Let's be honest with ourselves here. Animorphs is a children's pulp series about teen superheroes. It's campy, it's unrealistic, its pages are littered with sound effects and dialogue like, " 'Arrrrgggghhh!' I yelled in frustration." The only reason I'm still talking about it a decade later is because many of the books rose above that.This is not one of those books. This book is exactly what you think it is. It is not deep. It does not contain quandries about the ethics of war, or depictions of kids traumatized by horrors that kids should never know. This book contains a pool party, a dust monster from Saturn, and Easy Amnesia. This is actually the first Animorphs book that bored me so much I stopped reading in the middle and grudgingly came back to it a few days later, purely out of a sense of obligation to my three or so readers. I probably devoured it as a kid, but I had lower standards then.
The Megamorphs books (there were four of them by the end of the series) were supposed to be special adventures, longer than the normal Animorphs books and with multiple narrators. The other three feature time travel and alternate timelines and stuff, so that's another way in which they bust out of the usual format. This one, though, doesn't have any of that. I'm not totally sure why this particular story needed the expanded length and multiple perspectives. Of course, I'm not totally sure why this particular story needed to be told at all.
Basically, here's how it goes down: Rachel signed up for a weekend gymnastics camp before she got superpowers. She's going to go, but then calls and cancels at the last minute because Earth needs her help, but the others talk her into having at least the semblance of a normal life for two days. So her family and friends still think she's going, but the camp isn't expecting her. Just before leaving, she morphs bald eagle to fly to Tobias's meadow and say goodbye, but she flies a little too close to some baby blue jays. The flock gets angry and attacks her, and while trying to escape she hits her head against a tree and is knocked unconscious. When she comes to, she's half-human and freaking out because she has the kind of TV amnesia where you remember everything except who you are and your own life history, and also your ability to form new memories is not impacted in the least. She manages to calm herself down enough to demorph, figuring she's some kind of freak.
I have a lot of problems with this, starting with amnesia being an overused cliche that virtually never works like that. The thing is, if for some reason you really want to do Easy Amnesia, this is a universe where mind-controlling aliens exist. You could come up with some sci-fi explanation for how Rachel loses her memories of who she is without resorting to the eye-rolling "I hit my head really hard." Also, since injuries suffered in morph don't apply once you're de-morphed, why would the bald eagle's head trauma apply to Rachel's human brain? Especially if her perfectly intact human brain was controlling the bald eagle from Z-space? I mean, if Jake can use all his human brainpower while in the form of a flea, I don't see why Rachel's human brainpower would not be able to control a brain-damaged eagle. Now, if a spaceship had smashed into her body while it was passing through Z-space, I could see that being a serious problem. And that would be way more interesting and scary than being chased into a tree by a flock of friggin' blue jays. How lame is that? Seriously? She was a bald eagle.
So while this is happening, Marco crashes a pool party he wasn't invited to, dragging Ax along by promising him he'll do something to help Ax with his new flea problem. They're both mice, and while initially Marco just wants to eavesdrop on the girl throwing the party, he can't resist going a little further. He thought-speaks his own name into her head, and, thinking someone else mentioned Marco, she goes off on a rant about how immature and obnoxious he is. He proves her wrong by running over her toes and chasing her around the pool. Oh, Marco. Jake and Cassie, who were invited, immediately know what's up and try to contain the chaos/save their friends from being stomped on. Marco and Ax manage to race inside the house and down to the basement, where they demorph.
This is where things weird. A giant swirling dust storm with insane numbers of mouths and razor-sharp teeth appears out of nowhere, rips the house apart, almost kills everyone, and then disappears. It reappears in the forest as Rachel is morphing human and starts chasing after her. She runs to a highway where the monster destroys a Ben & Jerry's truck and then disappears again. The others see news footage of it, and Cassie immediately recognizes Rachel.
Rachel leaves the scene, wanders through the forest, and eventually stumbles upon a crazy old lady living in a shack. This woman is rambling about Yeerks. She seems to imply that the Yeerk that once controlled her died. I really wish we knew more about her - who she was before, how her Yeerk died, what happened. Maybe she ate maple-ginger oatmeal. (If you haven't read all the books yet... you'll see.) Anyway, the woman becomes convinced that Rachel is a Controller, locks her in the cold cellar beneath the shack, and lights the entire place on fire. But something inside Rachel knows to morph grizzly bear.
Meanwhile, Jake, Marco, Tobias, and Ax grab a shirt Rachel left at Cassie's one time, go to the place where the truck was destroyed, and use it to track her scent as wolves. Of course, as soon as they start morphing, the dust monster appears and starts attacking them. They run away, leading the monster on a chase through the woods, then suddenly turns around and makes a beeline for the burning shack. It attacks Rachel, and Rachel tries to fight back, but the monster shreds both her front paws. Ax shows up to save her, but realizes he can't do anything to stop it. Hoping to at least follow it and find out where it lives, he starts to morph hawk. As soon as he does, the monster forgets about Rachel and goes after him. Instead of killing Ax, however, the monster wraps him up in a sort of cocoon and whisks him away.
Incidentally, Megamorphs #1 is the first time Ax narrates. He mentions for the first time that he is honor-bound to kill his brother's murderer, Visser Three. So conveniently (or not), the monster takes him right to the Blade Ship where the Yeerks lock him up in a metal box that can be made opaque or translucent on demand. Visser Three, in typical Bond villain fashion, explains exactly what's going on. The monster is a creature from Saturn which the Yeerks trained to detect the energy released during morphing, capture whoever released the energy, and take it back to the Blade Ship. Visser Three calls it the "Veleek," Yeerk for "pet." Didn't occur to me that Yeerks had the concept of pets. Did they have pets on their homeworld? How would that work?
Anyway, Ax has a potential opportunity to kill Visser Three, but doesn't. Even though he probably wouldn't be able to kill him, and would almost certainly die in the process, Ax beats himself up over failing his duty to his brother. This is one of three worthwhile things in this book. Also, because Ax is an Andalite, Visser Three haughtily dismisses forever the possibility - suggested by some of his underlings - that maybe the "Andalite terrorists" are human. Because it's not like he knows about an Andalite that survived in the Dome that crashed into the ocean and was rescued by a bunch of morph-capable beings whose true forms he never saw. Oh wait, yes he does, because he was there. Criminal incompetence.
Meanwhile, Cassie's at the mall. Why? "Jake had asked me to look in all the other places she might have gone. He'd said I would know best where she hung out." That's right: while the boys are turning into wolves and running from dust monsters and saving Rachel's life, Cassie's sent to the mall. She wanders around thinking about all the reasons this bothers her - Jake being "a little" sexist (a little?), her getting special treatment, her shameful relief at being in a safe place - when she sees Chapman. She morphs fly to spy on him and overhears a conversation between him and two other Controllers basically repeating the exact same information Visser Three told Ax, but with less detail. So that's kind of repetitive. Cassie tells everybody what's up at the barn and they figure they can tire the Veleek out by spreading out and constantly morphing, thereby making him chase them everywhere. They don't know for sure that it even can be tired out, but the very least, they'll distract it from Rachel.
By the way, Rachel survived the attack. Instead of becoming the bear version of the Handless Maiden, she morphs back to human. She still can't remember who she is, but she's at least figured out that she can morph. She follows a stream to a suburban housing development and finds an empty house to fall asleep in. Unfortunately, the neighbors saw her breaking in and called the cops. So she does what any of us would do: she morphs into an elephant and breaks the door frame rushing the cops. Of course, this morphing attracts the Veleek, which rips the house apart.
Back at Cassie's farm, the other Animorphs can see it headed that way, so they steal Cassie's dad's pickup truck. That poor guy. All he ever wanted to do was heal injured animals, and now his cell phone's been used to make a suspicious phone call to a Controller and his pickup truck's been stolen and totalled. You think running a wildlife hospital is a really lucrative career choice? You really think he's got the money for a brand-new pickup truck? He's probably still paying off his student loans from veterinary school.
Anyway, Marco "drives" the pickup truck. I put "drive" in quotation marks because, well, Marco cannot drive. This is the second worthwhile thing about this book, because the way he careens around the neighborhood with Jake and Cassie screaming in the backseat is actually really, really funny. Especially when he hits seven garbage cans (while driving on the sidewalk) and Jake yells, "Do you hate trash cans? Is that your problem? Do you just HATE TRASH CANS?!!" Miraculously, they make it to the housing development alive to find the Veleek trying, and failing, to lift Rachel in her elephant morph. Cassie jumps out to go to Rachel while Jake morphs tiger in the truck and Marco burns rubber, trying to lure the Veleek away.
They lead the Veleek onto a highway, then Marco takes the truck off-road, hoping it'll slow the Veleek down. Jake jumps off the truck and leads the Veleek on a merry chase through the woods, getting more and more exhausted while the Veleek doesn't slow down for a second. Just as it's about to grab Jake, though, it disintegrates and races somewhere else - see, Marco's just started morphing gorilla. And continues to drive. He crashes the truck right into Elephant!Rachel - which restores her memory, because of course it does. Bug fighters have shown up, shooting Dracon beams everywhere, and now he's led the Veleek right to Rachel and Cassie. Cassie bravely runs away and the Veleek picks up Marco and carries him to the Blade Ship.
Oh, and somehow the Yeerks are all watching this on some kind of holographic TV set, so Ax can know what's going on, but for some reason they never catch the kids morphing straight from human to animal. At this point, I've lost track of how many times they reveal their secret right in front of a bunch of Yeerks. They make Ax's box opaque, and he notices a flea on himself. (Aha! That was some good setup.) He acquires and morphs the flea, and by the time Visser Three orders his box made translucent again so Ax can see his friend's been captured, he can't see anything in there. The Controllers open the box, of course, and Ax jumps onto the nearest Controller, whom Visser Three immediately kills for being so damn stupid. To his credit, V3 recognizes that Ax could have morphed something small, so he demands that "bio-scanners" be brought in. (First mention! Although in later books it's referred to as a bio-filter, still, they're pretty obviously the same thing.)
Ax hatches a plan: he's on Visser Three, and he starts to demorph, causing the Veleek to attack V3. The Yeerks spray the Veleek with water while Marco opens the hatch to the ship. Apparently, the Veleek is actually a hive of extremely small insect-like creatures that all work together as one. Ax hops off V3 and onto Marco, and Marco jumps out of the ship, which is flying two miles above the Earth. Good plan! Marco just barely manages to demorph and remorph as an osprey seconds before hitting the pavement.
The next day, everybody meets up in the woods, no morphing allowed. Cassie's guilt-stricken over letting the Veleek take Marco when she could have morphed and drawn him to her. So she comes up with a plan and insists on doing it herself. And it involves a psychic whale! They go to the ocean, morph dolphin to attract the Veleek, and swim out to the nearest whale. As they suspected, the Veleek stays the hell away from the water, though he hovers above. With the others holding her just above the water so she doesn't drown, Cassie demorphs, acquires the whale, then immediately morphs cockroach and gets onto Tobias's back. He flies her as high as he can take her, then drops her onto the Veleek. She demorphs, then morphs whale in mid-air, as she's falling. (There's a lot of that in this book.) The Veleek wraps itself around her, but her whale form is far too heavy for it. They fall into the ocean, killing (?) the Veleek. Having achieved victory, Cassie sings a whale song of hope which she knows somehow despite having been a whale for about ten seconds.
Commentary:
Between the the unrealistic amnesia, the silly dust monster, and the return of Jesus Whale, this book is kind of cringe-worthy. There are some funny parts, and Cassie's heroics at the end are genuinely awesome. Actually, her character development from selfish fear to selfless courage, and the way she uses her natural morphing talent to save the day, is the third worthwhile thing in the book. It belongs in a better story, with a less ridiculous villain. Ideally, it should go in a Cassie book, where she doesn't have to share narration with five other people so her arc has more time to play out naturally. I'd also prefer that it not involve psychic whales. Overall, this one is eminently skippable.
Come back next Monday for my review of Animorphs #8: The Alien! Liun-uh. Nuh.
