flameraven | #5 & #6 - The Predator and The Capture (Reply)

Summary
The book starts off with the group at the mall. It seems that Ax wants to return to the Andalite home world, so he plans to steal a Bug Fighter from the Yeerks via a faked distress signal. So they head to the Radio Shack at the mall to buy components. Unfortunately, Ax is overwhelmed by the sense of taste, and soon ends up running around stealing food off people's plates. When the mall cops show up, he panics and morphs back into his Andalite form, which of course alerts all the Controllers and real cops and the group ends up having to make a run for it. Ax, Jake, and Marco flee into a nearby grocery store and hide as lobsters in the tank.
Naturally, when Ax announces they're nearing their time limit and they demorph, it's just as they're about to be boiled for dinner by some poor random woman.

Nonetheless, Ax manages to finish creating his signal, except for one key part: a Z-Space transmitter. Since the only other people who have these are Yeerks, the Animorphs decide to sneak into Chapman's basement as ants and get one from his secret transmitter there.

This is a really, really REALLY bad idea. The ants have no self and the group almost forgets who they are entirely. They manage to get in and get the part, as well as snooping on some Yeerk mail-- it seems Visser 1 is paying a visit to earth to check up on Visser 3. They head out as ants again, and are attacked by an enemy colony of ants, who start ripping them apart. They demorph to escape, but are thoroughly freaked out and all of them suffer nightmares from the experience. Still, they have the transmitter complete and they send out the fake distress signal in a quarry, as they wait in their most powerful morphs.

During all of this, Marco is dealing with a lot of family stuff; in a few days it will be the second anniversary of his mom's death, which emotionally shattered his dad. After the ant experience, Marco, who's always been reluctant about the whole saving the world thing, flat-out tells Jake that the quarry ambush is his last mission. After that, he's out.

Of course, the Animorphs being the Animorphs, the quarry mission fails completely, as the Bug Fighter that shows up is only a ploy and Visser 3's ship quickly follows it, along with plenty of backup. Seems the Yeerks have changed their frequencies and they quickly realized this was a trap. The Animorphs are all captured and brought to the Blade Ship, which takes them up to the Yeerk mother ship in orbit.

And then they meet Visser 1.

It's Marco's mom. Because we don't have enough emotional trauma already.

Fortunately for Marco, Jake is the only one who knows what his mom looks like, and Jake promises to keep the secret.

Visser 1 ends up helping them escape, entirely to make Visser 3 look bad. So the Animorphs get away, but they're all understandably shaken up by the experience. However, there's a somewhat happy ending-- Marco cements his resolve to keep fightings the Yeerks, and his dad comes out of his depression.

Thoughts:
I... don't entirely like Marco? I mean, he's a perfectly fine character, and objectively I appreciate what he brings to the group, both as the paranoid security-minded guy and the group clown who keeps everyone's mind off how incredibly horrifying this situation is. But I have a hard time really relating to him. I'm not sure why.

Nevertheless, this is still a very strong book emotionally, especially after Marco learns what happened to his mom and his mind is flooded with terrible questions: how long has she been a Controller? How many of his memories of her were just a Yeerk slug acting the part? How much of his life was a lie? How can he grieve with his dad over his mom's grave when he knows she's out there, alive but trapped in her own mind?

This is definitely something I appreciate about these books-- a lot of these teenage save-the-world stories have some fairly horrifying implications when you think about them, but the stories themselves tend to avoid really focusing on the emotional state of the characters, preferring to focus mainly on the action. Here, it's all about the emotion, and the emotion is very raw and real and totally believable. Also very painful.

The life of the Animorphs sucks. And sadly, you know it's only going to get worse.
I do also enjoy the little bit of politics we get here between Visser 1 and Visser 3. Ah, office politics. Even in an evil alien empire, you can't avoid them. Visser 1 certainly has a point, though. If Visser 3 is going to be in charge of conquering Earth, you think he'd do a bit of research on the place. He really is not very good at his job. He clearly hasn't read the Evil Overlord list, and that's a good thing, at least for our protagonists.

#6 - The Capture

Summary
The Animorphs seem to be on a bug-morphing kick, because despite the disaster that was the ants, they acquire two more bugs in this book.

Anyway, I can't complain too much because this time they're actually attempting to do some reconnaissance before they jump into a situation. Progress!

So. Plot. The Animorphs have gotten wind that the Yeerks are opening up a hospital in town, which they will use to infest even more people. Not a bad plan on the Yeerks' end, but definitely one the Animorphs want to stop. So they sneak into the hospital as cockroaches. One of the creatures most likely to be killed on sight. ...Yes. They sneak into the meeting and learn the Yeerk's master plan, which is to infect the state governor, who is scheduled to be at the hospital in a week. And what's worse, the governor is planning to run for president next year! Oh noes! The possibility of a Controller president is too much, and the Animorphs are determined to stop them.

After a tricky escape during the meeting, they sneak back in to the hospital as flies, and quickly find a room where there is a mini Yeerk pool in a hot tub. They decide to turn the Jacuzzi back on, boiling the Yeerks alive. They're interrupted in this process, though, guns start shooting, and in all the confusion, Jake falls into the Yeerk pool and becomes a host to a Yeerk.

Fortunately for the group, Yeerks are, again, kind of terrible at imitating humans. Well, Jake says the Yeerk acts exactly as he would have, but the Yeerk controlling Jake is so repulsed at the sight of Ax that they immediately suspect he is possessed. This is confirmed when Ax touches Jake to acquire his DNA and the Yeerk flips out and screams about 'Andalite filth!' So they drag him off to a shack in the woods to wait the 3 days and starve the Yeerk of Kandrona rays, killing it. Meanwhile, Ax pretends to be Jake.

There are a few escape attempts on the Yeerk's part, morphing to different animals, but the group is on top of things and stops him at every turn. After three days, the Yeerk slug shrivels up and dies, and Jake returns to his normal life, but not before imparting a rather odd vision of a figure or machine on a throne with a huge, blood red eye...

Thoughts
The Animorphs are confirmed to be living in California here, with their Republican governor running for president. Google tells me that this would be Pete Wilson, who did attempt to run for the Republican nomination in 1996. It also means the events of the series are starting in 1995, not 1996 as I assumed from the book's publishing date. Currently it's probably spring or early summer; I'd assume they first got their abilities in about March.

First, while the Yeerk plan to infect a governor is definitely worrying, I do have to laugh at the Animorphs' assumption that running for president = getting nominated = getting elected. These are all very different things, and as we saw this year, just getting nominated can be difficult. Some people run for president multiple times and never even get nominated. So I do think their panic is a little premature. But at least they are getting a picture of just how far-reaching the Yeerk plans are.

We also get a lot of interesting information on the Yeerks, since this is our first close-up look at their culture. We learn that they have a strict hierarchy, and the numbers after their name (Temrash 114, in this case) denote rank. The lower your number, the higher your rank. Presumably there are hundreds or thousands of Yeerks in each 'pool', all competing for better positions and better hosts. This goes up into double-digits, where you hit the 47+ Vissers and then apparently the Council of Thirteen, which we've had a few references to. Conveniently, this Yeerk was the one intended for governor Wilson.

Predictably, this Yeerk is kind of an asshole, but it's hard to expect much else from a race bound on conquering the galaxy. Their motivations are understandable-- increase their numbers, get better hosts-- if not really sympathetic, and it seems the Yeerks just don't really go in for emotions like empathy and love. Not unexpected from a parasite race. The Yeerk dresses it up as "peace", saying that they don't have to kill anyone to survive, but Jake points out that it's hardly peace when they conquer entire planets and subjugate them (plus all that genocide of non-host species!)

The Yeerk drops some interesting hints too, especially on the nature of the Andalite and Yeerk relationship. We got a little taste of it before, when the group met Ax and got a bit hostile over the situation on Earth. I forget when exactly this is explained outright, though. Not for another ten books or so, I think? I do remember that the Andalites feel like the whole Yeerk invasion is their fault, because they showed up, felt bad for the Yeerks, and gave them starships. And now they don't talk about it, because they're ashamed. Which isn't a helpful solution. But then, the Andalites are all about honor, as we'll see once we get Ax's perspective.

In addition to this background info, we get a pretty strong emotional plot in this book (as usual). Not only do we have Jake being trapped in his own head, but we get a peek into Tom's mind too-- the real Tom, who cries and begs the Yeerk to leave his little brother alone. We get Tom's memories and learn how he was possessed; seems there was a pretty girl in the Sharing he liked, and he stumbled onto a secret meeting in an attempt to court her. Poor Tom. :/

Last, we get a glimpse of Crayak at the end! Very clever foreshadowing on Applegate's part, especially as the Ellimist shows up in Book 7. The plot is really starting to thicken now.