flameraven | Animorphs #3 - The Encounter (Reply)

It occurs to me that the titles of these books are... not actually all that relevant? I guess you could make a case for Rachel being 'the visitor' in #2, but it's kind of a stretch. Likewise, 'the encounter' is pretty vague and not all that relevant to the plot.

Anyway!

Summary:
There is plot in this book, but the real focus here is on Tobias and his identity crisis. It's only been a few weeks since he was stuck in morph, but he's having a hard time adjusting. He lives in Jake's attic for the moment, eating hamburger and other scraps, but this isn't really satisfying. At the same time, he's afraid that if he lives and hunts like a hawk, he'll lose himself.

The book starts off with Tobias and Rachel cooperating to free a captive female red-tailed hawk who is being used as a mascot for a shady used car dealership. Tobias swoops in and opens up the cage while Rachel causes a distraction by smashing up some cars. All while the car dealership is filming a commercial. This is a really stupid thing to do and the rest of the team appropriately chews them out for it later. After the meeting breaks up, Tobias notices an odd disturbance in the air, and after later investigation, realizes that it's a very large Yeerk ship.

The team acquires some wolf morphs from a pair of wolves in Cassie's plot barn, and they take a trip out to the mountains, where the ship was headed. There they learn that the ship is a giant supply truck, ferrying water and probably other resources up to the Yeerk mother ship in orbit. However, they take enough time doing so that they very nearly get stuck in morph, and have a hard time shifting back to human as they fight the time limit. This not only freaks Tobias out but reminds him of his own situation, and he flies off, depressed and upset.

Tobias talks to Rachel later that night and she assures him that he IS human, but he's not that certain. The next day he's still trying to cheer himself up when he hunts and eats a rat out of pure instinct. This freaks him out so badly he flees to the mall, attempting to collide with the mall doors after a high-speed dive. His friends keep him from being hurt, but he essentially checks out for a few days after that, living as a hawk and trying to forget his life as a human. Returning to the lake territory (where the female hawk is set up) he sees a man being chased by a Hork-Bajir, and this reminds him of the fight.

He returns to the group, and they go forward with their mission of trying to infiltrate the supply ship. Their hope is to turn off its shields so that the Yeerks expose themselves while over the city. To do this, they plan to morph into fish and be sucked up by the water supply tubes, then get into the rest of the ship... somehow. Naturally with such a vague plan, things go wrong pretty much instantly, and they end up with the four Animorphs trapped inside the water tank with Tobias recognized and hunted by Yeerk fighter ships outside.

There is a fight and through some rather improbable luck, Tobias manages to crash the supply ship and the rest of the group escapes. (The female hawk is, of course, mistaken for Tobias and killed by Yeerks.) It's really only a partial victory, although even that is better than they've done previously. Tobias decides to continue living as a hawk, but seems to be more or less at peace with his situation.

Thoughts:
I do feel for Tobias and his identity crisis here. It's a pretty awful situation, and of course none of it is made easier by the rest of the group dancing around the topic and being unwilling to really address it, because of course they're all terrified of the same thing happening to them. Emotionally, this is a really strong book, and I really felt for Tobias, with all his uncertainty.

Unfortunately, plot-wise, the Animorphs still aren't really learning from their previous defeats. They're still very inclined to simply rush in with a vague, half-formed plan at the first opportunity they see. If nothing else you'd think that Tobias being trapped would teach them that they need to plan their missions carefully, but alas, they're 14 and this doesn't seem to have sunk in yet. They manage a halfway victory by destroying the supply ship, but it really was only out of sheer luck and narrative's helping hand. By rights they kind of deserved to be captured with their plan as flimsy as it was. Being fish to get into the ship is clever, sure, but they had no idea what to do once they got there, or if they'd even be able to access the rest of the ship.

As far as analysis goes, this book is rather interesting as it gives us a whole wealth of information as to the Animorphs' location. It was already obvious that they were on a coast, as Jake mentions in the first book that Tobias "was shipped between his uncle here and his aunt on the other coast," and it was pretty obvious they were on the West Coast. Now we know that not only are they near a beach, they're within 20-40 miles of mountains, with a large lake about 20-30 miles out. They also mention that wolves have recently been reintroduced to the area*, and that the beaches have cliffs. This all points pretty closely to somewhere in southern Oregon/northern California, with the latter being a little more likely. I did a google maps search and there are national forests all over that area, but only a few large lakes. I'd venture a guess that the lake in this story is probably based on Clear Lake; it definitely showed up very easily on satellite view.

Oh, we also get another horrible death: a Hork-Bajir whose fate is apparently so bad Tobias won't tell us what happened, and who is then eaten alive by Taxxons. You know, for kids!

*Wiki tells me that wolves were definitely reintroduced to Yellowstone Nat'l Park in 1995, so Applegate is probably just taking some liberties and shifting their location a bit west.