#04: The Message

Title: The Message
Number: 04
Narrator: Cassie

Cassie starts by talking about the night she morphs into a squirrel for the first time in her barn. She didn't think this through very well because when the squirrel mind kicks in she freaks out about how many things nearby want to eat her, but eventually Tobias saves her from a hungry fox and she snaps out of it.

Cassie's dad almost catches her as she's de-morphing, but chalks it up to lack of sleep. It's at that point that we learn that Cassie and Tobias have both been having weird dreams about the ocean, and a voice calling to them from it.

Wah wah.

The Animorphs convene and we learn that no one else is having funky ocean dreams. Rachel and Marco are skeptical and ready to dismiss them as just dreams, but Jake shows them a taping of the late-night news where a piece of metal marked with some funky hieroglyphics washed up on the beach. Jake tells everyone they're Andalite markings, meaning there's probably an Andalite ship out there in the ocean somewhere.

Cassie promptly faints. We see Cassie's dream, where she falls into the ocean and starts sinking until she hears someone's thought-speech tell her to come get him. She wakes up and we see Tobias has also fainted and says he had the same dream. Tobias says it feels like a distress signal. The kids talk for a minute before realizing it's an Andalite calling to them and decide that obviously they're going to go help him.

That night they go to the beach and see whether Cassie or Tobias can sense anything more. They aren't picking anything up. There's some conversation about why Cassie and Tobias were the only ones to get the message. Jake says that it might be tied to morphing and because Cassie is so good at it and Tobias is stuck it might have targeted them.

While they're talking Tobias swoops in and warns them that there's a line of people with flashlights combing the beach up ahead. He says Tom is with them, which means Chapman is with them, which means it's a Controller search party. They catch sight of the kids (vaguely) and start shooting actual bullets at them, but they morph into trouts and swim away.

Things continue a few days later. We get a little bit of info about how the kids are struggling to balance the war and their education and social lives: Jake completely bombs a test, Rachel's got gymnastics stuff to do, and Cassie helps her dad out. Eventually Jake shows up at the barn and asks Cassie what the plan is.

This surprises her, because she (and everyone else) thinks of Jake as the leader, but he tells her that because it's her dreams and Tobias is out (because he's a bird and all) that it's her choice. She says that yes, they will go see if they can find the signal and that they'll get some seaworthy morphs from the Gardens.

"The next day after school" (I'm not making most of these transitions up) they head there and acquire some dolphin morphs. There's some discussion over whether morphing such an intelligent being would be the equivalent to Yeerking one but ultimately Cassie gets over it and they acquire the dolphins.

That night Cassie has another sea dream, but the voice is fainter than usual, so she decides that they'll do it. The plan is this: go to the river, morph into dolphins, swim through the river to the ocean, and find whatever is broadcasting the distress call. Tobias will be the timekeeper. They morph into dolphins and waste a lot of time getting caught up in the animal's playful, goofy instincts.

And then the sharks show up.

There's actually a bunch of them, and they're all attacking a whale, which is referred to by the dolphin-kids as a Great One. They fight off the sharks, but Marco gets bitten in half and is bleeding to death. Luckily the whale is grateful and lets him demorph on his back to heal.

While everyone rests, Cassie talks to the whale. It tells her where the Andalite ship is and they thank him and leave. They're out of time so they decide to call it a day and go back to shore and try again another day.

Cassie visits Marco and they talk about responsibility. They have some good development: Cassie is afraid to be in a position where she might have to watch her friends die and Marco is scared that if he dies his dad will be all alone and there probably won't be any body, just like what happened to his mom. While they're talking, Marco brings up that he saw in the news about two different explorations into the close sea, one for an alleged sunken treasure ship and the other by a marine biologist. He points out that the sudden interest must be because of the ship and that it means they have to get there before the Yeerks.

As a group they decide they're going to morph into birds, fly out onto a ship headed out to sea, wait for a while, then morph into dolphins and go the rest of the way. They all agree that it's a dumb, dangerous idea, and that they'll go the first thing in the morning. After everyone leaves Jake and Cassie share a tender moment inside all the dread.

The first seagull morphing session consists of the kids eating garbage on the boardwalk then flying out onto a shipping container on its way out. The situations highlights one thing a lot of young adult novels don't: sometimes saving the world consists of sitting around being incredibly uncomfortable for long stretches of time. Tobias takes off, leaving them the morphing watch.

They wait until they're close to where Cassie thinks they should go and morph into dolphins. Cassie takes the lead and they head off to find this ship or whatever. Along the way they see a helicopter dragging a cable through the water and determine it's the Yeerks.

But it's cool, they get down to the thing and we learn what it is: a big glass dome containing an alien-looking pasture sample with some weird trees, weird grass, and weird crystals. The outer doors open and the Animorphs are all stunned (literally and figuratively) by the lone inhabitant:

Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill, Andalite teenager, and younger brother of Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul. Turns out he was on the Andalite Dome Ship (a spaceship with samples of the Andalite homeworld so they don't get planet-sick) in Earth orbit during the recent space fight. The dome itself was jettisoned and landed in the ocean. Ax has been hanging out waiting for an Andalite patrol to get him, but it seems like he might actually be the last one on the planet who isn't Visser Three. He declares Jake his Prince (an Andalite honorific and military leadership position) and that he'll help them out until his friends get him.

After some jerky introductions the kids rest a bit and chat with Ax. He mentions that the Yeerks get bitter about how pretty the Andalite homeworld is (their own homeworld is sludgy and brown and gross) and that they'll dirty up Earth too when they catch it. That gets Cassie's attention, as she doesn't want Earth to be turned into just another Yeerk subject breeding rock.

The Yeerks show up at a dramatically convenient moment and the Animorphs all turn into their ocean animals to escape. The Yeerks start trying to blow up the Dome and drop some Taxxons into the water, but because Taxxons are made of tissue paper and party hats the kids rip through them without any real danger.

And then Visser Three shows up in some alien squid-morph and chases them around for a while while mocking them. We get another scene of an Animorph giving up and another scene of Visser Three talking about eating someone (dude's got a problem) when some whales show up and kick his ass. They let the Animorphs rest on their backs to sleep and remorph before going back to shore with one more member in their group.

Back at the farm Ax absorbs DNA from all of the kids and "creates" a human morph out of it with elements of each. He experiments with talking, as Andalites have no mouths, and everything is quieting down.

That night Cassie goes to the Gardens, morphs into a dolphin, and swims in the tank. Just because.

Some Thoughts:
- Cassie novels tend to be the weird ones. The Animorph novels widely considered the worst (I'll let you know when we reach them) are Cassie novels for various reasons. We can see a bit of that weirdness in this one in how Applegate has the kids interact with the whale and how she presupposes that there's some sort of psychic network between maritime mammals. SeaNet? Comcoast?AT&SEA?

- I bet the dolphins are big fans of net neutrality.

- I had always assumed the kids knew morphing reset your hit points, but this is the first time in the series that one of them gets seriously physically injured enough to require it. This is potentially the greatest abuse of morphing, and a pretty good idea on Applegate's part; it lets the characters get horribly, horribly maimed and beaten but recover fully (physically, at least).

- If you've read the series you can probably guess why Tobias is getting the thought-speech from Ax. We'll see why in about 10 books.

- The number of times they have to morph in public is way higher than I remember. There are a lot of close calls in these early novels, and the first version of most of their plans fail pretty spectacularly.

- Tom's Yeerk is right. This is the first sign that maybe the Animorphs aren't the only thing preventing the Yeerks from succeeding easily.

- I read these books in early elementary school and I can still spell Ax's full name from memory. Ax is a cool character, as we'll all soon see, and provides a lot of the humor from here on out. I realized as he was morphing into his human form and talking that if they ever do a live-action version again (Ellimist forbid) he should be voiced/played by Danny Pudi from Community.

- Some of the best parts are when we see the Animorphs just trying to be normal kids. As the series goes on we're going to see them have to work harder and harder to maintain that balance, and you can all guess how the balance starts to shift as we progress.

- Each of the dolphins in the Gardens is named after one of the Friends. I haven't seen more than a few episodes, but considering dolphins are sex fiends the names seem appropriate.

Character Sheets:
- Cassie: Animal lover, and the mom of the group. She cares a lot about her friends, almost as much as she does about animals, and she tends to think about the impact of the invasion outside of just how it would affect the humans. The idea of a scorched, used-up earth terrifies her, and she uses it as her motivation to fight the Yeerks. Likes Jake. Acquires dolphin, seagull, and squirrel morphs. Kills one shark, at least one Taxxon.

- Marco: Reluctant snarky hero. Good at pointing out the flaws in a plan, and often seems to be the one with the most going on under the hood. Deals with danger by laughing, because the only other thing he could do is sob. Acquires dolphin and seagull morphs. Presumably kills at least one Taxxon.

- Jake: The leader, the lancer, and all-around nice guy. Doesn't mind stepping down if he doesn't have all the information, though we don't know whether he's simply tired of leading the others around or not. Likes Cassie. Acquires dolphin and seagull morphs. Presumably kills at least one Taxxon.

- Rachel: Fan of Sun Tzu, battle quotes, and gymnastics. Likes feeling big and strong, and is often the one at the front of the pack in a fight. Cares  a lot for her family and her friends. Likes shopping and violence. Acquires dolphin and seagull morphs. Presumably kills at least one Taxxon.

- Tobias: Thirteen going on hawkish. Tends to fly above the action and deliver up-to-the-second reconnaissance. Had to sit a lot of this book out because he can't morph, even though he's one of the two to get the thought-speech messages. Likes flying, and sometimes eating rodents.

- Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill (Ax): Our newcomer, the young Andalite brother of Prince Elfangor, who was the alien that gave the Animorphs their curse. Proud, as Andalites can be, he thought he was going to be rescued by other Andalites. He is willing to fight with them for the time being, at least until someone comes to get him (hint, they won't for a while).

- Visser Three: Has a serious obsession with eating things while in morphs. We see Ax go crazy over taste as a human, so maybe it's just him trying out every bit of cuisine he can? Likes to morph into big, powerful creatures and get #rekt. We start to see hints that maybe he's not such a good commander after all, as his reputation for killing his subordinates means no one is willing to actually report to him when they might need to.

Dodushkun: Session 2

The System: Savage Worlds.

The Setting: Dodushkun, unofficial capital city of the Volbruggar Provinces, ten years since last we left our heroes. The decade has been rough on the hardy Volbruggar people under the Gerneschmenk Empire. Raids and burned fields due to a personal dispute between Lord-Governors has festered into almost open warfare. Dodushkun thus far has remained neutral, but whispers abound that Lord-Governor Gadelbrecht plans to intervene in some manner, should the fighting spill over onto his land.

The Player Characters

Saldo: A curious, reckless young man well-trained in the martial art Sanhar. He spent the previous ten years in Borderpost at the school there, and quickly rose as a student until he earned his wraps and left to take the odd job or Contract. He is just outside the Volbruggar border when he receives a letter from Alvra, calling him back to take care of the orphanage in her absence.

Gorvis: A confident scoundrel, Gorvis spent the last decade working under Jormind, a locksmith who is also a member of a thieve's guild specializing in selling lock specs to interested parties. He was a Lifter, one of the people the ring sent out to make sure there were feet on the ground. He is in Dodushkun when he receives his letter and goes across the city to the orphanage the next day.

Ingevla: Ingevla stayed in the city until she was old enough to legally stand on her own, and started taking Contracts. She spent the next ten years tramping about the land with the intent to make her Citizenry and family Name worth something again. She has been moderately successful, with a number of successful and impressive Contracts under her belt, but she answers the letter immediately once she receives it.

Chaya: After demonstrating her alchemical brilliance to Alvra, Chaya's guardian managed to get word to the Order of Philosophers, and the girl left soon after. Hailed as a talent, Chaya worked her way through the ranks towards mastering the Third Art of Alchemy. After a school friend leaps from a clocktower after allegedly consorting with the Forbidden Arts she dives into her schoolwork. When her letter arrives she takes a break from her education to attend.

Felix: Mysteriously absent, though rumor is he was simply delayed on the road. Jokes are made at his expense about drinking water from ditches.

Ten years or so after our last session our heroes receive letters from Mother Alvra stating that her recent duties require her absence from the area and she requests they return to take care of the orphanage during her absence, and that if they have any questions to go to the Sunken Stone and ask for Karek. They all arrive at roughly the same time and talk about their adventures before attempting to enter the orphanage.

Finding the door locked, Gorvis picks it handily. They enter the orphanage and pause...

The place is absolutely trashed. Broken pieces of furniture litter the floor, the beds are ripped apart, the chests are stomped in. They cautiously explore the building and find it empty, though Mother Alvra's room is still locked. Gorvis picks this lock and they find Alvra's room empty, though her mattress is askew. Saldo searches her desk and finds three empty imprints in the dust: an outline that looks like a dagger, and two indistinguishable square ones. Gorvis looks under the mattress and finds the outline of a door and a strange, triple-keyhole.

Gorvis replaces the lock on the front door with one from his master's shop, and hands out keys. The apprentice working there mentions that Jormind said he will be absent for a few days. The group puts together a group fund of their money, fixes the place up, and goes to sleep.

The next morning Gorvis goes to his normal morning bar, Chaya and Inge go supply-shopping at the Wall Market, where they end up indignantly bartering with a carpenter to make them some cheap chairs. After berating him on his obvious over-charging, he drops the price and promises delivery within the next one-and-a-half weeks.

They all meet up at the Sunken Stone  and quiz the bartender, Gill, about this man, Karek. The bartender says he has a room on retainer, but only visits every so often. Inge bribes him with 5% of his yearly wage, so he lets them into the man's room. They find nothing unusual, but Inge leaves a note saying, "Wayward Souls" and leave.

The next morning there's a knock at the door. They answer and it's Karek's wife. She asks why they're asking about her husband, and they don't answer. She says that he's dead and they need to leave her be. They show her the last two lines of the letter that instruct them to look for him, and she calms down. She apologizes and says that they can pay their respects at a graveyard overlooking where the river enters the lake.

They make their way through the Sprawl and towards the graveyard. It's a fair walk, but they make it in good speed. Once there they inspect the graveyard and find the right stone. While discussing what to do about it, Gorvis bends down real low, takes a whiff of that dirt, realizes something isn't right, reaches in, and feels a key. He tries to palm it, but Saldo sees through his shit and calls him out on it. After a speech from Chaya about family, they leave.

They head back to the orphanage, making it just inside the gate before they closed it for dusk.They open up the bed-door first, and find an extensive stash of alchemy ingredients, enough to stump even Chaya. At the bottom in a locked chest are four ingots of [Talmium](http://www.reddit.com/r/Iumendros/comments/2kzh5m/talmium/), an incredibly dangerous magical stone that can be programmed to perform magic. Unfortunately, too much exposure can cause Talmium Sickness, which kills pretty much all the time. They put that back.

Saldo goes and tries the key in the fountain keyhole. It makes a lot of deep mechanical noises and a set of stairs descends into the ground. The group, led by Saldo, descends, follows a long tunnel, and find a ladder that descends deep into darkness. Undeterred, Saldo marches onward.

At the bottom of the ladder they find...a [room](http://imgur.com/uy3rbmX). It has a few chests, filled with tinderboxes, rope, changes of clothing, all manner of things used to survive. There are two beds, well-made, and a table with a sword on it. On the floor in the center of the room is a bloodied sword lying in a drying pool of the stuff. There's a cabinet containing some nice chain shirts and two swords that match the two already out.

On the wall is a huge map of the city, including the isles. Pinned in maybe a dozen places are little flags, unmarked except by individual colors. They puzzle over this before seeing the half-open door. Once opened fully, it reveals a passage, long and low, that slopes slightly downward in the direction of the lake...

And that's where we faded to black, as our (mostly) reunited ragamuffins venture into unknown depths...

The End

#03: The Encounter

Title: The Encounter
Number: 03
Narrator: Tobias

Tobias has found a car dealership using a caged female red-tailed hawk in their commercials and that's not cool with him. He liberates the hawk during a television commercial shoot with some elephantine help from Rachel. As the hawk flies off, Tobias is struck with a sudden urge to go with her, but Rachel draws him back.

On the way back to report to the other Animorphs Tobias notices a ripple in the sky over the city, going against the wind. He dismisses it and, with Rachel, gets a responsibility speech from Marco, Jake, and Cassie about morphing in public again. We learn that Tobias is sleeping in Jake's attic and avoiding eating live animals, as the thought of surrendering that much to the hawk mind would be like betraying his humanity.

The next day everyone else is busy at school, so Tobias decides to spend the day flying. While he's up there he sees another ripple in the sky and watches a flight of geese smack into something large, solid, moving, and invisible. He deduces that it's a Yeerk ship with cloaking and tells the others about it. They talk over what to do and Tobias says it was heading towards the mountains. Eventually the "great power, great responsibility" speeches are made, and the animorphs get to morphing.

Everyone gets wolf morphs and runs off into the mountains, following the rough direction of the ship. Eventually they reach a lake and Tobias sees a group of park services vehicles filled with park rangers wielding automatic rifles. The vehicles are soon joined by some helicopters and Tobias watches them drag two campers away.

He sees some Hork-Bajir and lets everyone know the Yeerks are around. He runs into a second wolfpack but finds his friends and tells them what he's seen. As he does the ship, which was hidden above them, uncloaks and reveals itself as a massive, massive, city-sized vacuum ship. It's joined by two bug fighters keeping a lookout as it lowers a hose and sucks up a bunch of water to take to the Pool ship in orbit.

While they're talking about what to do about the ship, Tobias notices the lady hawk he and Rachel freed, and that triggers a bit of an identity crisis in him. It distracts him long enough that his friends end up in a face-off with another wolf pack, but he distracts the real alpha wolf and checks on their morphing time.

It's super late!

He tells them they're two minutes over the two hour limit when they're really seven over, so they hastily attempt to morph back to human. Cassie manages it easily and coaches the rest through, but not before some creepy half-wolf morphing scenes. Marco uses Tobias's state as motivation and makes it through his moprh in time. Tobias angsts about this a little bit and flies off.

Tobias returns to Jake's attic that night, where he realizes that his new body doesn't want comfort, doesn't want human-prepared foods like potatoes or green beans. He flies to Rachel's house and has a chat with her where he admits he feels like he's losing himself. Rachel tries to comfort him but only calms him down a little bit.

The next day Jake calls a meeting to discuss what to do about the truck ship. They decide that somehow shorting out its stealth capabilities while its over the city is the best option, as no one would be able to hide something extraterrestrial of that size. The idea is that they will morph fish, go up the tubes, and sabotage the ship from the inside. They decide to wait for the weekend for a variety of reasons, including homework, family stuff, and Rachel's upcoming gymnastics showcase at the mall.

While everyone else is at school Tobias is flying around when he lets himself surrender to the hawk mind for a minute. Unfortunately the experience is too strong and he kills and eats a rat. In his frustration and disgust he flies to the mall, intent on ending the entire thing. In a sign of serendipity he manages to fly through two sets of open doors and through the mall. As he flies over Rachel and Marco at her gymnastics thing. They recognize him because red-tailed hawks don't frequent malls.

Tobias fully intends to slam into a wall when he gets ahold of himself and stops. Rachel tells him to get our of the mall because, you know, he's a bird. The hawk takes control and flies up to the skylight, which Tobias faintly hopes will kill him. Luckily, Marco breaks the glass with a baseball and Tobias flies off for a few days on a hawk bender.

As far as benders go, Tobias's is pretty mellow; he hangs out in some trees, eats some vermin, and palls around with a girl hawk. He's snapped out of it when he sees a human getting chased by a hork-bajir and blinds the alien. The hork-bajir calls out and a bunch of other Controllers appear, and Tobias remembers his humanity.

He stops to talk to Rachel and says he can hold on as long as he can stop other people getting trapped in their bodies like he is. The animorphs go to the mountain lake ahead of time and acquire some fish morphs. The yeerks arrive and almost catch the kids but Tobias distracts the helicopter and they get in their cave in time. The truck ship decloaks, and so do the four bug fighters, two more than usual. Tobias wonders if it's because he helped the non-Controller escape when the blade ship decloaks and the yeerks start exterminating the local wildlife.

A bunch of hork-bajir and taxxons leave the blade ship, followed by Visser Three. The animorphs realize they'll never get to the water in time, so they decide that, one by one, they will morph into fish, Tobias will pick them up, take them to the lake, and drop them in. Sure, why not?

The plan goes well until a hork-bajir and a human controller find their cave and let Tobias get away. The Controllers freak out because Visser Three doesn't believe in mercy, but the fish-morphs all get into the lake and up the pipe. Tobias keeps a watch and sees the hork-bajir Controller get...terminated by Visser Three. It seems the yeerk let Visser know about the suspicious bird from the past few days, so he orders the bug fighters to patrol on kill alert. Tobias almost gets hit, but parks himself just above the truck ship's bridge, making it impossible for the yeerks to fire on him without potentially hitting their own ship.

Visser Three shows up and gloats for a bit, so Tobias stalls. Rachel gets in thought-contact with him and tells him there's no way out for them because the grate won't open. She says they're trapped and that they're planning on not being taken alive so they'll wait to get in orbit, then battle-morph and go down fighting. Then she says goodbye and goes dark.

Up above the Visser has released a bunch of taxxons on Tobias. Tobias charges a taxxon, steals his hand-held Dracon beam, and uses it to blow the hell out of the truck ship's bridge. The thing immediately dips and slides to one side. It crashes into a helicopter, then a bug fighter. The impacts open a gash into the water tank and Tobias watches his friends fall out. As they do they morph into birds and fly off. As they do the female hawk flies into the air and gets one of her wings burned off by a Dracon beam. Tobias watches her fall as they fly away.

We learn the truck ship burned and was disintegrated by the yeerks. Tobias visits Rachel and the two talk about what happened to the hawk and whether they should give her a burial. Tobias says to not, it wouldn't have mattered to her either way. After seeing how the yeerks would treat him and all the other birds like him (but who don't have the capability to understand it), Tobias has his reason to fight.

Some Thoughts:

 - One problem with the early books (that carries a little bit into the middle ones) is that the introductions and exposition tend to be fairly heavy in the first 20% of each book. You'll get the standard "My name is X, but I can't tell you any more" and than each character's recollection of the construction site encounter and following adventures. They tend to mellow out in the later books, but sometimes you feel like skimming the first few pages of each of the early ones.

- Some heavy stuff in this one: the kids are almost stuck as half-wolves, we see the Yeerks harvesting both humans and resources, and Tobias tries to commit suicide. See below.

- Based on Goodreads ratings, the Tobias novels have the highest averages out of the main 54 novels. I remember liking them a fair amount, but I also remember Marco being my favorite narrator, but that's because I think Marco's storyline is far more interesting than Tobias's but reading about Tobias dealing with his hawk instincts makes for great "measure of a human" drama.

- Morph timer: The kids are almost trapped as half-wolf, half-human monsters because their morph timer runs over. We're told that two hours is the time limit, but I don't know that we ever learn if it's an immediate loss of the ability or it just gets exponentially more difficult as time progresses past two hours. The animorphs manage a seven-minute late morph in this book, but Tobias says the clock might have been wrong. There are similar instances of last-minute morphing in these, but I think this is the longest time they've gone over.

- This is the third time the animorphs have been in a bad situation and have had some farewell scene to another animorph. At this point they haven't been in any real serious fights (I mean none of them have lost limbs yet) so they aren't fully aware of their potential. We'll see how often they give up in the later books.

Character Sheets:

- Tobias: Came from a broken home, now stuck as a red-tailed hawk. He's slowly adjusting, but it's a reluctant change as he fears losing his humanity. Regularly serves as the eyes and the ears of the group. Struggles with his identity, but ultimately embraces his hawkishness as a way of life in cooperation with his human mind. Exact number of deaths caused is unclear, but (based on standard Yeerk vehicle deployment) he is directly responsible for at least fifteen taxxons (dozen on top of ship, at least two on bridge, one in a bug fighter), two hork-bajir (one in helicopter, one in bug fighter), and one human (in the helicopter).

- Cassie: Still an animal lover. This won't ever change, but it's worth mentioning because Applegate sure wants us to know. She's the moral compass for the group and often serves as the voice of reason, especially when Jake gets too personally involved. Her and Jake have crushes on each other early on, but neither her nor he will admit their feelings yet. Acquires wolf and trout morphs.

- Marco: Still the most reluctant Animorph, but it's worth noting that he is offered an out by Rachel and doesn't take it. Seems to take everything just a little more seriously than the other animorphs, as he's worried what would happen to his father if he vanished like his mom did. Acquires wolf and trout morphs.

- Jake: The leader, by involuntary appointment. Usually ends up at the front of the pack, in this case literally. He's still showing a bit of reluctance, but his brother's Controller status motivates him to at least attempt to keep the Yeerks from winning. Acquires wolf and trout morphs.

- Rachel: The tough one. Cares a lot about Tobias, and serves as his rock when he needs someone to remind him about his humanity. Seems to harbor deeper feelings for him, but never quite admits it. Acquires wolf and trout morphs.

- Visser Three: Yeerk mastermind, cat lover, imperialism enthusiast. Doesn't tolerate failure, half-successes, and sometimes doesn't seem to like success too often. Has finally instituted a shoot-first, ask-later policy against earth wildlife. Hobbies include punishing subordinates, hurting things, and gloating before he has any reason to. Kills one hork-bajir.

#02: The Visitor

The Title: The Visitor
The Number: 02
Narrator: Rachel

We open with what will become the standard Animorphs introduction, with Rachel telling you her name, why they can't reveal any other information about themselves, and a short bit about the story so far.

Rachel and the others are flying one afternoon when someone starts shooting at them. They steal some redneck's rifle and drop it a few miles distant before returning to their human forms. Rachel angsts about how Tobias is a bird for a bit before they talk about some nightmares and exposit for a little bit.

They determine that since the secret entry to the Yeerk pool in their school has been bricked up, they need to find another way to get in or destroy the Kandrona feeding the yeerks so that all the yeerks will starve in three days. The best plan they come up with is getting close to Chapman through his daughter, Melissa because the yeerk in his head would most likely know where it is. You see, Rachel used to be very good friends with Melissa, until she changed suddenly and doesn't seem to want to be around her anymore.

At their mutual gymnastics class, Rachel attempts to lure Melissa back into her friendship web with temptations of shopping, but she ain't buying it. Rachel fakes it until she can leave and bolts, wondering whether her friend is playing host to an alien brainslug.

On the way back from school a college kid tries to abduct Rachel, so she morphs halfway into an elephant and scares him off.

Almost immediately afterwards Chapman pulls up, Melissa in tow, and insists on giving her a ride. Rachel spends the ride wondering whether Chapman caught sight of her, but he drops her off with no problem (except for Melissa pointing out her burst shoes). We catch a glimpse of Rachel's family before her mother leaves: lawyer mother who orders out more often than she cooks, and her two younger sisters Jordan and Sara, whom she cares about very much.

The other animorphs come over and Rachel is promptly chastised for potentially blowing the entire operation in the second book. Marco makes an excellent point that, while a normal person would disregard stories of girls turning into elephants, Controllers who heard could potentially connect the dots. They determine that Melissa isn't a useful link, as she is potentially a Controller as well.

They need a plan.

Rachel catches sight of a picture of her and Melissa at an old birthday party.

Her gift?

A cat.

Seriously, morphing is so overpowered.

The kids scope out Chapman's house and Rachel acquires Fluffer's DNA after baiting the cat by turning into a shrew. Rachel's experience with the shrew gives her nightmares that night about wanting to eat maggots, and she ends up throwing up from it. Rachel angsts a little about her little sisters potentially being Controllers, and doesn't have a very good night overall.

The next day at school Melissa is acting strangely again, and when Rachel runs into Chapman he says some cryptic, vaguely threatening stuff. The animorphs decide to infiltrate his house a few days later due to real life complications, and Marco reminds Rachel that she's finding a way to hurt the yeerks, not save Melissa.

Rachel morphs into the cat and deals with the intense confidence that comes from being a cat. It feels like it's accurate enough. While Tobias runs interference on the real Fluffers Rachel goes into the house and sees that everything seems normal. She follows Chapman down into the basement and through a secret door with a keypad. Inside is a desk and a hologram projector displaying the image of Visser Three.

The Visser greets Chapman by his Yeerk name, Iniss two two six of the Sulp Niaar pool and they chat about andalite bandit business. The hologram projector manages to capture the Visser's hamminess perfectly, and Chapman is the image of the sniveling, scared underling. As the two are talking Chapman catches sight of Rachel, as does Visser Three. The good Visser asks what it is, and Chapman explains before Visser Three tells him to kill it.

Yeah, probably a good call, actually.

He points out, (almost) correctly, that any animal could be an andalite, but Chapman/Iniss is understandably reluctant to kill his/host's daughter's pet cat. Visser pretends to attack Rachel with his tail, and she just bats at the hologram. This amuses Visser Three, and the cats have found themselves yet another unwitting Catroller.

Wait, I got cats confused with yeerks. Easy mistake.

Chapman weasels his way out of it by claiming discretion, and Visser says they'll figure out what to do about it after they figure out what to do about the girl. Chapman mentions some deal they had concerning the daughter, but Visser Three morphs into a Vanarx (a big, purple, tubelike alien with the apparent ability to suck yeerks from their hosts) and does his whole Visser Three intimidation thing.

Upstairs Rachel overhears Chapman and his wife, both Controllers, talk about how Visser Three is mean and still wants them to capture the andalite bandits. Melissa comes downstairs and Rachel sees that the yeerks inside their heads aren't very good at portraying parental emotions, which is the reason Melissa has been so weird. She hugs Rachel (who she thinks is Fluffers) and Rachel finds her reason to fight.

The animorphs meet at an abandoned clocktower to discuss their plans, and Rachel leaves out her interaction with Visser Three. They decide she'll have to go back in because they still don't know where the Kandrona is. They go back to Chapman's house, repeat the cat morph, and Rachel follows him down into his secret room without being noticed. While Chapman is talking Jake reveals that he's a flea on her back, because they didn't want to send her in alone.

Chapman tells Visser Three he got him a handful of new hosts and the head honcho isn't pleased that none of them are andalites. The yeerks are increasing guards around the Kandrona, wherever it is. Rachel isn't paying attention and gets kicked by Chapman, revealing her presence to the Visser. He taunts her a bit and tells Chapman to get her, which he does after she scratches him up pretty bad.

This entertains Visser Three. He tells Chapman to bring the cat and Melissa because having an uppity human daughter could draw unwanted attention their way.

Chapman holds Rachel at Dracon beam point while Mrs. Chapman gets a cat carrier.  At that point, Chapman and his wife begin to rebel against their hosts, making it seem like the two are going crazy, as Ms. Chapman (the real Ms. Chapman) attempts to choke herself to death to kill the yeerk in her head. Not too long after the yeerks manage to get them under control, and continue, although Chapman decides not to take Melissa, rationalizing it by saying the Visser will understand, considering the circumstances.

As Chapman is removing her, Melissa comes out and wonders what he's doing, but Tobias manages to drive the real Fluffer back in time to avoid Chapman having to explain to his daughter why he's going to murder her cat. Rachel decides that she's going to stay as a cat forever so they can't Controller her.

Rachel and Jake are taken to the construction site where Visser Three shows up with a bunch of hork-bajir and taxxons. Visser Three performs his "ANDALITE FOOLS" shtick for a while before asking why Melissa wasn't there. Chapman lets the actual Chapman control the body for a while, and he reveals that his wife wanted to join, so he bargained his own body for that of his daughter. Visser tells Chapman to toe the line and takes Rachel's cat carrier into the blade ship.

Suddenly, a bunch of earth-movers start advancing towards the blade ship, so Jake decides to hop off and turn into a tiger. Rachel unmorphs enough to get fingers, unlocks the cage, then runs out as a cat. Jake messes up Visser Three as a tiger, but ends up running. Visser Three morphs into a rock monster and wrecks the place, but Tobias saves Rachel and tells her everyone made it out.

At school the next day Rachel leaves Melissa an anonymous note telling her her dad loves her, and it seems to lift her spirits. The novel ends with everyone saying they'll have to keep it up until the andalites arrive.

Some thoughts:

- We start to see some more information concerning how yeerks work. The host rebellion from Chapman and his wife is pretty intense, with Mrs. Chapman trying to choke herself out. We also see what happens when a host is given full control after such a long time of being a Controller; Chapman falls to the ground and stammers because he's been locked up for so long. No thanks.

- Visser Three being such a fan of cats is a bit of comedy in what's otherwise a pretty tense book.

- At first I thought it would suck to be a high-ranking yeerk controlling a fairly low-ranking human, but Iniss 2-2-6 has inherited a fairly insidious position. As the assistant principle of what is presumably a large, urban school (they don't reveal the specific setting yet, but it becomes pretty clear where everything takes place later on) he regularly oversees hundreds of human adolescents, interacts with their parents, and other city officials.

- Iniss 2-2-6's plan right now seems to be straight-up slow growth. This is the second book, the Yeerks have been in place for months now, and they're still getting their operation started. Elfangor gave the yeerks a year to two to take over the planet, but the daily handful of Controllers seems to indicate they are still low enough in number to be worried about being discovered.

- We're starting to see the nightmares show up. These will be the animorphs constant companions throughout the series.

- Something I forgot to mention in the first book, but the series is almost immediately dated to the early 90s by constant references to Sega arcade machines, Baywatch and Letterman references, and VHS tapes still being used. One of the things the canceled rerelease did was to change all of the dated elements into more generic phrases. I get why they made those changes, but I don't think it matters that much.

Character Sheets:

-Jake: The leader, likes flying as a falcon. Can be reckless when it comes to helping his friends, but he's good in a fight. Plans tend to be well thought out but quickly go to hell for one reason or another. Acquires peregrine falcon and flea morphs. Kills one hork-bajir.

-Rachel: The fighter, she's pretty but doesn't let it define her. Cares about her younger sisters and her mother. Seems to revel in how morphing makes her feel powerful. Acquires bald eagle, shrew, and cat morphs. Doesn't kill anyone in this one, but she shreds Chapman up pretty bad.

-Tobias: Stuck as a red-tailed hawk, Tobias seems to be adjusting rather well, considering the circumstances. Coaches the animorphs in how to fly, and often acts as the scout, flying above the missions and relaying information to the others. Rarely kills, but regularly gouges out eyes, so his killcount will mostly be indirect.

-Cassie: The animal lover and morph source. Coaches people through morphing and how to overcome animal instincts when first morphing. Doesn't acquire anything and doesn't kill anything. Coaches Rachel through the morphing into a shrew, but doesn't do much in this novel.

Marco: The obstinate one. Teases everyone regularly, and is almost always the last one to join in. Keeps saying things like "just this time," and "this last time," but it's always in a resigned tone. He's still in denial at this point, but he seems to take the premise more seriously than the rest of them. He's the only one who seems to react appropriately to Rachel morphing in public.

Visser Three: Important figure in the Yeerk Empire, and the only andalite Controller. Morphs into a tiny-headed, tree-limbed monster and wrecks stuff, as he does. Cat enthusiast. Ruthlessly practical. Kills at least two taxxons, at least two hork-bajir, but it's implied that he kills every subordinate he brings with him. Visser Three's kill counts are going to be

#01: The Invasion

Title: The Invasion

Number: 01
Narrator: Jake

Applegate doesn’t waste any time.

The novel starts with our narrator, Jake, at a mall arcade with his friend, Marco. They meet up with Rachel, Jake’s cousin, Cassie, Rachel’s friend, and Tobias, the weird kid from school who Jake protects from bullies. Jake tells us a little bit about this group, about how Marco is great at finding patterns and analyzing video games, about how Rachel is pretty but doesn’t let people treat her like a useless blonde, about how Cassie is an animal lover and the mediator, and how Tobias comes from a broken family.

The gang walk home but decide to take a shortcut through an abandoned construction site. As they do an alien ship lands, and the dying Andalite prince Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul approaches. He warns them that the earth is under invasion by the alien mind-control slugs, the Yeerks, who can take over a host body with full access to memories, actions, and the rest. Elfangor tells them that, though they may not be able to win, with some help they might be able to hold the Yeerks back until the Andalite fleet can come rescue the planet.

To facilitate their mission, Elfangor has them touch a glowing cube that gives them the ability to acquire animal DNA through touch, then “morph” into that animal for a maximum limit of two hours. If they stay over that limit, they’ll be stuck in whatever body they currently have, forever.

Before the kids can ask too many questions, they feel another presence and Elfangor tells them to run, as the Yeerk commander has arrived. They go hide out in the construction site as a huge ship, shaped like a battleaxe and appropriately called the Blade Ship, appears, with two “Bug ship” escorts that look like cockroaches with side-lances.

A tangent about aliens:

The aliens in Animorphs manage to avoid most of the Star Trek and Wars alien tropes, in that they aren’t just humanoids with funny prosthetics. Instead, Applegate created a bustling stable of extraterrestrial beings with weird appearances. Some examples from this first book:

Andalites: Blue-tan centaurs with seven fingers, two extra eyes on tentacles atop the head, and a long, scythe-blade-tipped scorpion tale that is a highly dangerous weapon. They have no mouths, and communicate through thought-speech (The same way the kids do while morphed).

Yeerks: Tiny brown-grey space slugs with the ability to literally wrap around your brain and control you from inside. Almost blind, deaf, and totally mute in their natural forms, taking over beings is their only way to experience anything more than a dull life. Yeerk-controlled creatures are called…Controllers.

Hork-Bajir: Seven-foot tall, bipedal reptilians with razor-sharp blades at the tail, knees, elbows, wrists, shoulders, and the top of the head. Often described as having T-Rex feet. Applegate develop the Hork-Bajir as a species almost as much as she does the Andalites.

Taxxons: Man-sized centipede-looking fellas with hundreds of little cone legs, pincer claws, and a big round lamprey-style mouth on the end. They are possessed by a hunger so strong that Taxxon controllers often self-cannibalize if their own host body is injured enough. Cannon fodder.

Out from the Blade Ship steps the only Andalite controller, and the only controller with the ability to morph, Visser Three. He descends the ramp and torments Elfangor for a bit before morphing into a giant alien monster and eating the Andalite alive, with pieces of the alien falling to the ravenous Taxxon controllers below.

The kids are noticed, as they naturally start vomiting, and manage to escape. However, in the ensuing chaos, Jake notices that one of the human controllers present is their principle, a man named Chapman.

So there’s our backstory: five teenagers have to turn into animals to hold off an alien invasion. Piece of cake.

The next day, Tobias convinces Jake and the rest that what happened was real, and they experiment with a few morphs; Tobias into a cat, Jake into a dog, and Cassie into a horse. While they’re all discussing their options at Cassie’s farm (with a barn known as the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center, which serves as an easy source of morphs), a cop drives up and asks some suspiciously targeted questions about the construction site the previous night. Jake intuits that the cop is a controller, and when the officer mentions a youth group called the Sharing (which Jake’s older brother Tom already invited him to), they get even more suspicious.

Marco tells Jake that, after hearing Tom ask some similar questions, he thinks Jake’s brother might be a controller. Jake gets angry but is eventually forced to accept the idea after Tom gets really pushy about joining the Sharing.

One thing ends up leading to another, and the Animorphs discover that the Sharing is a Yeerk front designed to find willing (or unwilling) hosts. After infiltrating their beach-side meeting as his dog and hitching a ride on his assistant principle's pants, they learn that the Yeerk pool, where the slugs must rest every three days to bathe in rays from their home sun or die, is underneath their city.

Determined to fight this new thraet and rescue Tom and the other Controllers, the Animorphs use Cassie’s connections at a local zoo to acquire a few “battle” morphs: Jake gets a tiger, Marco gets a gorilla, Rachel an elephant, Cassie a horse, and Tobias a red-tailed hawk. With that DNA in tow, they make their way to a secret door Jake discovered in their school that leads downwards. Unfortunately, Cassie messes up and gets dragged down there by the cop-Controller, and the rest go to rescue her.

The Yeerk Pool is huge, taking up a massive cavern that is constantly getting expanded. Controllers whose Yeerks are feeding are kept in cages and forcibly re-Controlled by Hork-Bajir. It’s gloomy and sad and Cassie almost gets Controllered before the Animorphs turn into their battle morphs and start messing stuff up.

Now, one thing that always fascinated me about these books is the fight scenes. It isn’t very often you get to read about a tiger, a gorilla, and an elephant all coordinating their capabilities to kill stuff, but the fights in Animorphs are brutal. Rachel tramples a Hork-Bajir to death, Marco crushes a ribcage, Jake slices people up, Tobias takes out eyes, and Cassie sits back and gets people out of cages then turns into a horse to offer help.

The animorphs try and rescue everyone, but as they are escaping, Visser Three decides to establish his villainy. He monologues and morphs into an alien with a fetish for the number eight; eight legs, eight arms, and eight fire-ball-breathing heads. He reveals that he believes they are Andalites, not humans, and nearly kills them all before they escape through the door they came from. In the chaos Tom is re-infested, every escaping host is killed or captured, and Tobias is missing.

So they retreat. They retreat, and later that night Jake hears Tom come home and knows it’s an alien slug in his head. Tobias shows up as a hawk and reveals that he had to hide after the fight, for longer than the two hours. The novel ends with Tobias revealing he’s trapped as a hawk forever, but that he and Jake have decided to fight until the Andalites show up.

Some thoughts:

-The quality was something I was unsure of when going into this series again. I read this starting in kindergarten, so I don’t have much memory of the prose. I will say that Applegate is definitely no master of the written word, but there is a marked increase in the narration as the novel progresses, and as Jake must mature.

-The violence sticks out at me, but I always remembered that. Animorphs doesn’t hold back during the fight scenes, as I said, with dismemberment being a regular occurrence for these kids. We’ll be seeing a lot of really brutal fights throughout the series, which I appreciate. It makes everything feel like there’s a weight to it, like the kids are actually in danger.

-I've always wondered whether Applegate wanted to write horror novels or not, simply from how well she describes the kids dealing with the instincts of whichever animal they are at the time. Jake eating the spider ends up being a really small dot on the radar compared to some later morphs.

-The hopelessness of their situation sticks out a lot more now that I’m older. One problem I have with it, but I recognize as a necessity, is that the kids maybe aren’t paranoid enough, and neither is Elfangor. I laughed a little bit when I was rereading this, as the andalite pretty much just tosses them the cube and says, “have fun.” It’s never brought up in the books that any of the animorphs could have already been controllers (spoiler, they aren’t) and at this point we don’t know how long the Yeerks have been on Earth. It’s heavily implied that it has not been very long, as there are regular references to an orbital battle that took place recently, but the Yeerk pool is revealed to already be city-sized. The kids never even bring up the possibility that any of the others were possible already controllers.

-The novel moves at a brisk pace, even for only being 99 pages long. It’s written in first-person retrospective, the same with all 54 of the main novels, even though the first four or so chapters are delivered almost like a summary of events. There is a noticeable shift in the way the story is told at that point.

-Tobias getting stuck as a hawk so early was an interesting choice. For a long time I remembered it happening to him later, around book three. Having it happen so early lets his fate serve as a reminder of the potential consequences.

-"Idiot teenagers with a deathwish" is a pretty accurate description of the series. Applegate does a fair job of having some of the kids try and justify not using these gifts.

-Visser Three is one of my favorite villains of all time. He hams up every scene he stars in, and I can’t help by imagine his thought-speech being voice-acted by Matthew Wood, the same guy who voiced General Grievous. Favorite words include "fools," "Andalites," and "bandits."

Character Sheets (Yeerk kills are not counted unless it is explicitly described)

-Jake: Appointed the leader by Tobias, Jake is reluctant but manages to fake it well enough to keep his friends from dying. A little bland right now, but his concern for his brother drives him to fight. Acquires golden retriever, green anole, and siberian tiger morphs. Kills 3 hork-bajir.

-Rachel: The "pretty one," but don't let her hear you say that. She's often referred to in the narrative as Xena, so that should be a clue about how she thinks. Acquires an african elephant morph. Kills 2 hork-bajir and 2 taxxons.

-Tobias: Comes from a broken family and never knew his parents. Looks up to Jake, as the other boy regularly saved him from bullies. Ends up staying as a hawk for longer than the two-hour time limit and gets stuck that way. Acquires a cat and red-tailed hawk morphs.

-Cassie: Rural farm girl who loves animals and helps her dad at his Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic. Often a source for new morphs. She's also revealed to be the most talented morpher, and regularly shows off by morphing fancy. Acquires a horse morph.

-Marco: The group smart-ass. Always has a quip or protest against the current or future plan. Lives with his dad, who has fallen off the wagon after his mother sailed a ship out into the stormy sea and vanished. The most reluctant animorph of the lot. Acquired a gorilla morph. Killed 2 hork-bajir and 1 taxxon.

-Visser Three: Megalomaniac yeerk general. Enjoys morphing into giant monsters, eating people, and talking about himself at length. Kills at least 12 humans.

#00: The Great (Almost) Full Animorphs Re-Read

My name is Dylan. That's my first name; I can't tell you my last name. I can't tell you where I live, where I go to school, or who my parents are. It's too dangerous.

The Yeerks are everywhere. The Controllers could be anyone.

For those who don't know, Animorphs is a young-adult science fiction series by K.A. Applegate about a group of reluctant child soldiers who turn into animals to kill aliens, and deal with the fallout of fighting a guerrilla war against an unseen, pervasive alien invasion force.

Katherine Alice Applegate published the first novel in the series, The Invasion in 1996 and the final novel, The Beginning in 2001. The main series is made up of 54 novels which move in chronological order by publication date with each novel being narrated by one of the five (later six) main characters. In addition, there are four longer "Megamorph" novels which shift between narrators by chapter, and four "Chronicles" novels which deliver important backstory on various alien species in the universe. There is also a pair of Choose-Your-Own-Adventure style novels that take place outside the main canon, which I will not be reading.

The premise goes...

In a non-specific year in the 90s, a group of five teenagers are walking home through the mall and decide to take a shortcut through an old construction site. As they do, an alien ship lands and a dying alien tells them that Earth is being invaded by alien slugs with the power to crawl in your ear, wrap around your brain, and control you like a puppet. The teens are given the ability to Morph, to absorb the DNA of any animal they touch, and decide to fight and delay the Yeerks until the Andalites can arrive.

What a premise.

In the hands of a lesser author, the series might have turned into another young-adult group of teenagers save the world affair, and it would have faded into obscurity. Instead what Applegate gave us was a harrowing war story featuring unwilling, but ultimately heroic, child soldiers embroiled in a conflict no one should have to endure. There's pervasive paranoia, intense bloodshed, and a relatively realistic portrayal of warfare, invasions, and the effect that such a conflict can have on the human psyche.

The novels are far more graphic than expected, with limbs being mangled, removed, incinerated, eaten, crushed and more. Applegate doesn't shrink back from the horrible realities of combat, and the villains regularly aim to capture, torture, and kill the protagonists. There are shades of grey throughout, as the revelation of just how serious the kid's situations are becomes ever more clear. It ultimately morphs from being about a group of kids to being a war story played straight.

In addition, the setting also expands in a similar way, slowly involving more and more elements until the setting becomes an undeniable space opera, with some of the craziest, coolest aliens around.

I don't mean to oversell the series. While it is good for the most part, not every novel is of the same quality. Roughly half of the series was ghostwritten, and though the outlines were written by Applegate herself, the quality of the prose or story doesn't always hold up. The novels are usually pretty short; several run slightly under 100 pages, and few exceed 200, so some of the shorter novels can feel a little rushed.

However, these quality issues can be overlooked if you take in the whole, and that's what I intend to do. There's a reason that most people who read this series have fond memories of it, and it's not all just nostalgia.

Between 1998 and 2000 the series was adapted into a live-action Nickelodeon series, which has been widely panned for multiple reasons, including the writing quality, acting, special effects, and general production. I remember watching it and, though I had that exuberance only kids can have, I specifically remember a vague sense of disappointment. There were also some video games made, but I never even bothered.

In 2010 Scholastic announced a rerelease with fancy covers, updated pop culture references, and various smaller changes. Unfortunately it only lasted eight books before they stopped due to poor sales, which is a real shame.

I am going to read all 62 canon Animorphs books in chronological, published order, with some minor exceptions. I'll be putting up posts about the books, which will be part review, part summary, and part miscellaneous thoughts or things I've noticed. There will be no regard given to spoilers, so if you're worried about them...sorry.

I'll also be doing a kill count for each of the six main characters, and the primary antagonist, Visser Three. You'll soon see why.

Coming up next, The Invasion