Things are moving quickly now. Politics have shifted among the alien Yeerks, the new Visser running the show blatantly attacks. No more subtletry. Luckily the Animorphs have this device Ax built (with a nod to Marco\’s father assisting) that can intercept the alien communication signals. They find out something big is going to happen out in the ocean. They steal a fighter jet to get there on time, deliberately crash it when they\’re close to the location- because of course they\’re being persued and about to be shot down. Find a very large, very busy aircraft carrier which they board as seagulls but before long are using their animal battle forms and even morphing other people (except Cassie who objects), without bothering to hide much. It doesn\’t matter anymore. They discover that the Yeerks are on the verge of instigating World War III, for their own ends. (Why the enemy just tells them his plans when they ask, I just don\’t know). There\’s fighting everywhere. Ax- the narrator in this book- who for all this time in the series has been subordinate to Jake, never much taking his own initiative- suddenly makes a decisive move to force the enemy\’s hand. But it could also endanger thousands of human lives. Driving another rift between the Animorphs, perhaps. Cassie doesn\’t say much in this book, and I\’m with her. When all the others are talking over details of the fighter jets and the aircraft carrier (Jake knows a lot about its layout, helpfully) she just doesn\’t relate. Same here. So that was kinda a blur. Interesting to see that when the fight gets serious- Hork-bajir troops showing up to fight for the Yeerks- some of the sailors and Marines decide they\’re on the side of these animal-shifting kids. They must be in the know about the aliens and wanted to see resistance all along? Curious to see how that pans out in the next few books, maybe finally the Animorphs will have numbers on their side, instead of being a small secretive team.

 Rating: 3/5                        118 pages, 2000 

Arkham Reviews 

Opening scene has the Animorphs involved in a shoot-out between a few Marines and a bunch of enemy Yeerk controllers at the airport, because a piece of wreckage from a alien fighter ship was found and who\’s going to have it. Cassie gets caught in the middle, nearly killed, escapes by morphing a fly and hiding in some luggage, winds up on a plane headed to Australia. The Yeerks attack and there\’s a crash and she\’s lost in the desert. She morphs again to escape safely, but is witnessed by an Aboriginal boy nearby. He\’s not at all surprised, because his traditional beliefs lead him to readily accept people having powers to change into animals. Really? This made me a bit uncomfortable. So. Cassie gets sheltered by the Aboriginal family, and makes a plan to get back home. The outstation radio was destroyed by Yeerks, so Cassie is going to travel as kangaroo overnight (too hot during the day, even as a native animal) to the nearest place where she can use a phone. But the boy\’s grandfather gets a leg injury that develops into a terrible infection alarmingly fast, and Cassie and the boy perform an amputation. Even for a sci-fi book in a series that really stretches reality, this was too much for me. There\’s other adults in the community, even one who is a healer- and it\’s two relatively inexperienced kids who perform an emergency operation? Um, no. Description of that was very unsettling, too. 

At the end, Cassie has another confrontation with the enemy, who discovered her location and are going to wipe out all the innocent people there, unless she surrenders. She runs off in kangaroo form, hoping to lead them away. Finds a wild kangaroo mob and hides among them, the wild kangaroos and Cassie-kangaroo end up fighting Taxxons and Hork-bajir soldiers. A lot of this was just ridiculous scenarios. Why am I not surprised, ha. I found the beginning escapade uninteresting (fight scenes bore me, having high-profile men in black suits and impressive weapons and chase scenes across the tarmac dodging airplanes doesn\’t really make it exciting for me. I\’m just skimming through waiting for it to be over). The story got far more interesting when Cassie landed in Australia, but then disappointing. I don\’t know very much about Aboriginal people, but the depiction of them in this book felt shallow. I did like reading about the kangaroos, their incredible stamina and defense abilities against predators (they will lead dingoes into water and then drown them). 

The other good parts of this book were seeing Cassie on her own- having to quickly solve problems, escape the enemies, and finding it in her to actually kill a bunch of enemies when she had to. She was fairly resourceful once she figured out where she\’d landed. And upon returning back home, there\’s some very nice moments between her and Jake, demonstrating how much they care for each other, how worried Jake was about her disappearance. The usual humor among the group when they\’re hanging out at a food court re-grouping now that Cassie\’s back with them.

This one\’s on my e-reader. All the rest of the Animorphs series are.

Rating: 3/5                160 pages, 2000

more opinions:

by K.A. Applegate

Tobias finds a kid lost in the forest and he leads the rescue team to the spot where the kid is trapped- by speaking to the father- as a hawk! Of course this exposes him, and before he realizes what\’s happening, he\’s been attacked by a bald eagle then put in a cage in a wildlife veterinary clinic, and accosted by the enemy alien soldiers on all sides when they break into the place at night. His friends try to save him but then -strangely- a Yeerk controller named Taylor steps in- she\’s the one who tormented Tobias in the past. She claims to have a plan to destroy Visser Three and hundreds of Yeerks in one fell swoop- says she\’s part of a Yeerk rebellion against what they see as failing leadership, as an explanation. 

The Animorphs decide rather rashly to take this opportunity, even though they\’re suspicious of Taylor\’s willingness to work with them, and her plan seems to put them at a disadvantage- morphing into Taxxons to tunnel from a natural gas power station to the roof of the Yeerk pool cavern, where they will break in and cause an explosion. Cassie is against this plan because she realizes a lot of innocents- humans who are of course unwilling hosts of those Yeerks- will die. Some of the others have dobuts- especially Tobias- but they go along with it regardless. It\’s surreal. And gross. And nonsensical: the part where -because of course she wasn\’t really on their side- Taylor turns on them in the tunnel baffled me. How did they get out of that alive? I could not picture it as physically possible, surely they would have just all collapsed and been overwhelmed. Well, it was definitely dramatic. There\’s a lot of internal angst- Tobias facing his tormentor again and questioning many things he\’s done in the past, Jake struggling with leadership decisions, Cassie against the murder of innocents in the war, Ax and Tobias have to figure out how to manage the Taxxon morph without eating their friends who are there to keep them on task- because the alien Taxxons have an overwhelming urge to just consume everything in sight. Yet in the end, they do escape disaster happening, and the series goes on. 

  Rating: 3/5             144 pages, 2000 

 more opinions: 

Thistle Chaser 

the Library Ladies 

Very odd that this book happened to echo two things current IRL– of course the book I just finished which was all about a similar kind of dog- and the whole thing about the main characters as tiny beings inside the body witnessing very first hand how Marco\’s body defended itself from something invasive- well that of course made me think a lot about the virus. In an uncomfortable way, though it should have been encouraging!

Rating: 3/5             160 pages, 2000     

more opinions:

This one didn\’t really advance anything in the war against the aliens, but it was plenty interesting regardless. The Animorphs team discovers a pair of Andalites living in the suburbs- hidden in plain sight because one of then can morph human. The other is injured- missing his tail blade- and basically considered a worthless cripple in Andalite society. Ax certainly demonstrates this viewpoint, and the team roundly calls him out on it. These two new Andalites have been here all along, since the crash way back at the beginning of the series but never revealed themselves or joined the fight because one is caring for and protecting his friend who is disabled. However there\’s something suspicious going on- they seem to have some kind of deal worked out with the Visser. So the Animoprhs approach them cautiously, Marco and some of the team sneaking into the Andalites\’ house to spy on them and figure out what\’s going on. It ends up the disabled Andalite is being held captive by the enemy, and the team goes to battle an overwhelming number of Hork-Bajir in a derelict train yard to free him, with the new Andalite at their side. After which, the two go back to living in obscurity. Maybe they show up again later, I don\’t know. It was nice to see this book tackle the issues of prejudice in societies against the disabled, and after this I feel like Ax can never act so superior to the human race again.

I have this one on my e-reader, and it had a surprising number of typos. The last book had a few, marks indicating spoken dialog missing for the most part. This one had several words that didn\’t make sense, an entire two paragraphs repeated (starting in the middle of another sentence) and Jake at one point saying \”HeCO which is – what? However after staring at the page baffled for a moment, I just continued on.

Rating: 3/5             144 pages, 2000

more opinions:

This was much better. Had some issues, but overall I found the storyline interesting and wanted to keep reading the series! Probable SPOILERS ahead.

From Ax\’s viewpoint, but some things were odd about it. A small team of Andalites has actually finally shown up- they\’re suddenly present at a battle alongside Ax- which really threw me off because his reaction was so non-plussed I thought it must be fake. The Andalites, I mean. Nope, they\’re real. But very few in number. And not acting the way Ax expects. Turns out it\’s not a rescue ship bringing warriors in to save Earth as the Animorphs had hoped for all this time, but a small secret mission to assassinate Visser Three just to save face for the Andalites (who are off helping a different alien race on another plant). At this the Animorphs despair that the war against the aliens is completely hopeless, and most of them announce they\’re flat out giving up, can\’t handle it anymore, yell at each other and storm out of a meeting in the barn. Ax leaves and joins the Andalites, but there\’s not much explanation of how he feels about leaving the Animorphs, it\’s mostly about him trying to figure out what\’s really going on with this new small team. And there\’s a young female Andalite among them, which um, complicates things for Ax. (She goes bonkers over the taste of jelly beans). In the end, Ax is in a very tight spot down at the Yeerk pool surrounding by enemies, attempting to stop one of his compatriots from doing something to wipe out the Yeerks, which could very well also wipe out the human race. It looks like the end (but can\’t be, as there\’s sixteen more books in the series) so things are saved in the nick of time when the Animorphs show up again- having been hidden observing things all along in tiny forms- flies, roaches and things you know. Ax seems to know after they morph into their battle forms, but he hadn\’t let the reader know. Or I didn\’t catch on? 

I missed the inner look at what it feels like to change into an animal from many of the earlier books, but this one brings back in some of the sci-fi aspects and morality issues which make the series interesting in a different way. 

Rating: 3/5          160 pages, 2000

more opinions: