Month: July 2019

Animorphs #28
by K.A. Applegate

The Chee inform the Animorphs that the enemy have recently acquired ownership of both a research lab and a slaughterhouse, so of course they are suspicious and have to check it out. They break into a truck carrying animals to the lab- while it\’s driving through a tunnel by the way- take the place of the chimps inside, and set them free. Wind up in the lab themselves and find out the experiments are completed and Visser ordered all the animals killed (after they lobbed excrement all over him). They scramble to escape in time, just manage to set some animals free as well (because Cassie insists). Next stop is the slaughterhouse which they can only get into morphed as cows- and Ax nearly gets killed. It\’s pretty horrible and Ax is very shaken. Of course once again they barely escape with their lives- and having found out very little this time. Visser Three had intended to put something into the ground beef that would destroy humans\’ free will if they ate it- but it turns out the experiment results were all faked by his terrified inferiors. Other readers have said this plot was pointless, but I found a lot going on here. There\’s plenty of angst between Cassie and the others about how the animals are treated, is it okay to morph chimps because they seem intelligent and self-aware but can\’t give consent, the ethics of eating animals- brought up by Ax who is the narrator, no less. His viewpoint is always intersesting, and here is no different. Sidestory in this book is that Ax has acquired a television and spends a lot of time watching soap operas, enthralled with the commercial breaks. He starts quoting things and mimicking some of the tv actors\’ mannerisms and phrases, which gets him a lot of odd looks, and made me laugh. There\’s also a particularly chilling moment when some bystanders are in the way- and Rachel without hesitation tells Ax to remove their heads, with his tail blade. Instead he just knocks them out. But hey- Rachel. Resorting to violence a little to easily now?

Rating: 3/5                 139 pages, 1999

more opinions:
the Library Ladies
Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales
Arkham Reviews

Animorphs #27
by K.A. Applegate

Rachel and Cassie are in the mall when they find Erek- the android Chee- in trouble. His hologram is failing- so the mechanical parts show through his disguise. Quickly they hide him in plain sight- in a display- and stammer explanations to passerby while Marco shows up in gorilla morph to haul them out of there. Strangely, none of the other shoppers blink at this- they think he\’s a person wearing a gorilla suit- and they pull it off. Discover that all the Chee are in trouble- there\’s a station deep under the ocean built long ago by the Pemalites (who designed the Chee) and someone shut off the program that controls all the Chee\’s holograms. If the Chee disguise is blown, it exposes the Animorphs too.

So they bust into a flophouse overrun by drug addicts and homeless people while it\’s being raided by police, to rescue a Chee that\’s stuck there (oh yeah because they also can\’t move during this shutdown). It\’s a crazy chaotic scene with Jake as tiger, Marco as gorilla, Cassie the wolf and Rachel the elephant rampaging around. Well, after that scene they find out about the station- it\’s so far down in the ocean impossible reach it- unless they could morph into giant squids. The only way to get a giant squid is to be a sperm whale. And then there just so happens to be a sperm whale that beached itself nearby. The Animorphs are highly suspicious, even they recognize this is too convenient, but it\’s their only option so they go for it. Manage to acquire the whale in spite of all the people crowded around saving it, get out into open ocean in seagull and dolphin forms, then Rachel and Tobias morph the whale to dive deep and find a squid. That part was creepy. Obvious how frightened their human minds were, inside the whale that didn\’t care.

So long story short, they manage to find a squid- which puts up quite a fight- and get it to the surface so everyone can acquire. Then they get down to the station and things get very weird. There\’s a confrontation with the Yeerks (again, of course) and they find out the evil Crayak was behind the whole thing. This thing called the Drode is there, representing Crayak, and seems to know all about them, even their inner thoughts and self-doubts. A very dark scene where the Drode is tempting Rachel to join with him; he recognizes the part of her that favors violence and puts serious doubt in her mind. He even incites her to turn against her fellow Animorphs. Curious where this will lead.

Rating: 3/5                     154 pages, 1999

more opinions:
Arkham Reviews
The Library Ladies
Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

Animorphs #25
by K.A. Applegate

In this episode, the Animorphs- as you can guess by the cover- acquire a new morph, polar bear. But not until the very end of the story. This one had a fairly straightforward plot: they find out the enemy is building a structure in the Arctic that could populate the world with Yeerk pools (don\’t ask how) so they travel undercover there to stop it. Only they don\’t have any animal morphs that can deal with the cold, and aren\’t prepared to withstand it as humans, either. So a lot of the book is them desperately trying to survive the cold (morphed as wolves most of the time) while also trying to escape a new alien used by the enemy. At the very end they manage to acquire the polar bear, and then it\’s easy to live in the cold, they bash up the station, trick the aliens into disintegrating themselves (too easily) and run off. The part where they get the polar bear confused me, though. Rachel as a grizzly and Marco as a gorilla pinned a wild polar bear down while the others touched it to acquire its DNA, but there was no mention how they switched so that Rachel and Marco could also (they would have to be human to do so) I was actually waiting for that, see how they worked it out- but then they just, didn\’t. Someone suggested elsewhere the bear was calm enough in the acquiring state they could de-morph and touch it themselves, but it was never explained this way in the text. Hm. I also had a reading hitch when the animorphs as seals were making clicking noises to echolocate underwater- until I looked it up afterwards. Well, who knew. A lot of what made this story flow was just the characterization, banter between them, Ax involved in jokes about time, some hints at growing romantic feelings between Tobias and Rachel, Cassie and Jake. There was a bit of that in the last book, too- I forgot to mention it.

Rating: 3/5             146 pages, 1999

more opinions:
The Library Ladies
Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

Animorphs #24
by K.A. Applegate

Ridiculous premise, but amusing anyway. The Animorphs team encounters a new type of alien- tiny little things that haughtily declare their superiority and intentions to take over the world (they\’re offended when they find out the Yeerks are already trying to do so) and everyone scoffs at them until the little aliens get hold of the blue box that contains the morphing technology, and use it to shrink others, so they can overpower them. Most of the storyline is Cassie and Marco experiencing what it\’s like to be a creature small enough to see individual cells (because they shrink again from being quarter-inch-high humans to being literally microscopic when they morph into flies) while they and the others try to thwart the tiny aliens and retrieve the blue box. Crazy ridiculous chase scene involving a speeding limousine and a toy-sized flying spaceship, while normal traffic seems to notice nothing. Pretty clever how Cassie and Marco redirected the aliens\’ attention onto their enemy Visser Three. Odd closing scene where the Visser had them in his power but the standoff resulting in each side giving up the others they held captive. Which means the struggle can continue, I suppose. The cover shows Cassie morphing into an anteater- the new animal acquired in this book- but it happened at the very end, and although solved their problem with the tiny aliens, there wasn\’t really much about experiencing that animal form. Which is what I\’ve previously liked about this series, but oh well.

Rating: 3/5                151 pages, 1998

more opinions:
Arkham Reviews
Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

Animorphs # 23
by K.A. Applegate

It\’s been quite a while since I read an Animorphs book, so I had forgotten what happened last, but it didn\’t matter. This one has a tidy plot on its own. Tobias the human-turned-hawk is struggling with his identity. He\’s starting to feel bitter about being trapped in a hawk body- hates killing animals for food, stressed about a rival wild hawk encroaching on his territory, sometimes wants to morph into his old self and stay that way forever (but then he wouldn\’t be able to morph again at all). Two main things happen in this book: Tobias finds out that someone is looking for him, a woman claiming to be a cousin who wants to take him in- as family. This is a strong lure for Tobias in his moments of wishing to be human again, but he\’s suspicious. Something doesn\’t seem right about the situation. Meanwhile, there\’s a young Hork-Bajir gone missing from the hidden valley where the free aliens live, and of course the Animorphs get involved in a plan- it turns out he\’s in a shabby roadside zoo- but quickly the alien Yeerks find out and take him captive before the Animorphs can get there. So there\’s a lot about Cassie\’s outrage at how the animals are treated, Rachel\’s eagerness to plow through the place and destroy it all. Tobias is involved as lookout from the sky, as usual, where he sees something that clues him in to the true identity of the woman claiming to be his cousin. There\’s also revelations in this episode about Tobias\’ background, why his father had disappeared, etc. But really what I liked best about it was all the stuff from the hawk perspective, how Tobias felt about certain things, how he had forgotten a lot of human mannerisms from being a bird of prey so long, so when he was in human form to meet his so-called cousin, he had to put on an act, which really turned out to be for the best. That scene where he\’s sitting in a lawyer\’s office next to an enemy in disguise and confronted with some shocking information but his hawk nature enabled him to appear unconcerned and avoid blowing his cover- very intense.

Rating: 3/5                176  pages, 1998