and the hospital to infest large numbers of people quickly wasn't a bad idea. But it could maybe have been something they did on the local level while pursuing grander designs abroad. In fact, the Sharing and hospital (and why did they never go back to burn that place?) stuff was always happening in the background.

One complaint I've often heard about this series is that so much (including G8 conferences) seems to happen in this one small town, even though some books go to Alaska, or Leera or Hork-Bajir. And in-universe it makes a certain degree of sense that the Yeerks are going to arrange things to happen in the city they basically own, the one on top of their great stronghold, as much as they can. But why was there just the one Pool in the one city? Occasionally, just in a couple of books, it can feel like the invasion is just happening in Southern California.

In particular, we never see national or international reactions when the invasion goes public.

Nabbing the President or other figures under heavy security is only useful if you can smuggle portable feeding supplies (mini-pool and one-shot kandrona) or you turn enough of their security that they can get away unobserved for a couple hours every 3 days. Remember, the Yeerks need something like 2-3 hours of swimming in the Pool, and unless they have a voluntary host, the host has to be restrained the whole time.

EDIT: Actually Bean, I'm a bit surprised you didn't comment on some of the other things going on, like Cassie letting Tom go or the Andalites coming to end the world.

And if they Andalites have relatively casual planet-ending capability, why haven't they long ago annihilated the Taxxon or Yeerk homeworlds.

[Darmalus]

I get the feeling that Visser Three would rather play with Yeerk and Andalite dolls (action figures!) in his office, Spaceballs style, instead of reading those boring reports on the human political system.

[Ahriman238]

I get the feeling that Visser Three would rather play with Yeerk and Andalite dolls (action figures!) in his office, Spaceballs style, instead of reading those boring reports on the human political system.

But ALL the dolls are Yeerk dolls, you just have to remember to use evil voices.

[Mr Bean]

Maybe. Remember when they had a convoluted scheme to hit the Deputy Director of the CIA with a car so he'd be hospitalized and they could infest him, then either use him to get to his boss or arrange a suitable accident to make him the Director?

This is a good plan except for going after the director part, better to go after everyone else first then simply arrange for the director to be retired (You don't make Director of the CIA without being involved in SOMETHING shady which is an instant retirement if leaked to the press)

c.) Visser Three is a control freak who does not know how to delegate.

Also incompetent wasteful short sighted brute to boot.

Using the Sharing and the hospital to infest large numbers of people quickly wasn't a bad idea. But it could maybe have been something they did on the local level while pursuing grander designs abroad. In fact, the Sharing and hospital (and why did they never go back to burn that place?) stuff was always happening in the background.

The point is why not do it in Podunk Iowa where the Hospital is sixteen people and the nearest town is an hour away? To continue my virus analogy better to start small in twenty different places then big in only one or two places.

One complaint I've often heard about this series is that so much (including G8 conferences) seems to happen in this one small town, even though some books go to Alaska, or Leera or Hork-Bajir. And in-universe it makes a certain degree of sense that the Yeerks are going to arrange things to happen in the city they basically own, the one on top of their great stronghold, as much as they can. But why was there just the one Pool in the one city? Occasionally, just in a couple of books, it can feel like the invasion is just happening in Southern California.

This at least is justified if you recall the Yeerks are short on pools enough to make it a plot point in... what twelve books total where alternatives to the Pool means them growing out of Animorphs control and quickly.

Nabbing the President or other figures under heavy security is only useful if you can smuggle portable feeding supplies (mini-pool and one-shot kandrona) or you turn enough of their security that they can get away unobserved for a couple hours every 3 days. Remember, the Yeerks need something like 2-3 hours of swimming in the Pool, and unless they have a voluntary host, the host has to be restrained the whole time.

Which is why you set it up cell style.
And private dinners allow you three hours of swimming easy. Going to dine at the Yerkawitzes twice a week easily lets you get the feeding time in especially if it's something where the actual aliens become useful if you stagger feeding days. Mass production of these minipools would make for a useful plot point if they used it correctly. Hell it would have made 90% of the series better if rather than super gadget of the week the Yerks keep hammering into this point that they can't expand far because of the pool weakeness and there attempts to aquire wunderwaffen instead move into nothing but Pool swim substitutes.

Random question is the pool nasty stuff? IE can the Yeerk have his host jump in and feed that way?

EDIT: Actually Bean, I'm a bit surprised you didn't comment on some of the other things going on, like Cassie letting Tom go or the Andalites coming to end the world.

The Weakness of Mercy, I read the books and I already knew that Cassie made a shitty soldier, had they a bit of competence then the "Andalite bandits" would have kidnapped Tom and Champman and starved the Yeerks to death inside their heads months ago then vanished the two of them after full interrogations.

And if they Andalites have relatively casual planet-ending capability, why haven't they long ago annihilated the Taxxon or Yeerk homeworlds.

If they are in space they have planet ending ability, remember any space faring race can fall back on Rocks fall everyone dies. Any race able to travel between star systems posses sufficient technology to adjust the orbits of the hundreds of bits of floating rocks and orbiting comets to hit their home worlds. Hell the Dome ships are big enough that simply packing them full of iron and ramming them into the planet would cause planet wide devastation. You don't need much if you can get it going fast enough. And if you don't want to waste a ship just jam Z-space engines on the biggest hunk of rock you can and port it into the Gravity well. Rocks fall everyone dies.

So the simple fact the Andys are on there way to kill murder an entire sentient species is no big suprise for me. They already allowed the Yeerks to enslave two other species and have lost thousands? millions? billions? of soldiers to the Yeerks already.

[Mr Bean]

What I meant above where I said actual aliens become useful is the Hork Bajir and the Taxxons hanging out in Grandma's basement along with a minipool. Just need two Hork Bajir to watch over any number of humans considering how human immune there biology is to choke holds, kicks in vital places or eye gouges. So you have two Controller Hork Bajir hanging out in the basement watching the pool. Boring job but someone has to do it, when the party starts have the controllers slip down one by one (They won't have a security detail) except for the Host who obviously will feed on non-party days. Make it a point that the Controllers like to stay the night and you have seven hours (Party plus nap time) where the guests can slip off, get their feeding in while in the soundproof basement room, chill out and no big worries.

It's all bout staggering feeding times of the Yeerks and having something which is obvious to me but have the controller help restrain himself in full medical restrains complete with gag then exit the body to feed (They can be carried the two feet to the pool rather than dumped directly in that always struck me as incredibly silly. Cages are unnecessary when you can simply use a damp rag to carry the Yeerk a few feet to the pool after it helps you strap it's own host body down.

[Ahriman238]

Random answer, the Yeerks do ingest some nutrients from the grey sludge that fills the Pool. However, that is more supplemental to their diet, the thing they can't go three days without is the radiation they absorb from their star, or it's mechanical fill-ins, with the Pool liquid as a medium.

On with the show.

Book 53: the Answer

We open to fifty or so Bug Fighters strafing the Animorphs' city, as refugees beat feet, they level every tree, every building, and create a 2-mile radius circle of ash and dirt. Four fighter jets rise up to stop them, and two Bug Fighters casually break off to deal with them, shooting down the missiles easily, then slaughtering the jets, save one survivor to tell the tale. A news chopper is allowed to get most of the show before they kill it just before the main event.

The Pool Ship lands in the exact center of the exclusion zone.

Well, now they know this is an opportunity, with the Pool gone, the Pool Ship is the only way of feeding Yeerks by the thousands. Destroy it, and all but a handful of Yeerks will die by slow starvation. Take it, and they’ll actually be in a position to dictate terms to the Yeerks.

Of course it will be ridiculously dangerous, Visser One and the other Yeerks are painfully aware of what a huge weak point the Pool Ship is for them while it’s on the ground, that’s why they’re so serious about security. Bottom line, they’ll need help, a large diversion to buy Ax time to finesse his way through the ship’s computer security. So Jake has Marco and Ax hack the Pentagon and find the man in charge, one Gen. Samuel Doubleday ATF-1. Which stands here for ‘Alien Task Force’ not ‘Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.’
Doubleday commands 2 Army divisions, plus whatever Guard forces are obeying orders. So he’s a bit surprised when Jake easily penetrates his security and dimorphs in front of him. Before Jake can make more than a token arguments that he is neither alien nor enemy, 3 burly MPs seize him and throw him in a cell. 3 minutes later, he dimorphs in front of the general again, this process repeats itself twice more before Doubleday decides to hear him out. He gets pretty pissed when Jake says he can’t trust anyone in the chain of command, and his own control of his forces is suspect. Did the commander of the Army group sent after the Yeerks not get shown the Governor’s broadcast?

Fortunately, the three controllers in the room decide at this point that it’s better to kill Jake right now, proving his point. But Cassie has already morphed to wolf under the big map table, and Tobias and Rachel have replaced two of the MPs (anyone remember when we didn’t morph people? Anyone at all?) so they’re quickly dealt with. But by some coincidence the Yeerks have also hacked or otherwise compromised the Pentagon, and the Yeerks take this moment to attack. The Animorphs help out the ATF, and they all fall back.

Doubleday agrees to launch his diversionary attack on the grounded Pool Ship, but it will have to wait a while. Jake advises him to lock down his men, no one in or out, for three days which the general can’t do with his full 2 divisions, so it’ll have to be just a thousand trustworthy men.

In the meantime, the Yeerks are digging out an open-air lakebed to be the new ground-based Pool. If they get that even somewhat functional before the Animorphs are ready, the Pool Ship will retreat into orbit. So they take the auxiliaries and some of Toby’s better warriors and massacre the Taxxons doing the digging. In the process, Jake gets separated from the others and meets an old friend of ours, Arbron.

For those who don’t remember, Arbron was Elfangor’s friend who became trapped in Taxxon morph and stayed behind to lead a Taxxon resistance to the Yeerks. That he’s still alive some 20 years or so later is almost miraculous. The Taxxon resistance… has not gone so well. They try, but sooner or later, their resolve crumbles and they return to the Yeerks that feed them. But now the Yeerks have gotten morphing technology, and it occurs to the Taxxons that they could be something, anything other than themselves and escape the constant sensation of starvation. It has also occurred to them that Visser One will never, ever let them have this, he won’t even give morphing to Taxxon-controllers, much less the free Taxxons kept in line by food. So, all 1700 free Taxxons are willing to fight with the Animorphs, in exchange for their word that they can be given morphing powers and permanently morph the form of their choice.

Jake gets back to the others to relay the news. I owe an apology to all of you, my memories were confused and this is when the others all find out about the Andalites. Ax says that this must be the High Command alone, the people would not stand for genocide like this. But Peter’s Z-Space comm. Doesn’t have the power to access Andalite civilian communications, perhaps with the Pool Ship they could reach the Andalites who would stop this. For the moment, Jake commands Ax to report that he successfully stopped the destruction of the Yeerk Pool, but the Andalites need to hold off because the Earth Resistance is going to deliver an intact Pool Ship into their hands.

Jake meets again with the Taxxons, shows off an anaconda morph (Arbron had implied that a bodyplan relatively close to a Taxxon’s would go over well) and secures their support. Tom also shows up, it seems he is now Security Chief. He’s not there for a fight though, he’s felling hurt because he hasn’t made sub-visser yet despite felling that he’s “carried” Visser Three/One for years now. He thinks the Yeerk Empire is too hide-bound traditional, so he wants to betray Visser One, and run off to start his own Empire with the Blade Ship and a hundred or so of his dedicated followers. First they’ll use the morphing tech to largely eliminate their dependence on Kandrona Rays. He offers passage through the secure perimeter around the Pool Ship, and access codes. Jake… accepts.

Oh, Jake knows that Tom is going to backstab him, and he’s already planning to backstab Tom. But Tom can get them in before the mutual double-crossing.

Anyway, he orders Marco to dig in the ruins of the King household until he finds the Chee, then bring Erek to him. Their one real ace is that the Yeerks still know nothing about the Chee and capabilities. Erek refuses out of hand to be involved in a battle, even to the point of simply enabling the Animorphs to kill others, but Jake already has a solution. The Pemalites, not being idiots, allowed in their programming the possibility that a Chee would have no options, and empowered them to choose the lesser of two evils. So Jake had Ax take Chapman captive, and promises that if Erek refuses to help or deviates from the plan, this man will die.

Whoa there, big guy, you’re on the side that DOESN”T do things like this, remember? Well he doesn’t, and if the other Animorphs are uncomfortable, none of them object. Not even Cassie. Erek accedes, but he is not a happy android.

Okay, so Tom’s plan is to “capture” Cassie and bring her to Visser One, using his authority as Security Chief to get around the Gleet Biofilters, while the other Animorphs hitchhike. Then he warns about a Taxxon Uprising that’s going to try and destroy the new Pool being dug, and convinces the Visser to give him temporary command of the Blade Ship.

Visser One acts really oddly here, he seems… tired. Confused. But he doesn’t trust his sudden good fortune in having a beaten Animorph dropped at his hooves. When Tom brings a Taxxon witness to back up his story of a Taxxon uprising, he questions whether the Taxxon might be an Animorph and Tom orders it to eat Cassie, which it does with gusto.

Of course, “Cassie” is actually Erek, and the Taxxon is Tobias. Visser One then checks the corners to see there’s no one demorphing to save their friend, and gives Tom the Blade Ship. Then he orders the nearest Hork-Bajir (Toby) to take the Taxxon out and kill it, while he orders the Pool Ship to lift off and prepare to fight.

Doubleday’s men attack, a thousand infantry supported by a dozen tanks, nineteen helicopter gunships, and nine fighter jets. Visser One is all ready to do the sensible thing, a sustained shot at max diffusion will cook them all in about 30 seconds. But then he sees over a dozen lions, tigers, and pachyderms among the infantry and decides that while a microwave heat-death might be practical, he really just wants to see the Animorphs burn and get blasted into meaty chunks.

He’s finished killing every animal in sight, and is just getting back to the wide-beam plan when Erek and Ax finally break into navigation and order the ship up into a stable orbit. Visser One immediately orders “every Hork-Bajir that can stand” to accompany him to Engineering. He has the Hork-Bajir form three ranks and sweep the entire chamber with dracon beams set to kill every living thing but leave the machinery unharmed, then charge in. Toby and her dozen finest warriors are in the ranks, and hang back from the charge to lock them in and guard them, though that won’t hold Visser One.

The Animorphs, who had already evacuated Engineering, are in a bind. They know Tom will be coming with the Blade Ship to destroy them, but Erek simply will not, cannot, help them bring the weapons online. That much is hardwired into him. They need Visser One to cough up the codes for weapons. They figure he won’t stay to help his Hork-Bajir fight their way out of Engineering, he’ll head for the bridge, and so will they. On the way, the Animorphs swing by the Pool to free all the hosts not presently carrying Yeerks, and seeing an opportunity he hadn’t foreseen, hoping beyond hope to somehow stop what he knew would happen between Rachel and Tom, Jake does something really questionable.

He has Ax flush the Pool, and 17,000 helpless Yeerks, into space.

They get to the bridge to find one of the last things they’d have expected, Visser One, defeated and not even making a token effort to try and kill them. The Blade Ship is closing and they are helpless, true they can get off a hot or two, but someone (Erek) is siphoning power away from the weapons, and at 25% power, their shots are ineffective. Tom disables the Pool Ship’s engines, then calls to gloat. He sees Jake on the bridge and freaks out, ordering the Blade Ship to come about and immediately target the bridge… And Jake orders Rachel to fight.



Book 54: the Beginning

Also known as the one that ripped off the Rolling Stones with the cover.

Rachel, in the corner dimorphs and rapidly morphs a grizzly bear. The bridge crew all notice her and immediately begin going into their own battle morphs. Rachel fights her way through them, killing Tom and his Yeerk and fatally wounded, demorphs just in time to catch the fatal blow from a polar bear. The Ellimist freezes time in the moment of her death to talk to her, and tells his life story in the Ellimist Chronicles, then time resumes.

Tom’s Yeerks, in fear and confusion jump away into Z-space. Ax knocks Visser One out, and the Yeerk bails from Alloran’s head. Marco sticks him in a ziplock bag full of water, and hides that in a briefcase full of chocolate bars he found on the bridge. I bet there’s a small story there.

They call the Dome Ship Elfangor to tell them that they’ve won, secured the Pool Ship, and there is absolutely no reason to incinerate the Earth. Prince Asculan, the captain is openly hostile and distrusting, convinced that this is a Yeerk trap and dammit, he has his orders. When Jake points out the possibilities of morphing to give everyone what they want, Asculan dismisses it out of hand. Then they reveal that Ax has broadcast their conversation to the entire Andalite Homeworld. Asculan rounds on Ax, because only a War-Prince has that authority, but Alloran wakes up and covers for Ax, saying that he authorized and he is still a War-Prince. What, Alloran still has rank and privileges? I’m just going to hope that means “now they can demonstrate he isn’t a controller” and not that they never changed the locks when he was taken.

Anyway, Asculan retreats to talk privately with his superiors, then sends a junior flunky to tell the kids that Ax has been made a Prince, and a morphing cube has been released to him to do as he sees fit.

After that, things move very quickly. The Pool Ship, as Visser One’s temporary flagship, has the ability to remotely self-destruct all Bug Fighters in Earth space. It’s communication and other codes allows the Andalites swift victory over the Yeerks elsewhere. Those who fight die quickly, those who run die slow, those who surrender are given a body of their choice, with Ax and a dozen Andalite warriors watching to make sure they don’t dimorph at the last moment. They land an Andalite fighter on the White House lawn to tell the president and the world everything that’s happened.

The Chee and the Animorphs part company. Jake cannot forgive Erek for disabling the weapons, costing him a chance to disable the Blade Ship and maybe spare Tom and Rachel. Erek, for his part, cannot condone Jake’s tactics, the hostage and the flushing of the Yeerks. But the Animorphs respect the Chee desire for privacy, and carefully edit the androids out of the official story.

James and all of the auxiliary Animorphs died.

The free Hork-Bajir lost many warriors, including Jara Hamee. The U.S. Government granted Yellowstone National Park to the free Hork-Bajir and their heirs in perpetuity. They still accept visitors, tourism is how the Hork-Bajir make money for dealing with outsiders, and the waiting list to see Hork-Bajir in what has become their natural habitat is long. Toby is recognized as their leader and becomes a non-voting member of the U.S. Senate.

General Doubleday and most of his men survived. Nothing is said of their further lives, save that they attended all the funerals.

The Taxxons all morphed pythons and were turned loose in the Amazon. They have a big impact on the local rodent population, but (sneaky Cassie) the highly publicized knowledge that there are sentient beings who may not get out of the way of loggers slows rainforest destruction to a crawl. Arbron goes with them, though he remains trapped as a Taxxon. Four months in, a poacher shot him for his exotic skin. He was given a funeral with full military honors, and they came down hard on the man who did it.

Marco’s dad, as the sole survivor of the team that discovered Z-space, and the first man to make a Z-space comm. 9albeit with much help from Ax) is widely recognized as the world’s foremost expert on Zero Space. But at heart, he’s an engineer, not a physicist, and he takes a job with Lockheed Martin, designing humanity’s first FTL spacecraft.

Every government and organization in the world fell over themselves to give Jake every possible medal, knighthood, or other honor. He never finished high school, but had a honorary degrees from hundreds of colleges. He “received propositions from girls as young as twelve to women old enough to be his grandmother. Not interested.” The feds give him a mansion and a Ferrari tax-free. They offer him professorship at Annapolis and West Point in “Emerging Tactics and Xeno-warfare.” No dice. He never gets over all the casualties, the sacrifices of Rachel and the auxiliaries, and the seventeen thousand Yeerks he killed. Jake the Yeerk-killer, something the Drode used to call him, and the title sticks. He does get to see his parents free and alive, but they know, hell the entire world knows, that he sent his cousin to kill his brother. That has to make dinner conversation awkward. He visits the graves and war memorial every day and never morphs. Somebody get that kid some counseling.

The Andalites found Rachel’s body floating in space. The Yeerks must have tossed it before jumping out. She is cremated and given a funeral by the sea side. A red-tail hawk swoops down and, looking only to her mother for permission, flies away with the urn holding her ashes. It would be years before another human being saw or spoke to Tobias again. I can’t imagine how Loren must feel.

Cassie becomes ‘special advisor to the president.’ Mostly she runs around supporting every conceivable 90s feel-good cause. Environmentalism, animal cruelty, global warming, disabilities and more. She never forgot the lesson from James, and worked hard to be helpful but never patronizing to the disabled. She eventually published a book on animal psychology, as understood by someone who’s spent a lot of time as various animals.

Ax is made a full Prince without even becoming a warrior first, something even Elfangor never managed. He spent a lot of time getting all the Yeerks safely morphed, and acting as a liaison to the governments of Earth. Our blue-green planet becomes the next big thing in Andalite tourism. Having no native sense of taste, curious Andalites flock to Earth to pick up human morphs and experience the culinary arts.

Marco becomes the unofficial spokesman for the Animorphs, since Jake is in a funk, Tobias is gone, and Cassie will just use any excuse to launch into a speech about one of her pet causes. Marco on the other hand, can trade witticisms with talk-show hosts. He pretty much lives the slightly bittersweet shallow rock-star life, swimming in cash, dating a new supermodel every month. He also gets a credit as ‘technical advisor’ to the movie series Spielberg eventually makes of the Animorphs. ‘With some help from a ghostwriter’ Marco writes a tell-all book, the Gorilla Speaks which eventually becomes the great source used in historical research of the Animorphs. Of course, he leaves out the Chee, the Ellimist and Crayak, anything relating to time-travel… okay, it’s more of a ‘tell-most’ book. I’m sort of curious if things like some of the space adventures, the Nartec or David make it into the official history.

One year after the war ends the Animorphs gather once more, in the Netherlands, to serve as witnesses in the war-crimes trial of Visser One. The Andalites had to rig up a ‘Yeerk box’ sort of a purple shoebox full of Yeerk Pool sludge, with a computer interface inside so he can ‘see’ and ‘hear’ the things around him, and speak. The defense scores an early victory by having Alloran barred as a witness, but it doesn’t matter because there are literally thousands of witnesses to him doing things illegal even by the Yeerk’s regs (like executing subordinates.) Jake freezes on the stand when one of the defense lawyers protests that he’s just as much a war-criminal as the Visser, citing the destruction of the original Pool and the Pool Ship massacre. This is enough to convince the others to stage an intervention, so they kidnap Jake and throw him into the ocean, all but forcing him to morph a dolphin. When he gets out he apologizes for being such an ass, and starts moving forward with his life.

Three years after the war ended, two after Visser One was sentenced to many consecutive life-sentences, Ax is captain of the Dome Ship Intrepid. The last ship out looking for trouble, specifically the escaped Blade Ship. They find a vast and strange derelict, and Ax overrides his XO to lead the away mission. He finds several hairs he recognizes as belonging to a polar bear and orders everyone out, but the derelict fires and his ship is destroyed. Menderash, the XO, is the only survivor.

Back on Earth, Jake has found a worthwhile job. Once it actually sunk in that aliens are real, and Earth became a hot spot for Andalite tourism, anti-alien terrorism began. The Andalites finally had enough of that, and released an Escafil Device to the governments of Earth, on the condition that it be kept under tight security, and morphing powers would only be given to elite counter-terror forces. Jake is ‘the Professor’ responsible for training these men and women in their powers and the tactics that work well with them. He is now 19.

Menderash comes and tells his story. They suspect the ship belonged to an alien race the Andalites have a treaty with, that neither side can violate the other’s territorial space. He doesn’t know though, since no Andalite has seen a ship, in living memory, or ever seen one of these aliens in person. He wants to search their space, to try and rescue Ax. Jake agrees, and Menderash traps himself in human morph to provide plausible deniability to the Andalites.

Jake rounds up the team, finding Marco in his manor, and telling Cassie to stay home this time. He finds Tobias in Yellowstone, watching over the Hork-Bajir, and if Tobias has a lot of resentment built up towards Jake, Ax needs him so Tobias is in. So Jake, Marco, Tobias and Menderash, plus two of Jake’s students who know only that Jake is going on a dangerous off-book mission and wants them to come set off. They take out two Andalites and steal a shuttle, programming it to crash later (the official story is that terrorists stole the shuttle but didn’t figure out how to fly it) and board their new ship.

Their new home is a pocket Blade Ship, the latest generation just starting to see service when the war ended. Just as powerful, and far, far faster. They name it the Rachel.

They go for a long boring search of the universe for more than a year, before being found. They transmit that they are the starship Enterprise, on a mission of peaceful exploration on behalf of the United Federation of Planets (great cover story guys) and the Yeerks of course, get the joke. Okay, the Yeerks seem to have become a cult worshipping something they call ‘the One.’ Said entity appears on the Blade Ship bridge, shifting between a dozen alien forms before turning into Ax and revealing that it has all Ax’s memories. It orders it’s Yeerk minions to destroy them. Jake looks to Marco says “crazy, stupid, reckless decisions, huh? Ramming speed.”

The End.

Commentary later.

[Ahriman238]

Ok, the ending. It's an ending. You have the "where are they now" section and then the rescue Ax plot rammed down your throat in the last quarter of the book. Applegate wrote a letter to the fans (In my copy, it was included as an afterword) apologizing for the the ending and saying she wanted the Animorphs to go out the way they'd entered: outnumbered, outgunned, outwitted and still coming up swinging.

Faqa said when I started this that the premise didn't have 54 books in it. I sort of wish it had kept going longer. Maybe not to DW/Perry Rhodan extremes. But I'd have loved to see more exploration of the Andalites, their culture and some of the interactions between human and alien. What happens when the first Z-Space ship is built? Do we explore, trade, or what have you? How does the post-war Earth work? Are all the Yeerks morphed into new forms, or do some remain in a sort of symbiosis?

If nothing else, the Sharing and the Peace Movement proved that there are people desperate and lonely enough to become willing controllers, even knowing they give up all control over their lives, and that some Yeerks can be perfectly tolerable to share headspace with.

I do wish she'd done more with some of those damned dangling plot threads.

And in fact, there's a surprising number of decent-to-very-good Animorphs fanfics out there. There are also an unfortunate number of fics dedicated to exploring the concept of a shapeshifter's sexuality :facepalm: so consider yourself warned.

The series as a whole had a lot of high and low points, I'd probably still recommend it to appropriately aged kids, or even adults who want an airport book they can finish in one sitting. Though I'd probably include a list of books that aren't worth it. If you want to keep the happy optimistic Animorphs in mind, I'd say stop reading before book 30. If you want the darker morally-ambigious stuff, that may be a good point to jump on, though I'd say start a bit later. It's funny how much horror and logically nightmare-inducing stuff there was in this series, but in the earlier books the horror never seemed to stick to you. I mean, as early as book 5 we had the kids almost losing their individuality to an ant morph, then having to fight their way out of a hostile ant tunnel, but a chapter later I was fine as a kid.

The kids deal with some pretty heavy issues of right and wrong, and the series never really tries to invent third options, they sometimes come up when appropriate to the situation at hand (like giving Aftran morphing technology) but in situations like with the oatmeal, David, the auxiliary Animorphs, there really isn't.

It's also a vastly colorful universe, with a handful of distinctive worlds shown, and a mind-boggling array of aliens, none of which looked remotely human. I heard a story once that in Applegate's first draft the Andalites were generic Roswell Greys, and the Hork-Bajir "lizard-men" and scholastic returned the draft with instructions to make the aliens more distinctive and visually interesting. She certainly did that!

Well, those are my thoughts, more will probably occur to me later.

[Ahriman238]

@Bean

There is another problem with going after highly public figures, consider it an argument for infesting the immediate subordinates of people like the president rather than him personally. It was shown repeatedly, and from quite early on, that Yeerk's control over a host is not (quite) absolute. A strong-willed and/or clever host can seize back some control sometimes. Not a lot, but enough to give themselves a mean case of alien hand syndrome, collapse, spout gibberish, once or twice getting a complete sentence across before the Yeerk restores order.

This is one reason for the Sharing and elaborate way it convinces people to submit to infestation, not only does it drastically cut down on the host's even trying to make trouble later, the knowledge and self-loathing from knowing they did it to themselves goes a long way to sabotaging the strength of will needed.

Still, it may be one thing for a high school principal to spaz out on occasion, but it the President suddenly drops and convulses for a minute, no amount of reassurances or orders are going to keep him from getting an MRI, and who knows what that may find?

Also, while there certainly "wunderwaffen" books, there were more than a few books about the Animorphs defeating some trap or plot to expose them, where their only major accomplishment was to escape with their lives. And a handful about them disrupting fairly routine Yeerk operations. And more about some new weirdness unrelated to the Yeerks.

Point is, there were very few offensive books, where the kids set out to attack the Yeerks, rather than to save this or that person, or foil this scheme for ending the war faster.

Also, according to the last couple books, the series took place in-universe over the span of 3 years. When Elfangor crashed in front of the kids, they were 13, by the time of the Pool Ship they were 16. 3 Years doesn't seem like an unreasonable timeframe for world domination. Ok, that averages out to 18 books a year, though a couple happen roughly on top of each other. Let's look at what the kids did (and from that, what we know the Yeerks did) over that time.

Year I

1. Visser Three kills Elfangor, kids infiltrate Yeerk Pool with no plan, escape with their lives and half a dozen freed hosts. Except Tobias, who gets trapped as a bird.

2. Infiltrate Chapman's house like idiots with no real plan. Escape with their lives. Destroy 1 Bug Fighter with construction equipment.

3. Destroy Yeerk truck ship, which harvests air and water from planet for use aboard ships. No evidence this did real damage, but I count it as their first real victory.

4. Rescue Ax from ocean floor. Visser Three is beat up by a pod of whales.

5. Animorphs ambush a Bug Fighter crew to try and steal it, get ambushed by Visser Three who expected them to steal it. Kids escape with their lives solely due to Yeerk internal politics.

6. Disrupt scheme to infest Governor, set fire to Yeerk hospital/controller factory.

7. Destroy kandrona. MASSIVE victory for the Animorphs and huge setback to the Yeerks, who mot only lose large numbers and have to replace the kandrona, but have to sink a lot of time and manpower into a cover-up.

MM1: Visser Three has scheme to capture all of the Animorphs, they manage to escape with their lives.

8. Ax tries and fails to assassinate Visser Three. But he comes very, very close. Between that and losing the kandrona, Visser Three has to be rethinking his security arrangements.

9. Yeerks start a logging company to let them tear apart the forest looking for Andalites. Kids barely manage to foil a scheme that owuld have ended them, and Visser Three gets hosed in the face by a skunk.

10. Animorphs steal the Pemalite crystal, which would have let the Yeerks hack every computer in the world (which they can already do.)

11. None of the time-travel stuff actually happened, so objectively a prototype of the next model of Bug Fighter malfunctioned and crashed into a strip mall. Chapman had to do some fast talking to cover it up. The kids weren't involved in any of that.

12. The Animorphs foil a celebrity endorsement of the Sharing. Not exactly either side's finest hour.

13. Jara Hamee and Ket Halpak escape the Yeerks. The kids help them flee to the Ellimist's hidden valley and fake their deaths. Good for the free Hork-Bajir, but not exactly a resounding blow agains the Yeerk Empire.

14. The kids rescue the military personnel of Zone 91 (Area 51 expy) from infestation. Visser Three almost desperate to find out what sort of alien artifact they have there.

15. First 'wunderwaffen' story, Visser One comes to earth to oversee creation of shark-controllers for Leeran campaign (the project takes place on Visser Three's turf, and Visser Four commands the invasion of Leera, so it's easy to see why Visser One is doing this. The council wanted somebody competent involved.) Kids foil plan, destroy facility, and all the shark enhancements liquifiy.

16. N/A nothing the kids did in this book hurt the yeerks in the slightest, or vice versa.

17. Successfully contaminate Yeerk Pool with oatmeal. Visser Three estimated it would affect half the Pool's population before they could clean it up.

18. Foil plot to infest/morph CIA deputy director. Save Leera from the Yeerks by suckering them onto planet's single continent and destroying it. Leerans somehow unaffected by massive explosion, despite 90% of their population living within 50 miles of the place. Then again, that may have been the Andalites being "helpful" to the primitive aliens again.

[Ahriman238]

Year II

19. No real damage done to either side. One five year old controller freed.

20-22. Peace conference derailed, along with Yeerk plot to infest world leaders. Except whichever one was already a controller.

23. Yeerks investigate Tobias for connection to 'Andalite Bandits.' He escapes with his life and freedom. Barely.

24. Helmacrons shrink everybody, no damage to either side.

25. Wunderwaffen. Modified kandrona thats rays can be absorbed through the medium of water destroyed.

26. No damage to Yeerks. The Howlers on the other hand...

27. Yeerks locate Pemalite Ship, though the Animorphs went there for different reasons, the ship was still moved out from under their grasp.

28. Wunderwaffen. Drug to suppress free will. It's a dud, and the Animorphs nearly die trying to find out about it.

29. AFtran is captured, interrogation would lead the Yeerks to the Animorphs. So they (meaning Cassie) undertake an incredibly dangerous rescue mission. So again, Visser Three initiates the action, while the kids have to step fast just to get out with their hides.

MM3. Visser Four discovers time machine and inexplicably decides to alter only earth history, and start with Agincourt. Kids easily foil him due to lack of planning and foresight, and his panicking when they follow him.

30. Bold attempt to assassinate Vissers Three and One. Fails, but it's nice to see them being proactive.

31. Animorphs save Jake's dad from infestation or death without revealing themselves.

32. Wunderwaffen. AMR. Attempted snatch turns out to be a Yeerk trap, and they barely escape with their lives.

33. AMR part 2. Visser Three sets a trap, which the kids deliberately walk into so Tobias can be captured. Tobias tricks Visser Three into thinking the project a failure and feeding the scientists to the Taxxons. For once, both sides are being proactive in dealing with their problems.

34. Kids leave Earth to set up a guerilla war on Hork-Bajir, which goes swimmingly.

35. Animorphs foil celebrity endorsement of the Sharing. Seriously, that's a military objective.

36. Creation and destruction of the Sea Blade. Does that count as wunderwaffen?

Year III.

37. Kids attempt to discredit Visser Three before the Council's Inspector. Good. Fails with the death of said Inspector, and Rachel wrecks their starship access to the Pool.

38. Andalites show up, try and fail to assassinate Visser Three. Animorphs foil attempt to wipe out Yeerks and humans with bio-weapon. Yeah, we reaslly needed to be told the Andalites aren't perfect.

39. Attempt to use salvaged Helmacron sensors to locate the Animorphs, who again work near-miracles merely to escape with their lives. And all the abombinations against nature.

40. Visser Three takes Mertil hostage, to get Gafinilan to give him one of the Animorphs. Again, the kids are lucky to escape a trap set by Visser Three, though they do save Mertil.

41. Nothing of note was accomplished by either side. It was all a freaking dream.

42. Kids attack kandrona factory, but are driven off by large numbers of Hork-Bajir.

43. Taylor lures the kids into a trap where they and the entire Yeerk Pool would die. They escape with their lives.

44. Cassie goes to Australia, single Bug Fighter destroyed.

45. Animorphs resuce Marco's mom, gaining priceless intel.

46. Yeerks attempt to manipulate US and China into nuclear war, naturally in the most ham-fisted manner possible. Ax foils with Mutually Assured Destruction.

47. Yeerks storm Hork-Bajir Valley, taking large casulties, but ultimately killing many and driving the rest to flee.

48. N/A

49. Yeerks discover the Animorphs' identities, and they barely manage to evacuate most of their families. So the Yeerks initiate the action, and the kids barely escape with their lives.

50. Kids recruit auxilaries, the Yeerks bait a trap for them at a school for the blind (yet never go after James and his crew in the hospital) and they barely escape with their lives. Yeerks gain morphing cube, which is a HUGE victory for them.

51. Yeerks being mass infestation of National Guard, eventually leading into Guard Civil War (if that makes sense.) Attempt to seize Governor foiled by Animorphs. Governor blows open the masquerade.

52. Animorphs destroy the Yeerk Pool.

53-54. Animorphs seize the Pool Ship, capture Visser One and effectively end intergalactic war.

There were definitely 'wunderwaffen' stories, but I believe they're outnumbered by the 'shit! Visser Three/One has them now! However will they escape this time?' stories.

[Ahriman238]

From a versus perspective, this series is a bit of a mess. Almost criminally non-specific about everything. We know that shredders and dracon beams are sort of like phasers, in that they can disintegrate people or blast big holes through very tough metal, but are still limited by being lin-of-sight weapons. We see some use of theatre-scale forcefields. The Andalites use an antigrav skimmer, the closest comparison I can think of is the Posleen-verse tenar. Even unarmed, Hork-Bajir and Andalites are very dangerous, especially Andalites, whose tails are bullwhip fast and can easily sever limbs or depcapitate.

Spacewise, both sides have fairly casual world-ending capability, a single shot from one of A Dome Ship's two main Shredders can incinerate a planetary atmosphere, and there are anecdotal mentions of punching a hole through a moon. But we don't really know how many ships either side has, save that it's more than 30, but small enough that 30 capital ships represents a signifigant force. We know nothing of their power systems, save a throwaway line about it taking 'the power of a medium-sized star' to move a ship through Zero-Space. Does that mean every fighter has that sort of output? Unlikely, but can't be ruled out.

We know that both sides are capable of fairly casual intergalactic travel, meaning they can reach a nearby galaxy in a couple of weeks. Under normal conditions, an Andalite ship (whether a Dome Ship or a fighter) can be expected to make AT LEAST a million LY within a week. However, Z-Space sometimes 'reconfigures' and destinations a day or two away can suddenly take almost a month to reach.

We know the Andalites live on a single planet, the one they evolved on, and maintain population control so they can live in balance with nature. We know that after Alloran's genocide, there are only a few million Hork-Bajir left. Earth, with it's population of billions and vast and complex biodome is considered exceptional.

Morphing is the real wildcard in any vs. scenario I can think of involving Andalites, but it seems that only the Animorphs, Visser Three and Andalite commandos/intelligence agents use the power to it's potential, or do much more than basic training with it.

[Mr Bean]

More after the dog gets walked but I have to say the series shows that simple lack of scale a good Sci-fi should have.

[Mr Bean]

Okay back from my twenty hour long walk, lets talk scale.

So I mentioned scale. One of the things that the Animorphs series starts out with right is the sense of scale that gets demolished as time goes on. We start with a great intergalactic war of which earth is a sideshow. We are a primitive backwater which might someday make a useful staging base and controller hub. The Yeerks are out there fighting the Andalite's and that's all we know. The war is as big or as small as you like. By book thirteen things started falling apart because the brainbugs started biting. So a race has a homeworld fine, but any space fairing race is going to spread out unless stopped by some very weird cultural issues or biological issues. The Hork-Bajir should be on dozens of worlds if the Yeerks need more controllers and the Hork-Bajir make good bodies then they should have started seeding worlds with them to grow the raw bodies they need. They can make Kandrona for their space ships so it's not like they can't build four extra to start breeding millions of extra Hork-Bajir as hosts. Instead the only two places we run into Hork-Bajir are earth (Where I'm guessing they are not doing lots of little Hork production) and their homeworld which is 90% lethal to them.

The old one race one homeworld brainbug bites and it makes the setting smaller. We find out later that every single other race we meet also has this issue, Tak, the Andalites, the Yeerks (Who are the only race with a valid reason yet they are the most widespread race in the galaxy apparently). If one Dome ship can burn off the atmosphere why have the WMD'd with suicidal blade ship attacks on the Andalite homeworld since both are some what comparable. Don't tell me you can't sacrifice six ships to ensure victory. The Andalites by their very nature can't start building bunkers complexes to ride out something as nasty as igniting a world's atmosphere. We don't hear or see anything like planetary shields to stop this and Z-Space means all attacks on planetary bodies can be surprise attacks due to how hard it is to track and stop ships in Z-Space.

How much better this series could have been if they focused on what the first seven books were about. Small scale victories and disrupting Yeerk plots while we get tiny glimpses of the war outside. Drive home the point that for all the war was a huge deal from our prospective there were dozens of ships fighting over a dozen planets considered far more vital. Instead we get things like book nine, wunderwaffen ten and twelve which could have been more interesting with two slight changes.

Instead of having the plot be to stop the sharing endorsement what if the idea was instead to exploit the fact that it was a celebrity and try to expose the sharing by taking this nice seeming person, capturing him or her (Never read 12) waiting until the Yeerk was just about starved then dumping them in the media's lap, this star endorsing this cult like group to next week being found going crazy. Or alternative instead of exposing them that way instead make them make the hard choice to "disappear" the celebrity when the kids get wind their is a party planned for lots of media types the infested celebrity is hosting.

Let the books alternate between the kids being proactive and them being reactive. Stroke and counter stroke. Then for cappers (Books 10,20,30 however many between) you upset the status quo. Bring a new member of the team on, introduce a new enemy or as they finally did in book 49 tossing everything into the blender and seeing what comes out when everything goes to hell.

I like the progression of more and more questionable activities on the part of the kids but I think it needs to have been made more explicit and more callbacks brought in. Like "remember when we said no killing human controllers ahhh good times"

Take that idea and you could go all sorts of questionable places like say... oh I don't know... morphing Chapman to frame him for a crime, something big and federal attention getting. Then ten books later they simply off Chapman equivalent rather than trying to frame him for a crime he didn't commit. Take a lesson oh time traveler from the Harry Potter books, as the series goes on make the books more mature because your readers will be more mature. People are not going to skip right to book thirty after all.

[Ahriman238]

So I mentioned scale. One of the things that the Animorphs series starts out with right is the sense of scale that gets demolished as time goes on. We start with a great intergalactic war of which earth is a sideshow. We are a primitive backwater which might someday make a useful staging base and controller hub. The Yeerks are out there fighting the Andalite's and that's all we know. The war is as big or as small as you like. By book thirteen things started falling apart because the brainbugs started biting. So a race has a homeworld fine, but any space fairing race is going to spread out unless stopped by some very weird cultural issues or biological issues. The Hork-Bajir should be on dozens of worlds if the Yeerks need more controllers and the Hork-Bajir make good bodies then they should have started seeding worlds with them to grow the raw bodies they need. They can make Kandrona for their space ships so it's not like they can't build four extra to start breeding millions of extra Hork-Bajir as hosts. Instead the only two places we run into Hork-Bajir are earth (Where I'm guessing they are not doing lots of little Hork production) and their homeworld which is 90% lethal to them.

Objectively, Visser Three on Earth has about a third the forces Visser Four did at Leera. Plus the occasional mentions of conflict at Anati and Rakkam Garoo. So that's one argument for Earth being a sideshow, as is Visser Three's continual impatience with the invasion as the series progressed.

All the species conquered by the Yeerks, Gedd, Taxxon and Hork-Bajir can be found on every world belonging to the Empire, which seems to be 3 worlds. Though there are throwaway lines about the Yeerks conquering at least five more species. Anyway, there are Hork-Bajir on Taxxon and vice versa.

Alloran's quantum virus whittled the Hork-Bajir down to "a few million" and according to Visser One, Hork-Bajir cannot be bred quickly. Not as quickly as humans, anyway. Though Toby seemed to grow up awfully fast, perhaps they have a low fertility rate or very long gestation. Plus a Hork-Bajir is like the sports car of hosts for most Yeerks, good senses, dexterous hands, natural weapons. It's a host very much in demand for the frontlines and whatever elite couldn't find an exotic host body.

The old one race one homeworld brainbug bites and it makes the setting smaller. We find out later that every single other race we meet also has this issue, Tak, the Andalites, the Yeerks (Who are the only race with a valid reason yet they are the most widespread race in the galaxy apparently). If one Dome ship can burn off the atmosphere why have the WMD'd with suicidal blade ship attacks on the Andalite homeworld since both are some what comparable. Don't tell me you can't sacrifice six ships to ensure victory. The Andalites by their very nature can't start building bunkers complexes to ride out something as nasty as igniting a world's atmosphere. We don't hear or see anything like planetary shields to stop this and Z-Space means all attacks on planetary bodies can be surprise attacks due to how hard it is to track and stop ships in Z-Space.

True. Two answers leap to mind, first there are planetary shields and we just haven't heard of them, a weak argument to make. Second, in Andalite Chronicles, when returning Loren and Chapman to Earth the Andalites only microjumped to about the distance of mars, then had to spend a couple of days coming in on a slow burn to avoid screwing around with relativity. Elfangor explains that the exit point of a Z-Space jump is only accurate to within a million or so "Earth miles" and the risk of jumping much closer, and materializing in or dangerously near Earth or the moon, is too high to chance.

So if the Yeerks have to spend several hours trying to come in at sublight, that would give the Andalite fleet time to deploy.

How much better this series could have been if they focused on what the first seven books were about. Small scale victories and disrupting Yeerk plots while we get tiny glimpses of the war outside. Drive home the point that for all the war was a huge deal from our prospective there were dozens of ships fighting over a dozen planets considered far more vital. Instead we get things like book nine, wunderwaffen ten and twelve which could have been more interesting with two slight changes.

That could have been good, though book 18 was very much a cool feel-good book, when shown the terrible scale of the war we see space engagements with less than a dozen ships and a regiment-scale infantry battle. Okay, as a kid that was impressive as hell, as an adult I wonder why either side brought so few troops such a long distance from home.

And what was wrong with 9? Visser Three came up with a logical plan to deal with the Andalite Bandits, destroy their most likely hiding place, and they managed to stop him. The one thing I have is that Visser Three didn't seem to expect the kids to try and stop them, when he must have known they'd have to.

Instead of having the plot be to stop the sharing endorsement what if the idea was instead to exploit the fact that it was a celebrity and try to expose the sharing by taking this nice seeming person, capturing him or her (Never read 12) waiting until the Yeerk was just about starved then dumping them in the media's lap, this star endorsing this cult like group to next week being found going crazy. Or alternative instead of exposing them that way instead make them make the hard choice to "disappear" the celebrity when the kids get wind their is a party planned for lots of media types the infested celebrity is hosting.

Eh, this child actor turned teen heartthrob (if I read it right, think singular male version of the Olsen twins) was going to endorse the Sharing. He was even sipping champagne on his yacht while Visser Three (in human morph) explained his upcoming infestation in brutally honest detail. It seems he sold out the human race because he was afraid his career was flagging, and Visser Three offered him more money and fame.

The whole 'foiling' plan was kind of thrown together with only a couple days notice and many improvisions once begun. It ended with a crocodile gnawing on actor-boy's leg. His Yeerk bailed on him, and after being (accidently) freed he went into seclusion or something similar.

You know, now I'm sort of wondering what happened to actor-boy, and the dozen or so people they freed the first time they broke into the Pool, and the rescued test subjects for the free-will drug, the commisioner from 9, the local trekkers, Cassie's Australian pals, the men from the Washington... basically everyone who saw or knew something they shouldn't, but as far as we know the Yeerks never silenced them.

Let the books alternate between the kids being proactive and them being reactive. Stroke and counter stroke. Then for cappers (Books 10,20,30 however many between) you upset the status quo. Bring a new member of the team on, introduce a new enemy or as they finally did in book 49 tossing everything into the blender and seeing what comes out when everything goes to hell.

The offensive/defensive tempo has some attraction for me, I'll admit. Now that you mention it... Book 10 introduced the Chee, who were instrumental to the Animroph's ultimate victory and invaluable allies before that (way to screw the pooch, Jake!) 20 began the David arc, which was certainly different in having a story take place over the course of three books, and was a pivotal moment in their increasingly grey world. 30 was where Marco tried to kill his mom and... ok, 40 was just Gafinilan and Mertil.

I like the progression of more and more questionable activities on the part of the kids but I think it needs to have been made more explicit and more callbacks brought in. Like "remember when we said no killing human controllers ahhh good times"

Where do I begin...

They did mention those a couple of times. Funnily enough, the rules came up most often when they did pointless shit with their powers, like going to outddor concerts for free.

The moral ambiguity started out so small, and then you reach the final book where Jake holds a man hostage to secure Erek's cooperation, coldly sacrifices the auxiliaries, Rachel, his brother, and nearly does so with Doubelday's men and Toby's warriors. Oh, and he kills 17,000 defenseless Yeerks, out of a vague notion that a distraction might be spun into something that could let him spare Tom and Rachel.

Take that idea and you could go all sorts of questionable places like say... oh I don't know... morphing Chapman to frame him for a crime, something big and federal attention getting. Then ten books later they simply off Chapman equivalent rather than trying to frame him for a crime he didn't commit. Take a lesson oh time traveler from the Harry Potter books, as the series goes on make the books more mature because your readers will be more mature. People are not going to skip right to book thirty after all.

The series did get a lot darker, I don't know about more grown up. Then again, from the begining we had a kid turn into a tiger and rip an alien's throat out with his teeth.

[Mr Bean]

Objectively, Visser Three on Earth has about a third the forces Visser Four did at Leera. Plus the occasional mentions of conflict at Anati and Rakkam Garoo. So that's one argument for Earth being a sideshow, as is Visser Three's continual impatience with the invasion as the series progressed.

All the species conquered by the Yeerks, Gedd, Taxxon and Hork-Bajir can be found on every world belonging to the Empire, which seems to be 3 worlds. Though there are throwaway lines about the Yeerks conquering at least five more species. Anyway, there are Hork-Bajir on Taxxon and vice versa.

They are found but are there breeding populations, are there Taxxon or Gedd breeding ranges on Hork-Bajir or whatever the Hork home planet was called. That's what I mean about breeding hosts.

Alloran's quantum virus whittled the Hork-Bajir down to "a few million" and according to Visser One, Hork-Bajir cannot be bred quickly. Not as quickly as humans, anyway. Though Toby seemed to grow up awfully fast, perhaps they have a low fertility rate or very long gestation. Plus a Hork-Bajir is like the sports car of hosts for most Yeerks, good senses, dexterous hands, natural weapons. It's a host very much in demand for the frontlines and whatever elite couldn't find an exotic host body.

Which is why it makes sense to hack of ten thousand and get them busy getting busy. Even if they have low fertility and slow gestation you can always have them doing something useful while you wait so to speak.

How about that for a book where the Animorphs crash a non-standard Hork-Bajir base where there are just a few thousand of the Hork out in the jungles of the Congo or on some alien world clearing brush and getting it on, a small number of Yeerks with a few human and Taxxon's for oversight as the hosts are getting it on then spending their days building future housing or doing agriculture work. The work is hard but easy and their only assignment is reproduction and planting and growing the food future offspring will need. The moral quandary of these are the Yeerk equivalent of civilians and the Hork don't seem to mind the assignments and orders given because life is (relatively) good.

True. Two answers leap to mind, first there are planetary shields and we just haven't heard of them, a weak argument to make. Second, in Andalite Chronicles, when returning Loren and Chapman to Earth the Andalites only microjumped to about the distance of mars, then had to spend a couple of days coming in on a slow burn to avoid screwing around with relativity. Elfangor explains that the exit point of a Z-Space jump is only accurate to within a million or so "Earth miles" and the risk of jumping much closer, and materializing in or dangerously near Earth or the moon, is too high to chance.

So if the Yeerks have to spend several hours trying to come in at sublight, that would give the Andalite fleet time to deploy.

Again this is a suicide run but it begs the question what does happen if you take a big rock, install Z-space engines and aim it at a planet, might get a nasty space WMD or it just kapoofs in Z-space.

That could have been good, though book 18 was very much a cool feel-good book, when shown the terrible scale of the war we see space engagements with less than a dozen ships and a regiment-scale infantry battle. Okay, as a kid that was impressive as hell, as an adult I wonder why either side brought so few troops such a long distance from home.

They were not for me but then I'd been reading about the Battle of Kursk, Stalingrad, the Battle of the Budge and Operation Market Garden since I was seven. I knew scale even back then and new a regiment would not even be enough to hold Rode Island let alone a planet.

And what was wrong with 9? Visser Three came up with a logical plan to deal with the Andalite Bandits, destroy their most likely hiding place, and they managed to stop him. The one thing I have is that Visser Three didn't seem to expect the kids to try and stop them, when he must have known they'd have to.

Why he assumed the bandits were on his front doorstep was my issue. Setting up a base that close would be suicidal for Andalites and only made sense because the kids were thought to be Andalites and thus Visser was looking for giant blue centaurs rather than teenagers with attitude (Wait no that's the Power Rangers) I mean five-six screwed p kids plus Ax.

Eh, this child actor turned teen heartthrob (if I read it right, think singular male version of the Olsen twins) was going to endorse the Sharing. He was even sipping champagne on his yacht while Visser Three (in human morph) explained his upcoming infestation in brutally honest detail. It seems he sold out the human race because he was afraid his career was flagging, and Visser Three offered him more money and fame.

Now it's coming back to me. Yes he was a perfect test for a moral horizon. Frankly were I in that group trying to stop the endorsement was the dumbest of all possible plans.

You know, now I'm sort of wondering what happened to actor-boy, and the dozen or so people they freed the first time they broke into the Pool, and the rescued test subjects for the free-will drug, the commisioner from 9, the local trekkers, Cassie's Australian pals, the men from the Washington... basically everyone who saw or knew something they shouldn't, but as far as we know the Yeerks never silenced them.

Something tells me they simply were grabbed again later on. Remeber unless they killed the Yeerk who was their controller they simply could pick them up again having had access to all the memories and habits of their old hosts. Another moral horizon possiblity if they run across someone they freed only for that person to get picked up again a week later.

The offensive/defensive tempo has some attraction for me, I'll admit. Now that you mention it... Book 10 introduced the Chee, who were instrumental to the Animroph's ultimate victory and invaluable allies before that (way to screw the pooch, Jake!) 20 began the David arc, which was certainly different in having a story take place over the course of three books, and was a pivotal moment in their increasingly grey world. 30 was where Marco tried to kill his mom and... ok, 40 was just Gafinilan and Mertil.

The Chee took so long to go anywhere I don't count them, the David arc eh... thirty however was a game changer.

The series did get a lot darker, I don't know about more grown up. Then again, from the begining we had a kid turn into a tiger and rip an alien's throat out with his teeth.

Alien's throat.
Kill men? That's different which is why Chapman never got his armed torn off at three in the morning because Jake flew into his house as a Fly then burst out of his closet as a Tiger and mauled him to death in book six.

[Ahriman238]

Bean, how emotionally prepared were you to assassinate someone, however deserving, at the age of 13?

The setting aside a breeding population is a good idea, and could well have been happening, it being a very large universe. Then agian, it's not like it would be unusual for the Yeerks to be criminally short-sighted and make zero plans for the future.

I honestly have no idea if wou'd get a fearsome Z-Space weapon or if the rock would never materialize. Nothing like it came up.

As for 9, Andalites hate to have a roof over their head, save for inclement weather and have to avoid people. The forests around the city are a good place to look, but still a large enough area to need slash-and-burn to narrow it down. The fact is that Ax WAS living in the woods, as was Tobias, and the same woodlands would later shelter the Hork-Bajir in their valley.

Cutting down on the possible hiding places for your guerilla enemies is almost always a worthwhile endeavor.

[Darmalus]

I could have sworn that there was some plot point about how the current human population outnumbered basically all other sentient races involved in the war combined. They say "millions" they way we say "billions" and such. That would make the ship numbers go from far too few to possibly unsustainably large.

Then again, it's been more than a decade, I could be smearing various scifi stories together in my memory.

[Ahriman238]

I could have sworn that there was some plot point about how the current human population outnumbered basically all other sentient races involved in the war combined. They say "millions" they way we say "billions" and such. That would make the ship numbers go from far too few to possibly unsustainably large.

Then again, it's been more than a decade, I could be smearing various scifi stories together in my memory.

No, you've the right of it. It first came up in MM4, and received passing mention here and there, but they really harped on it in Visser, where the rest of the Empire was shocked when Edriss called and said she had a sentient, infestable race numbering in the billions (the first person she spoke to corrected her with 'millions.') Which makes earth an actually pivotal part of the war, if the Yeerks win they can drag down the Andalites with sheer numbers, while the Andalites hope to lure billions of Yeerks to one place for the slaughter.

Well, humanity actually doesn't outnumber the yeerks, who create hundreds of grubs everytime they spawn. But again, before the discovery of earth, less than 1% of Yeerks actually got a host.

[Vaporous]

Book 39: the Hidden


During a rest break, Cassie absent mindedly flicks an ant off the device, and a minute later flicks what seems to be a different ant off her leg. Until the ant starts to turn into her, growing and shifting into a horrible ant-human hybrid, and as soon as it forms a mouth it starts to scream... Luckily it reverses the morph before going completly human, and Cassie promptly stomps on it. Thank you, Mrs. Applegate for all the nightmares I'll be having.

...

If anyone needs me, I'll be in my bed. With the covers up and lights on.

i must have missed that one.

thanks for recapping the series. i loved it when i was ten.

[Ahriman238]

More for completion's sake than anything, the last of the Chronicle prequel books. I have to admit to feeling a bit conflicted, this was a pretty good story, not on the level of the Hork-Bajir or Andalite Chronicles (which I'd recommend even to adults with no further interest in the series) but pretty damn interesting in it's ideas. On the other hand, I sort of wish she'd left the Ellimist's backstory a mystery, it seems more appropriate to the 'omnipotent trickster' the Ellimist is.

Oh well.

The Ellimist Chronicles

Okay, so we start on the planet Ket, which is interesting but seems pretty implausible. See the surface is liberally coated with lava, except for the scorching deserts, acidic lakes and rivers, and sulfurous seas. There are a few tropical jungles where some very hardy (and very nasty) plants live, but that's basically it for the surface.

300 miles above the surface, however, a unique blend of atmospheric pressure (very strong, almost constant updraft from the deserts and lava) and the planet's screwy magnetic field allows fractal snowflake crystals to form in the air, at least until they reach a half-mile or so circumference and their weight finally tips the balance back in favor of gravity.

But not always, the local Ketrans are sort of vaguely humanoid (one head, two arms/legs) and yet not (four eyes, four wings, "docking talons" somehow distinct from their underdeveloped feet) and they have transparent quills instead of hair. They derive some form of sustenance from the crystals and have long ago (roughly 2 million years) learned to farm and settle the crystals. Every Ketran spends 90% of his day docked to his particular spar, beating his wings to help provide the extra lift to keep the crystal up, the remaining time being for free-flight recreation or rest.

Luckily, they also use crystal-state computers, so as long as you're touching crystal you can access the 'uninet' to exchange messages, read history or scholarly articles, play games or watch porn, and no one cares as long as you keep your wings moving.

There are 32 known Home Crystals at the beginning of the book, the one we see the most of Equatorial High Crystal, is 90 miles in circumference (deliberately cultivated in a sphere-like shape) with a population of half a million. Each crystal is effectively a city-state, while the Ketrans are familiar with the concept of radio and radar, background radiation and Ket's funky magnetic field make it impossible, so crystals only have contact with each other when they have a fly-by, which a given crystal will have once every year or three. The Ketrans favor gerontocracy, with a small council of elders or 'Wise Ones' holding absolute power.

The Ketrans have been aware of the existence of aliens for some time, since a Generational ship accidently collided with a crystal. They trade metals mined from the surface (the mines are mentioned as a punishment) for advanced technology. This has apparently spawned a long-running debate, since the Ketrans now have antigrav technology that could solve a lot of their problems, but may destroy the cohesion of their society. Naturally the elders tend somewhat to the conservative side. An exception is Polar High Crystal, which replaced their Wise Ones with a democracy, are leading innovators and have recently begun cultivating their crystal into the shape of an airfoil. What? 2 million years and nobody thought to try and make the crystals more aerodynamic?

The Ellimist, we learn, is actually the screen name of a Ketran gamer named Toomin. His game of choice is 'Alien Civilizations' where you're given a variety of scenarios and godlike power to alter anything to ensure a specie's survival. The point is minimalism, make the smallest change possible.

Toomin gets picked as nonessential crew aboard the MCQ3 (Mapping Crystal Quadrant 3) a Z-Space starship for exploration. He was sponsored by his neighbor, Lackofa, who noticed that Toomin regularly loses to less intelligent or capable players, because he always tries to win with beneficence, altruism. I suppose this somehow impressed Lackofa. It turns out MCQ3 has a secondary mission, to try and make peaceful first contact with a species called the Capasins who have been sniffing around the system and blowing up every probe sent their way.

Shortly before MCQ3 would launch, Equatorial High Crystal is destroyed by the Capasins. A Capasin armed shuttle is in the middle of burning it's way through MCQ3's shield as it prepares a Z-Space jump out, and Toomin saws off a 6-foot pointy spar and uses it as an improvised spear to kill the pilot. As the first Ketran in living memory to kill another sentient, he gets drafted to fly the thing (quite a trick, Ketrans are more claustrophobic than Andalites) as their only armed ship while they carry out search and rescue.

Toomin kills a Capasin capital ship, and they're able to extract just 70 survivors from 3 crystals. It turns out what happened was the Polar's fault. They developed a Z-Space comm, which could actually allow crystals to communicate, and after some playing around, sending math and poetry, they decided to really test the system's ability to handle large data volumes by playing games through the Z-Space comms. The Capasins overheard and thought that 'Alien Civilizations' was a real thing, and that the Ketrans really dick around with primitive and even advanced races for their own amusement.

MCQ3, renamed the Searcher, leaves Ket behind. Carrying just over 70 survivors, it's new mission is to find a homeworld for these refugees. Sadly, worlds with conditions allowing flying crystals are pretty few and far between. They spend 60 years looking, meeting new species, arming their ship, adding a dozen fighters. For some reason, they decide not to reproduce until they find their new home, not that it'd make much difference either way. After the first decade, Toomin became the Searcher's captain.

Until Father.

Finding a strange anomaly on an ocean-moon, Toomin leads an away mission in a shuttle, which is seized by underwater tendrils. The Searcher tries to rescue them, and is smashed by a massive tidal wave. When Toomin wakes, he is now the last Ketran.

Father is the plant thing that covers the entire ocean floor. He's more-or-less a world-brain, creating and controlling all life on that moon. From time to time, unwary aliens visit and he kills them and preserves their bodies so he can mine their brains for information (and possibly use them for processing power) but he keeps Toomin, the Ellimist, alive. Father is not immune to boredom, and the Ellimist intrigues him, the gamer who became a starship captain and leader of a lost people. So he plays games with the Ellimist, inside a shared mindscape. Card games, board games, war games, sports, children's games, video games, 4D puzzles, strategy games, skill games, and games mankind has never envisioned. Whenever the Ellimist refused to play, Father would leave him in the real world, hundreds of feet underwater with tentacles growing into and through him, surrounded by his dead crew. When the Ellimist cooperates, he gets to spend his non-game time in a mental recreation of his Home Crystal on Ket.

The Ellimist was Father's captive for 70 years before the big lump of seaweed made a mistake. He introduced a new game, called 'music' that the Ellimist had never heard of, it not being something the Ketrans ever did. Elly sucked at it the first few times, and begged Father not to make him play that game anymore, the surest way to have the game continue. And every day, the Ellimist practiced and composed in his head, until he was ready to play and win.

That was when he realized that Father had no innate creativity, he just recycled the songs and game strategies he got from dead men's brains. When Father introduced the next game, the Ellimist lost the first couple of times, then started a winning streak that didn't stop. Same with the next game, and the next, until Father just left him in reality and withdrew his mind to sulk. So the Ellimist reached out, using his experience with the uninet back home and what he'd figured of Father's neural link, and downloaded the brain-data from the Ketrans surrounding him. Then others, all of Father's victims until he was ready to subsume Father himself. But the Ellimist was right, Father had no true self, was only dimly self-aware, a parasite helpless without the brainpower of it's victims.

The Ellimist broke all his tethers, swam to the nearest island, and once he was dry flew to a different island where Father dumped all the ruined ships from his victims. It took him another 30 years to straighten out the thoughts and memories of a million dead aliens, and to... reinvent himself. When he was done, he was a massive cyborg-starship, containing some of the most advanced technology in the galaxy, with firepower to destroy small fleets of warships. And, of course, effectively immortal.

The Ellimist took the time, as he left Father's graveyard moon, to blast that hellhole into gravel. And that... seems like a good stopping point for the night, about halfway through.

[Ahriman238]

Ok, I'm back.

For an unknown period of time, the Ellimist as-giant-cyborg-ship wandered the universe without real purpose. Then he ran into an interstellar war between two species called the Jall and the Inner Worlders, and he stopped the annual killing by moving and blasting asteroids, creating a debris field neither side could circumvent with their present technology.

So the Ellimist decides to become a hero, touring the universe, stopping wars, curing plagues, averting natural disasters. For over a thousand years he does this, before returning to the system with the Jall and the Inner Worlders, where it turns out the Inner Worlders decided to spam nuclear space mines into the orbital path of Jall, destroying them, and then their society fell apart and they regressed.

Here the Ellimist finally meets Crayak, a being like himself, a massive cyborg with nearly god-like powers which match, even exceed the Ellimists own. And wouldn't you know it, he likes games to! Games like "Three worlds will die, you can save one. Choose" "You can save these people, or you can play my next game and maybe save many more.: On and on, ad infinitum until the Ellimist, unable to physically overpower Crayak, breaks and runs.

The Ellimist hides out in empty space for centuries before being overcome with loneliness. He finds a primitive people he names "Andalites" and creates a clone body for a small portion of his mind to inhabit. The cave Andalites (okay, plains andalites) are suspicious at first, but reluctantly accept him into the herd after he kills a local lizard-bear-thing with an energy weapon. He settles down and lives a long and fruitful life grazing, and mounting his wife. Yes, he takes a wife and has 5 kids. After the first one dies from a plague (that the Ellimist almost immediately eradicated from spite) his wife teaches him the glory of R strategy. Have enough kids and some of them will make it.

Inspired, the Ellimist goes out and starts seeding the universe with life, using his vast experiences and inherited memories to find life-sustaining worlds, and quickly terraforming worlds that were not life-sustaining. He also creates the Pemalites, a race of bipedal dogs with their intelligence, curiosity and playfulness maxed out, and their violent instincts quashed. To them he gives his advanced technology and, as their creator, commandments: Do not kill. Hide your existence and home. Spread life. They take to it with a will, and the Ellimist grows, creating 3 dozen more ship-bodies with a linked group mind.

The Crayak ambushes him, and for another thousand years they struggle, draining stars to power their weapons, hurling asteroids and planetoids at each other, warping gravity and space-time, learning and growing out an accelerated rate, while almost all other life is crushed beneath struggling giants. Finally, Crayak lures the Ellimist into a black hole, blasting all the pieces that survive. But the Ellimist endures and somehow becomes what we now know him as: a being outside time and space, able to manipulate both.

It takes him a long time to get used to his new powers, but he finally reaches down to the universe to act, not to destroy his enemy, but to stop him from killing the dinosaurs (that's Tobias' job) by whipping the Earth out of his reach. Crayak, once he figures out the game, manages to follow the Ellimist. in their new existence, they cannot directly harm each other, and anyway one might act on the universe can be immediately undone by the other, until they unravel the universe and both of them are destroyed. So they agree to a compromise, a final game lasting millions of years, trading interference for interference. So the Ellimist arranges for 6 kids to meet an alien, and somewhere else Crayak arranges a similar event, and they see who get the most mileage from that intervention.

[Esquire]

It's very neat, ironically speaking.

[Ahriman238]

It's very neat, ironically speaking.

I'm not sure I take your meaning, Esquire. Care to elaborate?

[Darmalus]

I rather liked the Ellimist book. Did he ever give a reason why he didn't use his new god powers to crush Crayak like a bug before he got the powers too?

[Ahriman238]

I rather liked the Ellimist book. Did he ever give a reason why he didn't use his new god powers to crush Crayak like a bug before he got the powers too?

Nope. The impression I got was that he didn't know how, he seemed to still be figuring out the god powers. Why choose to intervene before he was ready to stop Crayak from following him to godhood, I attribute to idealism, and possibly subconscious sabotage. One thing the book emphasized was how much fuller the Ellimist's life is (despite the miserable bits) with a worthy opponent, a game, and a mission. Maybe some part of him wanted to continue the game.

[Tanasinn]

It's very neat, ironically speaking.

I'm not sure I take your meaning, Esquire. Care to elaborate?

Alien plays a video game as a hobby, attempting to use altruistic means to win. His species is wiped out mistakenly under the belief they play with the lives of sapient aliens. He then meets an alien that actually does this before becoming just such a being himself.