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.
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