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Animorphs #37
The Weakness
When Tobias discovers Visser Three's newest feeding place, the Animorphs must decide how to proceed.
129 pages, Library Binding
First published January 1, 2000
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939 people want to read
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K.A. Applegate
251 books480 followersalso published under the name Katherine Applegate
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 165 reviews
July 30, 2015
Ghostwriter: Elise Smith, who also hasn't written any of these books before.
Right. This is the first time -- the very first time -- that I'm finally giving 1 star to an Animorphs book. Because this one is dreadful. Absolutely dreadful. I found myself highlighting lots of quotes, not because they were beautiful or well-phrased or interesting explorations of their characterisations, but because the behaviour in them was just so stupid that I couldn't believe it. I think the plot here is actually worse than the stupid 'poodle biting Visser Three's ankles' thing in #35.
So here's the deal: Jake is away on a family trip for a few days, and in his absence, an opportunity to discredit Visser Three in front of a fellow Yeerk inspector pops up. Rachel installs herself as interim leader of the Animorphs, and leads them on a series of rapid-fire blitz attacks all across town, and she (unsurprisingly) turns out to be awful as a leader.
It's atrocious. I can see what the point was supposed to be: look how they fall apart without Jake as a leader, see how Rachel can't stand in his shoes... except that earlier in the series, Marco successfully called the shots for the team not once, but twice, so I'm irate at the fact that she still steamrolled over him and this whole 'leadership rivalry' thing was fostered between them. Rachel's characterisation in this one, more than anything else, reminded me of megalomaniacal Psychotic Rachel from #32 (was that the only book the ghostwriter had read for Rachel reference, or something? because that is the only thing that explains her behaviour in this one, IMO, complete with delusions of grandeur).
She's always been impulsive and put herself in danger, but this is downright asinine and endangering the entire team. Putting an Andalite on TV (and there's no fallout from this?), causing the death of a civilian, Cassie's capture, all for the sake of a few cheap thrills. They rampage the town to supposedly make the Yeerks think it's an entire army of Andalites, but they use their same morphs every time plus the same number of attackers, so it's obvious that they're one group?? I also take issue with their "WANTON DESTRUCTION!!" plan, too, because it's pretty pointless probably directly messing with humans' livelihoods, destroying their shops if just a single Controller works there -- whereas the Animorphs have always tried to be pretty careful about limiting collateral damage in the past. But this is just... a rampage.
And I find it flat-out unbelievable that when literally the entire rest of the team is telling Rachel to take it easy and they should maybe do some scouting and info-gathering, she scoffs and laughs at them and insults them. And they still follow her!
Oddly, the rest of the team's characterisations were pretty accurate, but that just left me astonished at the fact that they went along with this plan (especially using untried polar bear morphs in extended battle, without morph variety). And our POV character was such a mess. Here, have an example:
I'M SO MAD. I seriously can't emphasise how much I hated this. I almost couldn't finish, when normally I devour these books.
The only thing I liked was in comparison with the previous book: the fact that Rachel hates the missions where they don't 'win' and cause any damage to the Yeerks, whereas Jake in #36 explains that he likes them, because at least they're all still alive. I also liked Tobias disagreeing with Rachel, and tactfully not saying anything whenever she called upon him.
I'm probably going to pretend this book never happened and wasn't a part of canon, because I just hate the Animorphs wantonly destroying their own hometown for the sake of Rachel's adrenaline rush.
EDIT: OH, WAIT, AND ALSO, they break into a freaking heavily-guarded private air base in their normal human forms, and are spotted and chased by multiple guards who could obviously physically identify them later?? It's such a crazy, stupid risk when they could have morphed and snuck into the jet to steal it! Why did they run across the tarmac as human kids! The jet freaking CRASHES INTO A SKYSCRAPER, obviously it's going to be all over the news and someone's gonna testify about the group of kids who stole it and who are now probably dead? Aaaaughh!!
Right. This is the first time -- the very first time -- that I'm finally giving 1 star to an Animorphs book. Because this one is dreadful. Absolutely dreadful. I found myself highlighting lots of quotes, not because they were beautiful or well-phrased or interesting explorations of their characterisations, but because the behaviour in them was just so stupid that I couldn't believe it. I think the plot here is actually worse than the stupid 'poodle biting Visser Three's ankles' thing in #35.
So here's the deal: Jake is away on a family trip for a few days, and in his absence, an opportunity to discredit Visser Three in front of a fellow Yeerk inspector pops up. Rachel installs herself as interim leader of the Animorphs, and leads them on a series of rapid-fire blitz attacks all across town, and she (unsurprisingly) turns out to be awful as a leader.
It's atrocious. I can see what the point was supposed to be: look how they fall apart without Jake as a leader, see how Rachel can't stand in his shoes... except that earlier in the series, Marco successfully called the shots for the team not once, but twice, so I'm irate at the fact that she still steamrolled over him and this whole 'leadership rivalry' thing was fostered between them. Rachel's characterisation in this one, more than anything else, reminded me of megalomaniacal Psychotic Rachel from #32 (was that the only book the ghostwriter had read for Rachel reference, or something? because that is the only thing that explains her behaviour in this one, IMO, complete with delusions of grandeur).
She's always been impulsive and put herself in danger, but this is downright asinine and endangering the entire team. Putting an Andalite on TV (and there's no fallout from this?), causing the death of a civilian, Cassie's capture, all for the sake of a few cheap thrills. They rampage the town to supposedly make the Yeerks think it's an entire army of Andalites, but they use their same morphs every time plus the same number of attackers, so it's obvious that they're one group?? I also take issue with their "WANTON DESTRUCTION!!" plan, too, because it's pretty pointless probably directly messing with humans' livelihoods, destroying their shops if just a single Controller works there -- whereas the Animorphs have always tried to be pretty careful about limiting collateral damage in the past. But this is just... a rampage.
And I find it flat-out unbelievable that when literally the entire rest of the team is telling Rachel to take it easy and they should maybe do some scouting and info-gathering, she scoffs and laughs at them and insults them. And they still follow her!
Oddly, the rest of the team's characterisations were pretty accurate, but that just left me astonished at the fact that they went along with this plan (especially using untried polar bear morphs in extended battle, without morph variety). And our POV character was such a mess. Here, have an example:
And here they would have Hork-Bajir shock troops. A very different proposition from scaring off civilians and roughing up human-Controllers. I wasn't sure exactly what we'd do once we got there. But I knew I'd figure out something. I was Rachel! Hero warrior and interim king!
***
There was a bounce in my step. I felt like howling and laughing and leaping up onto a sign-post and twirling in midair!
Like Gene Kelly in that old movie Singing in the Rain.
There was chaos in the streets! Maybe not chaos but there was definitely confusion. AT least there was evidence of something going on. Lots of police cars, just kind of cruising along. Shopkeepers shutting down before usual closing time. Clusters of people talking hurriedly, glancing over their shoulders nervously. Anticipating the next bizarro attack.
"Boo!"
The two men in suits flinched as Cassie and I passed.
"Jeez, Rachel, could you not call attention to us, please," Cassie muttered. "We all split up for a reason."
I'M SO MAD. I seriously can't emphasise how much I hated this. I almost couldn't finish, when normally I devour these books.
The only thing I liked was in comparison with the previous book: the fact that Rachel hates the missions where they don't 'win' and cause any damage to the Yeerks, whereas Jake in #36 explains that he likes them, because at least they're all still alive. I also liked Tobias disagreeing with Rachel, and tactfully not saying anything whenever she called upon him.
I'm probably going to pretend this book never happened and wasn't a part of canon, because I just hate the Animorphs wantonly destroying their own hometown for the sake of Rachel's adrenaline rush.
EDIT: OH, WAIT, AND ALSO, they break into a freaking heavily-guarded private air base in their normal human forms, and are spotted and chased by multiple guards who could obviously physically identify them later?? It's such a crazy, stupid risk when they could have morphed and snuck into the jet to steal it! Why did they run across the tarmac as human kids! The jet freaking CRASHES INTO A SKYSCRAPER, obviously it's going to be all over the news and someone's gonna testify about the group of kids who stole it and who are now probably dead? Aaaaughh!!
October 1, 2022
Jake is the leader of the Animorphs. When he leaves town for a short while, the leadership role falls on the strong shoulders of Rachel. What could possibly go wrong?
This is once again a pure filler story. Unfortunately, this is not a very good one. The thing is, the concept is really good but the execution could have been a lot better. Rachel has always been a bit reckless. So putting her in a leadership role, where her recklessness can cost the group, is a really good idea. Because it allows Rachel to take a good look at herself and recognize her own flaws. It’s a really good opportunity for some character development. But where this book goes wrong is that Rachel is just not characterized well here. Her recklessness is blown up so much, it becomes a parody of what it usually is. She makes stupid decisions. And instead of recklessly throwing herself in the face of danger to protect her friends, she casually puts everyone in danger. And for what? It’s not even for a good reason. It’s also so weird that all the Animorphs go along so easily with her plan, as they’ve been really careful to protect their identity in the past thirty plus novels. But here they’re not that worried about getting recognized and putting not only themselves but also their families in danger.
This is once again a pure filler story. Unfortunately, this is not a very good one. The thing is, the concept is really good but the execution could have been a lot better. Rachel has always been a bit reckless. So putting her in a leadership role, where her recklessness can cost the group, is a really good idea. Because it allows Rachel to take a good look at herself and recognize her own flaws. It’s a really good opportunity for some character development. But where this book goes wrong is that Rachel is just not characterized well here. Her recklessness is blown up so much, it becomes a parody of what it usually is. She makes stupid decisions. And instead of recklessly throwing herself in the face of danger to protect her friends, she casually puts everyone in danger. And for what? It’s not even for a good reason. It’s also so weird that all the Animorphs go along so easily with her plan, as they’ve been really careful to protect their identity in the past thirty plus novels. But here they’re not that worried about getting recognized and putting not only themselves but also their families in danger.
February 26, 2017
My friend Julie’s review pretty much nails why #37: The Weakness is, coincidentally, so weak. I’m just going to pile on with a few more observations.
This is Rachel’s chance to lead while Jake is away. She bungles it, but not as badly as the ghostwriter of this book (Elise Smith) bungles Rachel’s characterization. Her portrayal as an insecure megalomaniac gives me flashbacks, as it did Julie, to aggressive Rachel from #32: The Separation; Rachel’s whole narration just feels so off, such a caricature, that, plot holes aside, the entire book is just an uncomfortable reading experience. If this were a TV show, it would be as if Rachel’s normal actor were replaced by someone else, kind of how Dick York gets replaced by Dick Sargent in Bewitched and no one in the show acknowledges that Darrin is a completely different person (magic!).
Julie’s review goes on to critique the plot holes of this book with an unabashed and entirely justified rant. Reading this story is like reading someone’s really bad Animorph fanfic: all the characters are here; the essential story elements are here; but there are dumb contrivances and terrible story decisions. Why do the Garatrons need to physically resemble the Andalites if that is never relevant to the story (or subsequent stories) in any way? Is it just to drop in a mention of convergent evolution? And I agree that there is so much craziness happening in this book without any of it ever becoming an issue for the Animorphs. They trash a TV station, literally steal an airplane from a military base, and nothing bad comes of it. The level of action in this book is close to Megamorphs, Michael-Bay-style effects level—and it makes just as much sense as a Michael Bay film, i.e., zero.
It’s a shame, because The Weakness does have a few elements with potential. The whole “who would make a better leader” subplot does not interest me, mostly because it is something that this series has spent time on already. But this feels like a wasted opportunity to talk about strategy. Until now, the Animorphs have been very heavy on tactics: how they attack, when they attack, etc. Recent books have shifted this focus from tactics to strategy, with the Animorphs forced to temporarily work with Yeerks like Visser One in order to prevent a “worse” invasion of Earth. The question of whether or not the Animorphs are better off waging war against the Yeerks in secret or exposing them to prompt global resistance is a thorny one, and something that will come to the fore by the end of the series. The fraught, dangerous mission that the Animorphs undertake in this story, and the way they come up against the spectre of exposure, could have led to some interesting discussions among the team. Instead, we just get infighting. Because … conflict?
Every time I encounter a book like this, I have to remind myself that in 54 issues, they can’t all be winners. And young me probably didn’t mind as much. Nevertheless, I’d be remiss if I didn’t call out The Weakness as anything other than what it is: not just a hot mess, but a hot mess left behind by the guy who made you pay for the meal because he “forgot his wallet”.
My reviews of Animorphs:
← Visser | #38: The Arrival
This is Rachel’s chance to lead while Jake is away. She bungles it, but not as badly as the ghostwriter of this book (Elise Smith) bungles Rachel’s characterization. Her portrayal as an insecure megalomaniac gives me flashbacks, as it did Julie, to aggressive Rachel from #32: The Separation; Rachel’s whole narration just feels so off, such a caricature, that, plot holes aside, the entire book is just an uncomfortable reading experience. If this were a TV show, it would be as if Rachel’s normal actor were replaced by someone else, kind of how Dick York gets replaced by Dick Sargent in Bewitched and no one in the show acknowledges that Darrin is a completely different person (magic!).
Julie’s review goes on to critique the plot holes of this book with an unabashed and entirely justified rant. Reading this story is like reading someone’s really bad Animorph fanfic: all the characters are here; the essential story elements are here; but there are dumb contrivances and terrible story decisions. Why do the Garatrons need to physically resemble the Andalites if that is never relevant to the story (or subsequent stories) in any way? Is it just to drop in a mention of convergent evolution? And I agree that there is so much craziness happening in this book without any of it ever becoming an issue for the Animorphs. They trash a TV station, literally steal an airplane from a military base, and nothing bad comes of it. The level of action in this book is close to Megamorphs, Michael-Bay-style effects level—and it makes just as much sense as a Michael Bay film, i.e., zero.
It’s a shame, because The Weakness does have a few elements with potential. The whole “who would make a better leader” subplot does not interest me, mostly because it is something that this series has spent time on already. But this feels like a wasted opportunity to talk about strategy. Until now, the Animorphs have been very heavy on tactics: how they attack, when they attack, etc. Recent books have shifted this focus from tactics to strategy, with the Animorphs forced to temporarily work with Yeerks like Visser One in order to prevent a “worse” invasion of Earth. The question of whether or not the Animorphs are better off waging war against the Yeerks in secret or exposing them to prompt global resistance is a thorny one, and something that will come to the fore by the end of the series. The fraught, dangerous mission that the Animorphs undertake in this story, and the way they come up against the spectre of exposure, could have led to some interesting discussions among the team. Instead, we just get infighting. Because … conflict?
Every time I encounter a book like this, I have to remind myself that in 54 issues, they can’t all be winners. And young me probably didn’t mind as much. Nevertheless, I’d be remiss if I didn’t call out The Weakness as anything other than what it is: not just a hot mess, but a hot mess left behind by the guy who made you pay for the meal because he “forgot his wallet”.
My reviews of Animorphs:
← Visser | #38: The Arrival
January 21, 2015
RAGEY SPOILERS.
I'm going to go ahead and assume this book didn't exist. It's not part of canon. There is literally no reason for it to exist. It did not bring anything to the series except for MAYBE a plot point with the Garatron.
I'm going to go ahead and assume this book didn't exist. It's not part of canon. There is literally no reason for it to exist. It did not bring anything to the series except for MAYBE a plot point with the Garatron.
August 30, 2013
Brought to you by The Moonlight Library!
Jake has gone away for a week, leaving the Animorphs leaderless, when they come upon the perfect opportunity to make Visser three look incompetent in front of a Yeerk Inspector, reporting to the Council of Thirteen. The Animorphs can’t pass up this opportunity, so Rachel takes charge and they wreak havoc all over town. But Rachel’s recklessness gets Cassie captured and taken to the Yeerk Pool for infestation…
This book goes to show just how important Jake is. It’s a hot mess of a book, badly written, poorly plotted and takes the main characters to the extreme of their characterisation, but it does demonstrate how poorly the Animorphs act when Jake isn’t there to call the shots. The book opens with Jake already absent and the Animorphs attempting to assassinate Visser Three using cheetah morphs. With the arrival of the Inspector in an ultra-fast Gavatron body, they are forced to retreat, but decide to keep up the attacks to make the Visser look bad.
I can’t believe Applegate had time to read over this book after receiving it from her ghost writer before sending it off to the editor. The editor probably added in little bits to make it linear within the series – you know, references to past adventures. But Rachel’s hubris is the main factor in this book, as well as her out of control rage. It’s written as if we’ve got a slightly more in control Mean Rachel from the Separation in place of our normal gung-ho but intelligent Warrior Princess. Tobias is also out of character because he doesn’t support her, quietly tries to take the leadership from her and then yells at her. That’s not very Tobias-like. The other characters seem like their usual selves – Marco’s positioned as the main opposition to Rachel, but even he doesn’t want to lead.
This book is just so poorly written. I already mentioned Jake’s already gone by the time we open it The ruched feeling continues as the Animorphs destroy half the town in a narrative that mostly tells us what happens instead of shows us. I know there’s a lot to pack into these little books but this book is by far the shortest of any, and it shows. Half the book is taken up with Cassie’s rescue. The narrative itself is really choppy and neglects small details in favour of keeping the fast pace.
Overall this book is not important either for the greater narrative or as a Rachel character study. She’s too out of character in this book. The new villain of the week is crap. Why the Yeerks didn’t infest or murder Cassie right away is a mystery. The squabbling between Rachel, Marco and even Tobias is forced. For some reason Ax in human morph stumbles over stairs yet climbs a chicken wire fence with barbed wire easily enough. As a kid I wasn’t this harsh, but I do remember this was one of the more useless books in the series.
One thing I do like is the title. Rachel as the leader is the group’s weakness. The Animorphs exploit the Inspector’s one weakness while trying to exploit Visser Three’s, and in turn show the Inspector the Visser’s weakness. Enjoy, if you dare.
January 31, 2023
This book is a travesty in its depiction of Rachel's character. In what world -- and in what children's series -- would Rachel compare herself to not only Oedipus Rex AND Gene Kelly from Singin' in the Rain (???), but also dish out classic schoolyard taunts like Marco having a "Hamlet complex"? (He gets the last laugh though: "Rachel, you mall-crawling psycho" is one sick, 90s-centric burn, and possibly the high point of all the writing in this book.)
Much like this review, The Weakness is trying way too hard in all the wrong places. I can't believe it has a place in the Animorphs canon.
Much like this review, The Weakness is trying way too hard in all the wrong places. I can't believe it has a place in the Animorphs canon.
May 12, 2024
Honestly one of the worst animorphs yet. Rachel on a full fucking power trip and being reckless, rude, and tyrannical. She was mean to everyone, made poor decisions that endangered the animorphs but also civilians (which like I am usually for killing civilians…when they’re actually controllers and so technically they are the enemy), AND led to the death of an innocent old man. PLUS you got mad when Tobias called out your ass instead of just giving you the answer you wanted. AND THEN when Cassie gets captured you decide to fucking QUIT. That tantrum toddler behavior is not what Rachel does, so idk what this stupid ass change in personality was.
Didn’t know how good a leader Jake was until this shit show of a book, sorry I disrespected you bro.
Didn’t know how good a leader Jake was until this shit show of a book, sorry I disrespected you bro.
October 6, 2024
*** 3.44 ***
Rachel is really going through some identity crisis.... It is painful to watch her struggle and I feel kind of sorry for her. It's tough being a teenager and you add the Yeerks to it, it becomes even worse...
It was nice to have Jake missing and the rest trying to figure out the group dynamics without him.
Rachel is really going through some identity crisis.... It is painful to watch her struggle and I feel kind of sorry for her. It's tough being a teenager and you add the Yeerks to it, it becomes even worse...
It was nice to have Jake missing and the rest trying to figure out the group dynamics without him.
January 20, 2025
Rachel you’re out of control!!!
March 9, 2019
This book was a struggle to read. The main protagonist was completely out of character and a borderline lunatic throughout the entire book. It's my least favorite book out of the entire series--at least so far. I hope there are none worse. Yeesh.
July 10, 2022
This Rachel installment is a particularly interesting one in the series.
At about 40-ish book into this series, we finally see some development that gives some hope to get character. Despite her being as chaotic, vengeful and bloodthirsty as ever, Rachel is growing increasingly aware of her own hubris and makes small yet conscious decisions as a means of readjusting her grip on her humanity. She is no longer defaulting as frequently to being a lone wolf that needs to be reigned in by her peers. She’s the leader for this installment while Jake is away and sees how her mission-planning and leadership—things she’s been dreaming of taking control of since nearly the big fining— are flawed.
Watching her own plans fail in more ways than she had thought possible was a wake-up call for her. She isn’t the best possible decision for a leader and she isn’t any better than Jake. She never was.
And this isn’t to say she’s a bad leader as her missions were highly successful in instilling fear and causing unexpected damage to her enemies. She’s different from Jake in a way that just now clicked, for better or worse.
Rachel’s slow but steadily healing relationship with feeling remorse was refreshing to see. I hate to see her miserable but love to watch her move away from numbly causing death and destruction. Rachel wants to feel again in spite of how much feeling hurts and she wants to make amends, slowly but surely.
I want more of this from her.
CW: war, violence, slavery, death, grief
December 8, 2013
I haven't had any quarrels with the ghostwritten books. Except this one. This writing was just plain atrocious. I feel as if Rachel's descent into madness had been handled fairly well prior to this, but this book literally just took all of the hard work and subtlety that the others had accomplished and--I would normally prefer not to be so vulgar in reviews but I can't help it this time--shat all over it. Ugh.
June 4, 2016
Like usual, this series delivers.
January 28, 2016
Jake is out of town, and the Animorphs learn that Visser Three has an Inspector observing his progress with the earth invasion. It is too good of an opportunity to pass up – smear campaign of Visser Three -- but they need a leader. Since this is Rachel’s book, two guesses who gets voted in as interim leader, even though Marco is clearly far and above the logical choice. Subsequently, they go with Rachel’s plan of hitting known Controller-run businesses hard and fast, one right after the other, to show the Inspector that Visser Three does not have the “Andalite bandits” under control, not by a long shot, and to give the impression that there are a lot more of them than there actually are. This despite the fact that they only hit one place at a time, and in the same morphs.
I read this book twice in the past week, the first time over several days, and the second time over a 12-hour period broken up by sleep. Both times I read it (despite hoping for a better perspective on the second go round), the writing style and tone sounded too short and simplistic for Rachel, and for an Animorphs book in general. It did not really sound like Rachel to me, in tone or in her actions. Part of that may be due to having to find a new personal dilemma for Rachel, as her divided personality towards the war (warrior princess vs. scared fashion model girl) was by and large resolved in her last book. The short-sentence style had its advantages most notably for the battle scenes, but also seemed like a cop-out of really digging into Rachel’s struggle in this book. What could have been an interesting exploration of her leadership and planning capabilities as well as how this war is breaking her, instead the book fell quite flat and short of what it could have been.
The tone so detracted from the overall story, plus the too-hasty devolution of Rachel, that I seriously considered giving it 1 star. I mean, since when has Rachel ever had some sort of want-to-be-a-leader-complex? She has always been the one willing to go in claws and teeth bared, but at the same time she knows how to listen to others. Here she just steamrolls any opposition to her plans as she lets the leader-power-complex get to her. Not to mention the whole running as humans into an airfield to highjack a plane. (Hello? Super lucky none of those humans were Controllers, that we know of!)
However, there were about three redeeming moments which salvaged it to get 2 stars instead (and because I have a tendency to be generous with my stars on this series): the moments where Tobias gives Rachel non-answers about his support of her/her plan, Marco chewing her out and then persuading her to come back, and the conversation between Rachel and Jake at the end. Those moments seemed the most real, the most true to the overall story, for me. (Notice, all of these moments are when other Animorphs really step in and carry weight in the story.)
I was the hero, the warrior, the king!
Quotes and comments under the cut:
I read this book twice in the past week, the first time over several days, and the second time over a 12-hour period broken up by sleep. Both times I read it (despite hoping for a better perspective on the second go round), the writing style and tone sounded too short and simplistic for Rachel, and for an Animorphs book in general. It did not really sound like Rachel to me, in tone or in her actions. Part of that may be due to having to find a new personal dilemma for Rachel, as her divided personality towards the war (warrior princess vs. scared fashion model girl) was by and large resolved in her last book. The short-sentence style had its advantages most notably for the battle scenes, but also seemed like a cop-out of really digging into Rachel’s struggle in this book. What could have been an interesting exploration of her leadership and planning capabilities as well as how this war is breaking her, instead the book fell quite flat and short of what it could have been.
The tone so detracted from the overall story, plus the too-hasty devolution of Rachel, that I seriously considered giving it 1 star. I mean, since when has Rachel ever had some sort of want-to-be-a-leader-complex? She has always been the one willing to go in claws and teeth bared, but at the same time she knows how to listen to others. Here she just steamrolls any opposition to her plans as she lets the leader-power-complex get to her. Not to mention the whole running as humans into an airfield to highjack a plane. (Hello? Super lucky none of those humans were Controllers, that we know of!)
However, there were about three redeeming moments which salvaged it to get 2 stars instead (and because I have a tendency to be generous with my stars on this series): the moments where Tobias gives Rachel non-answers about his support of her/her plan, Marco chewing her out and then persuading her to come back, and the conversation between Rachel and Jake at the end. Those moments seemed the most real, the most true to the overall story, for me. (Notice, all of these moments are when other Animorphs really step in and carry weight in the story.)
I was the hero, the warrior, the king!
Quotes and comments under the cut:
September 14, 2024
"It's a war," he said. "We do what we have to do because we're forced to do it, right?
February 23, 2022
I've used the word "goofy" in the past to describe the handful of Animorphs volumes that I haven't really cared for in this reread, reflecting those one-off premises that are simply too outlandish to take seriously even in the context of a YA franchise about teens turning into animals to fight alien parasites. This story, by contrast, is pretty well-grounded in its setup: Jake is out of town on a family matter, and when the opportunity for a time-sensitive mission comes up before he's back, the group agrees to let Rachel lead them in his stead. The execution, however, is just terrible, with plot holes aplenty and the protagonist feeling very out-of-character to me. Under ghostwriter Elise Smith, she reads more like her shortsighted and megalomaniacal 'Mean Rachel' persona from #32 The Separation than our regular heroine, a frustrating development that's neither called-out nor justified in the text. I enjoy this series so much overall that I can generally come up with enough redeeming elements to give most books at least a three-out-of-five-star rating, but this one is too compromised by its inadvertently-titular weaknesses.
Even outside of the narrator pumping herself up with mantras like "I was Rachel! Hero warrior and interim king!" the storyline is a mess. There's a new Yeerk overseer on earth, in a host body too fast to be effectively fought. The team barely escape from their first encounter with their lives, but decide at Rachel's urging that since the Inspector is here to evaluate Visser Three on behalf of his superiors, they'll carry out a rapid sequence of high-profile attacks on known Controllers, to make the enemy leader look bad. Cassie and the others rightfully worry about civilian casualties, which Rachel overrules and then agonizes over once an old man dies of a heart attack in front of her, but the whole strategy is bizarre. The kids are basically just barging into businesses with infested employees, causing some property damage, and leaving. On two occasions, they embarrass the Yeerks by forcibly stripping them, with no explanation of why an extraterrestrial slug would care about that or consideration of how the helpless human hosts might feel at this latest invasion of privacy and autonomy.
Indeed, the heroes are totally nonchalant here about the humans inside their foes, whom they usually try to avoid fighting. Rachel in bear morph squeezes one Controller so tightly his lungs are crushed, the veins in his neck stand out, and his face turns blue, yet no one says a thing. They also bring Ax on all of these public outings in his own Andalite form, even though they've previously gone to great lengths to keep his existence a secret from humanity. Later, when Rachel decides that they need to quickly hijack a private plane, everybody storms the airport without morphing, letting security guards and potentially cameras see their faces as they rush the tarmac and force their way onto the jet. (And then they intentionally fly that vehicle into an empty office tower to access the base hidden within, in an explosion which admittedly didn't have the unfortunate overtones of today upon the novel's pre-9/11 publication but is still such an extreme escalation. There would be a major investigation into something like that, with interviews of all the available witnesses! Why didn't they just use a morph to sneak onto their target undetected like they've done so many times beforehand?)
Eventually, the Animorphs square off against the villainous commanders again, and manage to take down the newcomer with venom from Marco's cobra morph, which I guess is faster than even the cheetahs that failed them at the start. And that's it! Visser Three chooses to verify his rival's death over finishing the slaughter of his true opponents, and the news treats everything as a fluke stampede across the city and unrelated plane crash. There's no future mention of any other Garatrons or their physical resemblance to Andalites after this despite how effective the creature was overall, just like there's no followup on any of the ways the gang exposed themselves here. When Jake gets back, he commiserates with Rachel on how hard it is to call the shots, and praises her for keeping everyone alive without him. It's just such a thoroughly mediocre exercise all-around, without even the ludicrous joy of the more overtly ridiculous titles.
[Content warning for body horror and gore.]
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Even outside of the narrator pumping herself up with mantras like "I was Rachel! Hero warrior and interim king!" the storyline is a mess. There's a new Yeerk overseer on earth, in a host body too fast to be effectively fought. The team barely escape from their first encounter with their lives, but decide at Rachel's urging that since the Inspector is here to evaluate Visser Three on behalf of his superiors, they'll carry out a rapid sequence of high-profile attacks on known Controllers, to make the enemy leader look bad. Cassie and the others rightfully worry about civilian casualties, which Rachel overrules and then agonizes over once an old man dies of a heart attack in front of her, but the whole strategy is bizarre. The kids are basically just barging into businesses with infested employees, causing some property damage, and leaving. On two occasions, they embarrass the Yeerks by forcibly stripping them, with no explanation of why an extraterrestrial slug would care about that or consideration of how the helpless human hosts might feel at this latest invasion of privacy and autonomy.
Indeed, the heroes are totally nonchalant here about the humans inside their foes, whom they usually try to avoid fighting. Rachel in bear morph squeezes one Controller so tightly his lungs are crushed, the veins in his neck stand out, and his face turns blue, yet no one says a thing. They also bring Ax on all of these public outings in his own Andalite form, even though they've previously gone to great lengths to keep his existence a secret from humanity. Later, when Rachel decides that they need to quickly hijack a private plane, everybody storms the airport without morphing, letting security guards and potentially cameras see their faces as they rush the tarmac and force their way onto the jet. (And then they intentionally fly that vehicle into an empty office tower to access the base hidden within, in an explosion which admittedly didn't have the unfortunate overtones of today upon the novel's pre-9/11 publication but is still such an extreme escalation. There would be a major investigation into something like that, with interviews of all the available witnesses! Why didn't they just use a morph to sneak onto their target undetected like they've done so many times beforehand?)
Eventually, the Animorphs square off against the villainous commanders again, and manage to take down the newcomer with venom from Marco's cobra morph, which I guess is faster than even the cheetahs that failed them at the start. And that's it! Visser Three chooses to verify his rival's death over finishing the slaughter of his true opponents, and the news treats everything as a fluke stampede across the city and unrelated plane crash. There's no future mention of any other Garatrons or their physical resemblance to Andalites after this despite how effective the creature was overall, just like there's no followup on any of the ways the gang exposed themselves here. When Jake gets back, he commiserates with Rachel on how hard it is to call the shots, and praises her for keeping everyone alive without him. It's just such a thoroughly mediocre exercise all-around, without even the ludicrous joy of the more overtly ridiculous titles.
[Content warning for body horror and gore.]
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--Throw me a quick one-time donation here!
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--Or click here to browse through all my previous reviews!
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August 7, 2014
Um, Rachel is outta control. When Jake went away she became temporary leader of the Animorphs and the first thing she did was tell them to smash everything. This is why the strongest and most vicious fighter should never be the one who tells everyone else what to do.
Notable moments and inconsistencies:
This book is ghostwritten by Elise Smith.
It seems very unlike Jake to leave town and not either appoint a leader or give any instructions. It makes this book read like filler.
There being no clear second-in-command after Jake, the alliances line up interestingly. Rachel has Cassie as a best friend and Tobias as a romantic interest, so both are more sympathetic to her with Jake gone. Since Ax won't take a stand and his closest friend in the group is also Tobias who is loyal to Rachel, it's clear that when it comes to people willing to follow her, Rachel wins IF the people who love her would actually vote for her. But since Marco is a very good strategist, he would be a good candidate for second-in-command if the others were willing to follow him. His downfall is his caution and indecisiveness, according to Rachel.
A creature called a Garatron is introduced in this book. It is Andalite-like, but very fast in both movement and speech.
When the Animorphs are wrecking a toy store, Cassie expresses that Marco should leave the books alone because she feels books are sacred. At the time that Cassie tells him not to wreck anything there, he's standing poised to knock over a section called "Intermediate Series." That's the category the Animorphs books were generally shelved in. Funny.
There are a couple of errors where someone who has already spoken ends up being given a second line immediately afterwards on a new paragraph as if speakers have changed, but they haven't. It's hard to follow.
Jake and Rachel refer to there being six Animorphs in this book. In other books they suggest that Ax isn't an "Animorph" because Andalites in the military all morph and don't need a special name to indicate their morphing capabilities. But it makes more sense to call Ax an Animorph since it stands for "Animal Morpher" and he does that, and is part of their team. This is just an inconsistency.
Notable moments and inconsistencies:
This book is ghostwritten by Elise Smith.
It seems very unlike Jake to leave town and not either appoint a leader or give any instructions. It makes this book read like filler.
There being no clear second-in-command after Jake, the alliances line up interestingly. Rachel has Cassie as a best friend and Tobias as a romantic interest, so both are more sympathetic to her with Jake gone. Since Ax won't take a stand and his closest friend in the group is also Tobias who is loyal to Rachel, it's clear that when it comes to people willing to follow her, Rachel wins IF the people who love her would actually vote for her. But since Marco is a very good strategist, he would be a good candidate for second-in-command if the others were willing to follow him. His downfall is his caution and indecisiveness, according to Rachel.
A creature called a Garatron is introduced in this book. It is Andalite-like, but very fast in both movement and speech.
When the Animorphs are wrecking a toy store, Cassie expresses that Marco should leave the books alone because she feels books are sacred. At the time that Cassie tells him not to wreck anything there, he's standing poised to knock over a section called "Intermediate Series." That's the category the Animorphs books were generally shelved in. Funny.
There are a couple of errors where someone who has already spoken ends up being given a second line immediately afterwards on a new paragraph as if speakers have changed, but they haven't. It's hard to follow.
Jake and Rachel refer to there being six Animorphs in this book. In other books they suggest that Ax isn't an "Animorph" because Andalites in the military all morph and don't need a special name to indicate their morphing capabilities. But it makes more sense to call Ax an Animorph since it stands for "Animal Morpher" and he does that, and is part of their team. This is just an inconsistency.
August 20, 2015
No, this is not the worst of the Animorphs--but it tries hard for the accolade and is a sad part of a usually fantastic series.
So I get that the Animorphs wouldn't necessarily have a pecking order in place in case Jake is out, even though that's super short-sighted, because I would figure he would do everything in his power to NEVER LEAVE AGAIN after the mess of The Conspiracy, but Rachel? Seriously? After Marco has proven himself several times over as a better judge of how to use the Animorphs and himself?
So we get full-on crazy Rachel who, here, lost all subtleties and basically became David, which was not awesome at all. It was as though the ghostwriter said oh look at Rachel's eventual fate, we should probably make sure no reader is EVEN REMOTELY surprised by it.
I also have no idea what purpose the Garatron served, although that may be something that comes in again later that I've forgotten. I did like the way that Tobias becomes a rudder for Rachel (sort of) and the continuing weirdnesses of their relationship, and I also appreciated Rachel's moment with Jake at the tail end of the book (HOLY CROW THE FEELS when his mask drops for just one instant JAKE I HEART YOU SO MUCH), although I don't understand why he didn't have the frustration with Rachel that he had in The Exposed unless it was a we-need-to-end-this-book thing.
And one other complaint--this had the same weird narrative choppiness that The Mutation had. Seriously, writers, compound sentences aren't a crime. Use them, please oh please.
This could have been a really great piece if the ghostwriter had had any idea of how to handle Rachel as a complex character, but sadly it just fell flat as can be. Snaps to Marco for holding things together, that's about all I got out of it.
So I get that the Animorphs wouldn't necessarily have a pecking order in place in case Jake is out, even though that's super short-sighted, because I would figure he would do everything in his power to NEVER LEAVE AGAIN after the mess of The Conspiracy, but Rachel? Seriously? After Marco has proven himself several times over as a better judge of how to use the Animorphs and himself?
So we get full-on crazy Rachel who, here, lost all subtleties and basically became David, which was not awesome at all. It was as though the ghostwriter said oh look at Rachel's eventual fate, we should probably make sure no reader is EVEN REMOTELY surprised by it.
I also have no idea what purpose the Garatron served, although that may be something that comes in again later that I've forgotten. I did like the way that Tobias becomes a rudder for Rachel (sort of) and the continuing weirdnesses of their relationship, and I also appreciated Rachel's moment with Jake at the tail end of the book (HOLY CROW THE FEELS when his mask drops for just one instant JAKE I HEART YOU SO MUCH), although I don't understand why he didn't have the frustration with Rachel that he had in The Exposed unless it was a we-need-to-end-this-book thing.
And one other complaint--this had the same weird narrative choppiness that The Mutation had. Seriously, writers, compound sentences aren't a crime. Use them, please oh please.
This could have been a really great piece if the ghostwriter had had any idea of how to handle Rachel as a complex character, but sadly it just fell flat as can be. Snaps to Marco for holding things together, that's about all I got out of it.
June 8, 2024
1/5. What the ... did I just read. What kind of nimrod writes rachel like this. The ghost writer writes as though this is starfish book psycho Rachel... Nothing makes sense. Marco should have led.
Why the hell would you destroy your OWN #&$#ing TOWN.. the lives they probably ruined far outweigh any damned excuse!!!!!!! Think of all the people who probably lost a job, or lost money. Its not like they killed any bloody Yeerks even... where is the point in this. Cassie sure as hell would never have gone along wth this bulkshit psycotic plan!!!
Going to an airbase in human form. being spotted. and shrugging that off is not damn well acceptable. This series has taught us time and again that acrions HAVE consequences!!!
I agree with others. Lets just ... forget this crappy book and pretend it never happened! I could rant so much more but writing reviews on my cellphone is somewhat inconvient and this book doesnt deserve my time. I feel cheated enough already. RAGE RAGE RAGE!!!!
Why the hell would you destroy your OWN #&$#ing TOWN.. the lives they probably ruined far outweigh any damned excuse!!!!!!! Think of all the people who probably lost a job, or lost money. Its not like they killed any bloody Yeerks even... where is the point in this. Cassie sure as hell would never have gone along wth this bulkshit psycotic plan!!!
Going to an airbase in human form. being spotted. and shrugging that off is not damn well acceptable. This series has taught us time and again that acrions HAVE consequences!!!
I agree with others. Lets just ... forget this crappy book and pretend it never happened! I could rant so much more but writing reviews on my cellphone is somewhat inconvient and this book doesnt deserve my time. I feel cheated enough already. RAGE RAGE RAGE!!!!
November 13, 2018
(Full review here at the thelibraryladies.com.)
Narrator: Rachel
Plot: Ugh, I don’t want to. I don’t want to! This is probably the first time I’ve been truly uninspired to write up one of these recaps. The closest other instance was probably…also a Rachel book back with the split personality thing. And given her characterization in this book, I guess it’s hardly surprising that I’d find this one to be torture. It’s as if the ghost writer only read the megalomaniac!Rachel chapters from that one book and then went straight into writing this one. It’s truly, truly awful. So, with those bright thoughts, here we go!
Jake is out of town and the Animorphs have discovered the location of Visser Three’s new feeding ground. Knowing that he regularly changes this location, they decide they need to strike now and strike fast. They also decide to go with a new morph, the fastest mammal on the earth, the cheetah. Conveniently, the Gardens just got a pair. They acquire the morph (don’t ask how! details like this don’t matter!) and head off to the meadow. There, with no plan whatsoever, they morph cheetahs and take off after the Visser. Of course, things don’t go as they planned and the HUGELY OBVIOUS downside of their morphs, the very limited endurance of the cheetah, quickly becomes a problem as they fail to capture the Visser and begin getting taken down by some new super speedy creature. When it finally stops, they discover a new species that looks vaguely similar to Andalites and which has fallen to the control of the Yeerks. This particular one is infested by a Yeerk who identifies himself as Councilor Thirteen, an up-and-comer who is on Earth to monitor Visser Three’s progress with the Andalite bandits and who aspires to a position on the Council itself.
After the Animorphs manage to drag themselves away, they gather back in the barn to discuss what to do with this new information. They all decide that this opportunity is too good to resist (is it?? is it really??) and that they should do something to further discredit Visser Three. But without Jake as a leader, the group worries that they will not be able to effectively make decisions as they go along. They need to elect someone temporarily. Rachel is super gung-ho for the job. For reasons. Mostly having to do with mentally calling herself an unconquerable hero and other bizarre ego-maniacal terms. Marco puts up a brief resistance, but it never goes to a vote as he figures Cassie and Tobias would both vote Rachel and Ax, as always, has taken himself out of the equation.
Rachel comes up with the “brilliant” plan (one of many the group has in this book!) that the best way to discredit Visser Three is to out-right attack and terrorize known Controllers in their places of work, causing general mayhem and destruction and convincing the Inspector that there are more Andalite bandits than they had suspected. They move forward with this plan, starting with a TV studio that they completely trash while terrifying a group of tourists who happen to be stopping by, one of whom is an elderly man who collapses from the shock. They locate the Controller, Rachel delivers their “threat,” and they all bounce. The team continues this tactic all around town, destroying businesses and “threatening” the one Controller who works there. Rachel revels in all of the action and is generally riding high throughout it all (I mean, like, actually “high.” She seriously read as if she was one on some type if stimulant or in the middle of a manic episode).
And here they would have Hork-Bajir shock troops. A very different proposition from scaring off civilians and roughing up human-Controllers. I wasn’t sure exactly what we’d do once we got there. But I knew I’d figure out something. I was Rachel! Hero warrior and interim king!
(Seriously, this is just one of the many quotes I highlighted where Rachel reads as truly insane. This could have easily fit in the mean!Rachel chapters in the starfish book without any adjustment needed. And here, we’re supposed to buy that this is just normal Rachel…)
As they go, the remaining members of the team begin to feel more and more unsure about this plan, especially worrying about the elderly gentleman who collapsed at the TV studio. But Rachel disregards their concerns, and they save the biggest priority hit for last: the community center that The Sharing built and where Tobias was captured and tortured several books ago. Rachel has another brilliant idea for this attack specifically: they should all forego their comfortable, secure battle morphs and instead all morph their relatively under-used polar bear morphs. More power, more better! (Sure, Rachel never actually said that, but seriously, it wouldn’t be out of place with the rest of the nonsense she was spewing in this book.) The group pushes to investigate before barging in, but Rachel will have none of it.
The group powers in in their polar bear morphs. Unsurprisingly, the community center is much more equipped than the other human-operated places they had hit before. Not only is Visser Three himself there, but there are a bunch of Hork Bajir and the terrifyingly fast Councilor Thirteen himself. Visser Three inexplicably morphs some disgusting alien creature and then just as inexplicably demorphs said creature. The polar bear morphs quickly begin to fade, not able to cope with the extra heat in the building. They struggle to retreat, with Rachel staying behind to cover their backs. They finally make it out, but realize that Cassie is not with them, she’s been captured by the Yeerks. Around this time, they also overhear some local news that the older man at the TV studio died of a heart attack, and while he had suffered from this ailment for a long time and could have went “at any time,” the group, and specifically Rachel, still feel responsible.
Back in safety, the group gathers together and begins to fall apart. Marco is enraged. Tobias is silently judgemental. And Rachel breaks down crying, feeling like an utter failure (cuz duh, girl, you were). Marco is particularly harsh on her, accusing her of using her tears to garner sympathy and saying that she fought him for leadership and look where it go them. Defeated, she gives up, saying she will no longer be the leader, and that she alone will go into the Yeerk pool to somehow save Cassie. Marco follows her and says that while his analytical skills could have been used back at the community center, right now the group needed her, the reckless one who would suggest a crazy enough plot that might actually work in a situation as dire as this one. Rachel has another plan.
In their human form (!!!), the group climbs a fence at an airbase and steals a jet. With Ax at the wheel, they take off, barely making it when Ax decides to swerve a bit to miss a deer that just happened to stray into their path. Once in the air, the truly crazy part of the plan comes into action. The team has decided that the best path into the Yeerk pool is simply straight down through the roof of a building that the Yeerks have constructed directly above the pool. One by one, members of the Animorphs bail as birds (why were Tobias and Marco even on this part of the mission if they just had to get on and off??) until only Rachel is left to direct the plane in its crash. She hits the building, but is only partially morphed to bald eagle as the plane crashes through. Somehow, she completes her morph and escapes the plane just as the wreckage crashes into the Yeerk pool.
Mayhem ensues as the Yeerks rush to lock up all of the host bodies. In the midst of it all, eagle!Rachel spots polarbear!Cassie being held captive and brazenly attacks the Hork Bajir holding her. Together, they manage to break free, but before they can escape, Visser Three and the Inspector show up. Instead of quickly taking the two of them out, Visser Three poses a challenge to the Inspector, daring him to take out these two Andalite bandits right now, proving that he can do what Visser Three cannot. The Inspector attacks, and his speed quickly gives him the advantage over the two. As they fight, Tobias and harrier!Ax carrying cobra!Marco swoop down from the hole in the ceiling. Visser Three continues to taunt the Inspector, telling him that now is his opportunity to take out not two, but an entire group of Andalite warriors, that he will gladly give all credit to the Inspector and immediately resign as Visser if he pulls it off. Harrier!Ax drops cobra!Marco and begins demorphing to his Andalite form. From there, he engages the Inspector one-on-one. As they fight (Ax only barely managing to hold off the Inspector), cobra!Marco slithers up and strikes. As birds, one carrying Marco, the group flies away. Visser Three gloats over the dying Inspector and allows the group to leave.
On her own, Rachel visits the grandson of the man who died at the TV studio. She claims to have been in the studio when he died, and apologizes to the kid. He’s confused, but she quickly leaves. She runs into Jake on the way out and he explains that he talked to Cassie and Marco who filled him in. He reassures her that as long as the number of Animorphs alive is the same, she did OK. He also says the rest of the group said she did alright (what??). Rachel asks how Jake deals with it, being leader. She briefly glimpses his own terror at the task, but he quickly puts up his mask and claims that he just doesn’t think about it. Rachel tells him to never leave again.
Xena, Warrior Princess: Oh, god, it’s so terrible. For all my whining about the lack of character development for Jake in the last book…I take it back! I TAKE IT BACK!! That was sooo much better than the complete abuse that has been done to Rachel’s character in this book. I was truly serious when I said that this book reads as if the author had read zero, ZERO, of Rachel’s previous books other than the mean!Rachel chapters from the starfish book. It’d be laughable if it wasn’t so infuriating. She repeatedly refers to herself as the hero and the king, seemingly in all seriousness. Her behavior is off-the-wall crazy and she is power-hungry from the get-go. Gone is any of the careful consideration that was put into developing Rachel’s fears of what she is becoming. Oh no, instead she is sure that she is the absolute baddest most awesome hero ever. Again, she is seemingly sane and serious when she is thinking these things.
Her fight for leadership is also completely bizarre. Throughout the series we’ve seen some good interactions between Rachel and Jake specifically, and in none of them did it seem that Rachel coveted his role as leader. So it’s absolutely asinine to see her fighting so strongly for the role here. Further, her “plans” are absolutely ridiculous, to the point that it’s crazy to believe that any of the others would follow her on them. While Rachel is brave and reckless, this has most often manifested itself as based on her own fears of appearing cowardly or not upholding her role on the team. She knows that she is seen as the brave one, thus she has to be the brave one, and often we see the enormous burden that this puts on her. But nope! Here that recklessness and bravery just manifest as literal insanity and, frankly, stupidity.
She gets mildly better towards the end with the action down in the Yeerk pool, making decisions from the viewpoint that if someone was going to die or be left behind, it would be her. But even there, amidst even the better moments, she still refers to herself as the king. Ugh.
The scenes where she apologizes to the grandson and talks with Jake are also so truncated that they provide next to nothing. We don’t see any reflection, especially with the brief two paragraphs that we get with the grandson, and even her conversation with Jake never gets past the surface level. There is absolutely no pay off or explanation for the complete butchery that has happened to her character up to this point.
At one point we get this line from Marco, and honestly, he can’t be more right:
“Are you on medication?” Marco put his hands to his head. “No, I really want to know. Seriously. ‘Cause I think your dosage needs to be adjusted.”
Our Fearless Leader: Jake is gone for most of this book. When he does return, the conversation with Rachel is probably one of the stronger (??) parts of the book, but as I said above, even that was a big let-down. The Animorphs had just destroyed tons of businesses filled with regular people going about their lives and then topped it off by crashing a plane into a building. There is no way that A.) the others would have ever said that anything about this was “OK” and B.) that Jake wouldn’t flip out. I don’t care if he is trying to comfort Rachel about them all being alive in the end; this thing was such a complete shit show that if you actually stop and think about the repercussions, it has to be one of the biggest disasters the Animorphs have caused so far (other than the David incident, and arguably worse than that, considering the effects on innocents left by this). There’s no way Jake would just be patting her on the back about it all.
A Hawk’s Life: Most of Tobias’s role in this book is silently judging Rachel. Seriously, he uses the silent treatment on her repeatedly throughout the story and it was honestly one of the few times I actually felt bad for what Rachel was going through. In the past, we’ve seen the good influence that Tobias has had on Rachel and their ability to lean on each other to get through the tougher aspects of both of their ongoing struggles in the series. Here, it is acknowledged that Tobias and Rachel are together, but we see none of that support or care from him. Instead, like I said, there’s just a lot of silence and emotional abandonment. Sure, this version of Rachel also isn’t the one that we’ve seen before either, so I guess it makes sense that their relationship wouldn’t translate. But Tobias is kind of just a jerk here, too.
Peace, Love, and Animals: Cassie, on the other hand, is her usual supportive self of Rachel. While she again gets captured and ends up in the Yeerk pool (this is a bit of a trend with her, and I think it might say something about the character that she’s the easiest to leave out of big chunks of the story when the author is looking to have a character captured), she quickly teams up with eagle!Rachel and seemingly the two could have made their escape on their own had Visser Three and the Inspector not conveniently shown up. She also had one of the more fun lines from the book right after eagle!Rachel shows up in the Yeerk Pool:
I asked.
The Comic Relief: March is harsh. Truly mean at times. Yeah, this version of Rachel completely deserves it, but it’s still tough to read. In a long, LONG, list of questions that arose from this book, why Marco wasn’t immediately considered the leader is one of the first ones that popped up in my mind. For one, we’ve seen him successfully lead the group at least twice before. This alone would make him the obvious candidate. Beyond that, the entire group has, at one time or another in their own narrated books, pointed to Marco as the most strategic of the group. Plus, the idea that Cassie and Tobias would automatically vote for Rachel is beyond stupid. We’ve hardly ever seen any previous votes be affected by relationships like this, so to think that that would have been the case here is pretty silly. Marco does have a nice speech to Rachel towards the end about needing her reckless bravery to pull off a rescue of Cassie, but given that that plan itself was so truly terrible, one has to partly blame Marco as well for not being his usual brainy self and helping out here.
E.T./Ax Phone Home: I don’t know if it’s just because I’m grumpy at this book, but I’m also starting to feel like the whole “Ax removes himself from the decision making process” trope is getting super old. By this point in the series, Ax has been on Earth for close to two years or something. The period of time when he was not around is so brief that it hardly bares mentioning. Regardless of how he himself feels about his role in the group, I have to imagine the others would push back against this type of behavior. They’re all in this together, and that includes Ax. That is especially true of these challenging, voting situations. None of the rest have the privilege of just taking themselves out of the process, and it’s increasingly strange that it’s considered normal for Ax to do this.
Beyond that, there’s a very brief discussion about the resemblance of the Inspector’s host body to the anatomy of Andalites. There might have been something interesting to this, but nope! It’s completely dropped, and I honestly have no idea why the author even bothered to include it at all.
Best (?) Body Horror Moment: Visser Three’s morph in the community center is described as being really disgusting, just a stinky blob essentially. Again, among the many questionable things in this book is this morphing sequence all together. The morph itself really seems to be nothing more than folds of stinking fat. Sure, he’s pretty inpenetrable when polarbear!Rachel attacks, but he’s also not very mobile and we’ve seen a bunch of more successful morphs in the past that would have worked much better here. The stink of the alien does prove hard for the polar bear morphs to handle, but given the level of ignorance we’ve seen from Visser Three in the past as far as Earth creatures go, there’s zero chance he would have known that this would be the effect on these morphs. And then, like I said in the recap, after he throws Rachel at the wall one time, he just as strangely chooses to demorph.
Couples Watch!: Other than Cassie being referred to as Jake’s girlfriend, there’s really not much. Tobias and Rachel’s relationship is terrible here, mostly due to the poor characterization of Rachel herself. The Tobias we know would never even WANT to be in a relationship with this headcase, so it’s not surprising that the author struggled to write any believable moments between these two.
If Only Visser Three had Mustache to Twirl: Probably the best part of the book is the Yeerk politics, especially the moments we get in the Yeerk Pool as Visser Three gleefully watches the Inspector fail to kill/capture the Andalite bandits. Not only is his dialogue pretty funny, but it’s a gratifying look into how much respect Visser Three has unwillingly built for the Animorphs. The Inspector’s host body seems pretty unbeatable with his speed, but even against only two of the Animorphs, Visser Three is supremely confident that he will fail. It’s also always fun to see the Yeerks shoot themselves in the foot with their own politics. The Animorphs would have been done for way back in book #5 if the Yeerks’ power struggles weren’t out of control. And here, the Animorphs escape multiple times because Visser Three and the Inspector are more caught up in show-boating than anything else.
Adult Ugly Crying at a Middle Grade Book: Again, I cry over the remains of what used to be the incredible character work put into Rachel.
What a Terrible Plan, Guys!: There are so many! I mean, the entire book is made up of terrible plans! Let me list a few of them:
1.) Attacking business where a maximum of ONE known Controller works. Up to this point, the Animorphs have always operated very carefully in areas filled with regular people. But nope! That doesn’t matter now! Here, they destroy tons of businesses and terrorize countless people, all to deliver a very meaningless “threat” to one Controller at each location.
(Continued in full review on blog)
Narrator: Rachel
Plot: Ugh, I don’t want to. I don’t want to! This is probably the first time I’ve been truly uninspired to write up one of these recaps. The closest other instance was probably…also a Rachel book back with the split personality thing. And given her characterization in this book, I guess it’s hardly surprising that I’d find this one to be torture. It’s as if the ghost writer only read the megalomaniac!Rachel chapters from that one book and then went straight into writing this one. It’s truly, truly awful. So, with those bright thoughts, here we go!
Jake is out of town and the Animorphs have discovered the location of Visser Three’s new feeding ground. Knowing that he regularly changes this location, they decide they need to strike now and strike fast. They also decide to go with a new morph, the fastest mammal on the earth, the cheetah. Conveniently, the Gardens just got a pair. They acquire the morph (don’t ask how! details like this don’t matter!) and head off to the meadow. There, with no plan whatsoever, they morph cheetahs and take off after the Visser. Of course, things don’t go as they planned and the HUGELY OBVIOUS downside of their morphs, the very limited endurance of the cheetah, quickly becomes a problem as they fail to capture the Visser and begin getting taken down by some new super speedy creature. When it finally stops, they discover a new species that looks vaguely similar to Andalites and which has fallen to the control of the Yeerks. This particular one is infested by a Yeerk who identifies himself as Councilor Thirteen, an up-and-comer who is on Earth to monitor Visser Three’s progress with the Andalite bandits and who aspires to a position on the Council itself.
After the Animorphs manage to drag themselves away, they gather back in the barn to discuss what to do with this new information. They all decide that this opportunity is too good to resist (is it?? is it really??) and that they should do something to further discredit Visser Three. But without Jake as a leader, the group worries that they will not be able to effectively make decisions as they go along. They need to elect someone temporarily. Rachel is super gung-ho for the job. For reasons. Mostly having to do with mentally calling herself an unconquerable hero and other bizarre ego-maniacal terms. Marco puts up a brief resistance, but it never goes to a vote as he figures Cassie and Tobias would both vote Rachel and Ax, as always, has taken himself out of the equation.
Rachel comes up with the “brilliant” plan (one of many the group has in this book!) that the best way to discredit Visser Three is to out-right attack and terrorize known Controllers in their places of work, causing general mayhem and destruction and convincing the Inspector that there are more Andalite bandits than they had suspected. They move forward with this plan, starting with a TV studio that they completely trash while terrifying a group of tourists who happen to be stopping by, one of whom is an elderly man who collapses from the shock. They locate the Controller, Rachel delivers their “threat,” and they all bounce. The team continues this tactic all around town, destroying businesses and “threatening” the one Controller who works there. Rachel revels in all of the action and is generally riding high throughout it all (I mean, like, actually “high.” She seriously read as if she was one on some type if stimulant or in the middle of a manic episode).
And here they would have Hork-Bajir shock troops. A very different proposition from scaring off civilians and roughing up human-Controllers. I wasn’t sure exactly what we’d do once we got there. But I knew I’d figure out something. I was Rachel! Hero warrior and interim king!
(Seriously, this is just one of the many quotes I highlighted where Rachel reads as truly insane. This could have easily fit in the mean!Rachel chapters in the starfish book without any adjustment needed. And here, we’re supposed to buy that this is just normal Rachel…)
As they go, the remaining members of the team begin to feel more and more unsure about this plan, especially worrying about the elderly gentleman who collapsed at the TV studio. But Rachel disregards their concerns, and they save the biggest priority hit for last: the community center that The Sharing built and where Tobias was captured and tortured several books ago. Rachel has another brilliant idea for this attack specifically: they should all forego their comfortable, secure battle morphs and instead all morph their relatively under-used polar bear morphs. More power, more better! (Sure, Rachel never actually said that, but seriously, it wouldn’t be out of place with the rest of the nonsense she was spewing in this book.) The group pushes to investigate before barging in, but Rachel will have none of it.
The group powers in in their polar bear morphs. Unsurprisingly, the community center is much more equipped than the other human-operated places they had hit before. Not only is Visser Three himself there, but there are a bunch of Hork Bajir and the terrifyingly fast Councilor Thirteen himself. Visser Three inexplicably morphs some disgusting alien creature and then just as inexplicably demorphs said creature. The polar bear morphs quickly begin to fade, not able to cope with the extra heat in the building. They struggle to retreat, with Rachel staying behind to cover their backs. They finally make it out, but realize that Cassie is not with them, she’s been captured by the Yeerks. Around this time, they also overhear some local news that the older man at the TV studio died of a heart attack, and while he had suffered from this ailment for a long time and could have went “at any time,” the group, and specifically Rachel, still feel responsible.
Back in safety, the group gathers together and begins to fall apart. Marco is enraged. Tobias is silently judgemental. And Rachel breaks down crying, feeling like an utter failure (cuz duh, girl, you were). Marco is particularly harsh on her, accusing her of using her tears to garner sympathy and saying that she fought him for leadership and look where it go them. Defeated, she gives up, saying she will no longer be the leader, and that she alone will go into the Yeerk pool to somehow save Cassie. Marco follows her and says that while his analytical skills could have been used back at the community center, right now the group needed her, the reckless one who would suggest a crazy enough plot that might actually work in a situation as dire as this one. Rachel has another plan.
In their human form (!!!), the group climbs a fence at an airbase and steals a jet. With Ax at the wheel, they take off, barely making it when Ax decides to swerve a bit to miss a deer that just happened to stray into their path. Once in the air, the truly crazy part of the plan comes into action. The team has decided that the best path into the Yeerk pool is simply straight down through the roof of a building that the Yeerks have constructed directly above the pool. One by one, members of the Animorphs bail as birds (why were Tobias and Marco even on this part of the mission if they just had to get on and off??) until only Rachel is left to direct the plane in its crash. She hits the building, but is only partially morphed to bald eagle as the plane crashes through. Somehow, she completes her morph and escapes the plane just as the wreckage crashes into the Yeerk pool.
Mayhem ensues as the Yeerks rush to lock up all of the host bodies. In the midst of it all, eagle!Rachel spots polarbear!Cassie being held captive and brazenly attacks the Hork Bajir holding her. Together, they manage to break free, but before they can escape, Visser Three and the Inspector show up. Instead of quickly taking the two of them out, Visser Three poses a challenge to the Inspector, daring him to take out these two Andalite bandits right now, proving that he can do what Visser Three cannot. The Inspector attacks, and his speed quickly gives him the advantage over the two. As they fight, Tobias and harrier!Ax carrying cobra!Marco swoop down from the hole in the ceiling. Visser Three continues to taunt the Inspector, telling him that now is his opportunity to take out not two, but an entire group of Andalite warriors, that he will gladly give all credit to the Inspector and immediately resign as Visser if he pulls it off. Harrier!Ax drops cobra!Marco and begins demorphing to his Andalite form. From there, he engages the Inspector one-on-one. As they fight (Ax only barely managing to hold off the Inspector), cobra!Marco slithers up and strikes. As birds, one carrying Marco, the group flies away. Visser Three gloats over the dying Inspector and allows the group to leave.
On her own, Rachel visits the grandson of the man who died at the TV studio. She claims to have been in the studio when he died, and apologizes to the kid. He’s confused, but she quickly leaves. She runs into Jake on the way out and he explains that he talked to Cassie and Marco who filled him in. He reassures her that as long as the number of Animorphs alive is the same, she did OK. He also says the rest of the group said she did alright (what??). Rachel asks how Jake deals with it, being leader. She briefly glimpses his own terror at the task, but he quickly puts up his mask and claims that he just doesn’t think about it. Rachel tells him to never leave again.
Xena, Warrior Princess: Oh, god, it’s so terrible. For all my whining about the lack of character development for Jake in the last book…I take it back! I TAKE IT BACK!! That was sooo much better than the complete abuse that has been done to Rachel’s character in this book. I was truly serious when I said that this book reads as if the author had read zero, ZERO, of Rachel’s previous books other than the mean!Rachel chapters from the starfish book. It’d be laughable if it wasn’t so infuriating. She repeatedly refers to herself as the hero and the king, seemingly in all seriousness. Her behavior is off-the-wall crazy and she is power-hungry from the get-go. Gone is any of the careful consideration that was put into developing Rachel’s fears of what she is becoming. Oh no, instead she is sure that she is the absolute baddest most awesome hero ever. Again, she is seemingly sane and serious when she is thinking these things.
Her fight for leadership is also completely bizarre. Throughout the series we’ve seen some good interactions between Rachel and Jake specifically, and in none of them did it seem that Rachel coveted his role as leader. So it’s absolutely asinine to see her fighting so strongly for the role here. Further, her “plans” are absolutely ridiculous, to the point that it’s crazy to believe that any of the others would follow her on them. While Rachel is brave and reckless, this has most often manifested itself as based on her own fears of appearing cowardly or not upholding her role on the team. She knows that she is seen as the brave one, thus she has to be the brave one, and often we see the enormous burden that this puts on her. But nope! Here that recklessness and bravery just manifest as literal insanity and, frankly, stupidity.
She gets mildly better towards the end with the action down in the Yeerk pool, making decisions from the viewpoint that if someone was going to die or be left behind, it would be her. But even there, amidst even the better moments, she still refers to herself as the king. Ugh.
The scenes where she apologizes to the grandson and talks with Jake are also so truncated that they provide next to nothing. We don’t see any reflection, especially with the brief two paragraphs that we get with the grandson, and even her conversation with Jake never gets past the surface level. There is absolutely no pay off or explanation for the complete butchery that has happened to her character up to this point.
At one point we get this line from Marco, and honestly, he can’t be more right:
“Are you on medication?” Marco put his hands to his head. “No, I really want to know. Seriously. ‘Cause I think your dosage needs to be adjusted.”
Our Fearless Leader: Jake is gone for most of this book. When he does return, the conversation with Rachel is probably one of the stronger (??) parts of the book, but as I said above, even that was a big let-down. The Animorphs had just destroyed tons of businesses filled with regular people going about their lives and then topped it off by crashing a plane into a building. There is no way that A.) the others would have ever said that anything about this was “OK” and B.) that Jake wouldn’t flip out. I don’t care if he is trying to comfort Rachel about them all being alive in the end; this thing was such a complete shit show that if you actually stop and think about the repercussions, it has to be one of the biggest disasters the Animorphs have caused so far (other than the David incident, and arguably worse than that, considering the effects on innocents left by this). There’s no way Jake would just be patting her on the back about it all.
A Hawk’s Life: Most of Tobias’s role in this book is silently judging Rachel. Seriously, he uses the silent treatment on her repeatedly throughout the story and it was honestly one of the few times I actually felt bad for what Rachel was going through. In the past, we’ve seen the good influence that Tobias has had on Rachel and their ability to lean on each other to get through the tougher aspects of both of their ongoing struggles in the series. Here, it is acknowledged that Tobias and Rachel are together, but we see none of that support or care from him. Instead, like I said, there’s just a lot of silence and emotional abandonment. Sure, this version of Rachel also isn’t the one that we’ve seen before either, so I guess it makes sense that their relationship wouldn’t translate. But Tobias is kind of just a jerk here, too.
Peace, Love, and Animals: Cassie, on the other hand, is her usual supportive self of Rachel. While she again gets captured and ends up in the Yeerk pool (this is a bit of a trend with her, and I think it might say something about the character that she’s the easiest to leave out of big chunks of the story when the author is looking to have a character captured), she quickly teams up with eagle!Rachel and seemingly the two could have made their escape on their own had Visser Three and the Inspector not conveniently shown up. She also had one of the more fun lines from the book right after eagle!Rachel shows up in the Yeerk Pool:
I asked.
The Comic Relief: March is harsh. Truly mean at times. Yeah, this version of Rachel completely deserves it, but it’s still tough to read. In a long, LONG, list of questions that arose from this book, why Marco wasn’t immediately considered the leader is one of the first ones that popped up in my mind. For one, we’ve seen him successfully lead the group at least twice before. This alone would make him the obvious candidate. Beyond that, the entire group has, at one time or another in their own narrated books, pointed to Marco as the most strategic of the group. Plus, the idea that Cassie and Tobias would automatically vote for Rachel is beyond stupid. We’ve hardly ever seen any previous votes be affected by relationships like this, so to think that that would have been the case here is pretty silly. Marco does have a nice speech to Rachel towards the end about needing her reckless bravery to pull off a rescue of Cassie, but given that that plan itself was so truly terrible, one has to partly blame Marco as well for not being his usual brainy self and helping out here.
E.T./Ax Phone Home: I don’t know if it’s just because I’m grumpy at this book, but I’m also starting to feel like the whole “Ax removes himself from the decision making process” trope is getting super old. By this point in the series, Ax has been on Earth for close to two years or something. The period of time when he was not around is so brief that it hardly bares mentioning. Regardless of how he himself feels about his role in the group, I have to imagine the others would push back against this type of behavior. They’re all in this together, and that includes Ax. That is especially true of these challenging, voting situations. None of the rest have the privilege of just taking themselves out of the process, and it’s increasingly strange that it’s considered normal for Ax to do this.
Beyond that, there’s a very brief discussion about the resemblance of the Inspector’s host body to the anatomy of Andalites. There might have been something interesting to this, but nope! It’s completely dropped, and I honestly have no idea why the author even bothered to include it at all.
Best (?) Body Horror Moment: Visser Three’s morph in the community center is described as being really disgusting, just a stinky blob essentially. Again, among the many questionable things in this book is this morphing sequence all together. The morph itself really seems to be nothing more than folds of stinking fat. Sure, he’s pretty inpenetrable when polarbear!Rachel attacks, but he’s also not very mobile and we’ve seen a bunch of more successful morphs in the past that would have worked much better here. The stink of the alien does prove hard for the polar bear morphs to handle, but given the level of ignorance we’ve seen from Visser Three in the past as far as Earth creatures go, there’s zero chance he would have known that this would be the effect on these morphs. And then, like I said in the recap, after he throws Rachel at the wall one time, he just as strangely chooses to demorph.
Couples Watch!: Other than Cassie being referred to as Jake’s girlfriend, there’s really not much. Tobias and Rachel’s relationship is terrible here, mostly due to the poor characterization of Rachel herself. The Tobias we know would never even WANT to be in a relationship with this headcase, so it’s not surprising that the author struggled to write any believable moments between these two.
If Only Visser Three had Mustache to Twirl: Probably the best part of the book is the Yeerk politics, especially the moments we get in the Yeerk Pool as Visser Three gleefully watches the Inspector fail to kill/capture the Andalite bandits. Not only is his dialogue pretty funny, but it’s a gratifying look into how much respect Visser Three has unwillingly built for the Animorphs. The Inspector’s host body seems pretty unbeatable with his speed, but even against only two of the Animorphs, Visser Three is supremely confident that he will fail. It’s also always fun to see the Yeerks shoot themselves in the foot with their own politics. The Animorphs would have been done for way back in book #5 if the Yeerks’ power struggles weren’t out of control. And here, the Animorphs escape multiple times because Visser Three and the Inspector are more caught up in show-boating than anything else.
Adult Ugly Crying at a Middle Grade Book: Again, I cry over the remains of what used to be the incredible character work put into Rachel.
What a Terrible Plan, Guys!: There are so many! I mean, the entire book is made up of terrible plans! Let me list a few of them:
1.) Attacking business where a maximum of ONE known Controller works. Up to this point, the Animorphs have always operated very carefully in areas filled with regular people. But nope! That doesn’t matter now! Here, they destroy tons of businesses and terrorize countless people, all to deliver a very meaningless “threat” to one Controller at each location.
(Continued in full review on blog)
January 6, 2022
Rachael's back for another round and it's an interesting one. She's been a mixed bag with her having some lesser filler-y ones that don't take full advantage of her deeper side. Lately she's been somewhat climbing out of that. Does that keep it up? It's complicated. Our ghostwriter is Elise Smith. Weirdly the wiki lists the books that Elise Donner did under her name. Maybe they are the same person but there's no evidence...as there's no info about this one either. I found nothing so not much has changed since Poparena's video.
Her writing is sort of a combo of the fast pace of Laura Weiss and what we saw last time that. As in, focus on short sentences fairly often, but here it at least matches the quick pace. This is hectic one that is always moving. It's the shortest one so far at 129 pages and it feels it. That can mean the writing is on the clumsy end. Poparena noted she uses odd sound effects a lot. As I said before, the series has been like that since day 1 but this does push it at times, again sometimes feeling like she just fell asleep on the keyboard. (Speaking of Laura, her vocab bug is still here, had to google a word again)
It's another one off ghostwriter, I can kinda see why they are one offs as the highlights in them seem to come more from the outline. Anyway, the plot this week is that Jake has left for a family thing, and this time Tom stayed at home. Natrually something comes up, in this case they found Visser 3's "feeding" place for his Andalite body and plan to use that chance to strike him. They need a leader for this with Jake gone and Rachel gets picked.
Given her whole deal is being impulsive, this proves to be a rough idea. So the thing with this one it's another known for being bad, tends to be rated lowly and such. ...But honestly I don't see it. This is another I like well enough that will be low on the rankings, so there is room for others to like it less but I found more to like than some others that are low for me. And for its flaws, I don't see anything really worth hating here.
It does feel clunky for sure, having to fit the usual deeper ideas into this action heavy fast paced plot. They must have a hard time here as they need a plot that can lend itself to action and be important enough for them to NEED to do this instead of waiting for Jake to come back. I'm not sure it pulls that off. The Visser 3 thing I mentioned is kind of a weak reason but later we discover this thing with him and this inspector and they plan to discredit Visser 3 and show how bad he is at all this.
That works better although we've already seen this kinda thing with him and Visser 1. There are off moments with Rachel, some of which make sense given the circumstance, some not so much. I get she's impulsive but some things push it. The biggest offender is a scene involving a plane that is just...for one in context I don't see how they thought it would work, and something happens that has aged quite poorly, let's say.
That said that, I mainly like this as I appreciate the core idea. This basically combines a Jake and Racheal book together. We've seen the struggles of being a leader, so this shows what happens when someone who is not qulaified is given that role. Rachel's impulsive side gets to be shown big time in this case and it does work. There are a few deeper moments that I like, like when she's thinking about this and the ending when Jake comes back.
The ending note is a nice cap so the theme it brings up at least gets some sort of decent conclusion. That surely puts it well above The Underground at least. So overall, it has some clunky stuff in it for sure that does bring it down. But I give it credit for having deeper Rachael inside again, and it mostly does what it wanted to do well enough.
It could have been better but it enough to make it work fine. Not the finest outing but I am kinda baffled by some of the hate here.
Next time, Ax gets another crack at it. Let's hope it improves from the last one. See ya then.
(BTW, we've had a couple in a row with no Eerk, so we've escaped that assault at least)
Her writing is sort of a combo of the fast pace of Laura Weiss and what we saw last time that. As in, focus on short sentences fairly often, but here it at least matches the quick pace. This is hectic one that is always moving. It's the shortest one so far at 129 pages and it feels it. That can mean the writing is on the clumsy end. Poparena noted she uses odd sound effects a lot. As I said before, the series has been like that since day 1 but this does push it at times, again sometimes feeling like she just fell asleep on the keyboard. (Speaking of Laura, her vocab bug is still here, had to google a word again)
It's another one off ghostwriter, I can kinda see why they are one offs as the highlights in them seem to come more from the outline. Anyway, the plot this week is that Jake has left for a family thing, and this time Tom stayed at home. Natrually something comes up, in this case they found Visser 3's "feeding" place for his Andalite body and plan to use that chance to strike him. They need a leader for this with Jake gone and Rachel gets picked.
Given her whole deal is being impulsive, this proves to be a rough idea. So the thing with this one it's another known for being bad, tends to be rated lowly and such. ...But honestly I don't see it. This is another I like well enough that will be low on the rankings, so there is room for others to like it less but I found more to like than some others that are low for me. And for its flaws, I don't see anything really worth hating here.
It does feel clunky for sure, having to fit the usual deeper ideas into this action heavy fast paced plot. They must have a hard time here as they need a plot that can lend itself to action and be important enough for them to NEED to do this instead of waiting for Jake to come back. I'm not sure it pulls that off. The Visser 3 thing I mentioned is kind of a weak reason but later we discover this thing with him and this inspector and they plan to discredit Visser 3 and show how bad he is at all this.
That works better although we've already seen this kinda thing with him and Visser 1. There are off moments with Rachel, some of which make sense given the circumstance, some not so much. I get she's impulsive but some things push it. The biggest offender is a scene involving a plane that is just...for one in context I don't see how they thought it would work, and something happens that has aged quite poorly, let's say.
That said that, I mainly like this as I appreciate the core idea. This basically combines a Jake and Racheal book together. We've seen the struggles of being a leader, so this shows what happens when someone who is not qulaified is given that role. Rachel's impulsive side gets to be shown big time in this case and it does work. There are a few deeper moments that I like, like when she's thinking about this and the ending when Jake comes back.
The ending note is a nice cap so the theme it brings up at least gets some sort of decent conclusion. That surely puts it well above The Underground at least. So overall, it has some clunky stuff in it for sure that does bring it down. But I give it credit for having deeper Rachael inside again, and it mostly does what it wanted to do well enough.
It could have been better but it enough to make it work fine. Not the finest outing but I am kinda baffled by some of the hate here.
Next time, Ax gets another crack at it. Let's hope it improves from the last one. See ya then.
(BTW, we've had a couple in a row with no Eerk, so we've escaped that assault at least)
August 18, 2021
Rachel is a very one-dimensional character, but usually she's written well enough. This book, there's not much more than her constant anger and pettiness. It seemed like a backslide for the character and without Jake the book wasn't the same. The reason the series is so good and the characters are interesting and well written, in the majority of the books every character is involved and brings something to the table. Jake was completely absent except for the last two or three pages, it just didn't make sense in the way the series has been going. Rachel's decisions seemed rash, even for her character and almost undid the entire series and what the series is building towards.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 2, 2025
Wish the setup had been better executed.
Rachel is put to the test when foisted into Jake's usual role, leader. She has to wrestle with her impulsiveness, lethality, and place within the group-- which are classic and rich Rachel reservoirs. But nearly all of the internal monologue (that can make or break an Animorphs book) read to me like 'I was so mean but I didn't care because I felt like a king.' Emotionally, the flow was lacking until the final pages.
Rachel is put to the test when foisted into Jake's usual role, leader. She has to wrestle with her impulsiveness, lethality, and place within the group-- which are classic and rich Rachel reservoirs. But nearly all of the internal monologue (that can make or break an Animorphs book) read to me like 'I was so mean but I didn't care because I felt like a king.' Emotionally, the flow was lacking until the final pages.
March 13, 2021
Grand Theft Auto: Animorphs
... for some reason
... for some reason
March 11, 2023
Rachel creates an alternative timeline where 9/11 never happens. Anyway, there are cheetahs or something too.
March 26, 2023
The writers absolutely dogged Rachel in this one. Could've been really good otherwise
May 19, 2025
3.75. My previous observations—first mentioned in my review of Book 17: The Underground—are revisited here in The Weakness, where the Animorphs find themselves without their leader and with an opportune moment to disrupt Visser Three’s command, thanks to a Yeerk Inspector arriving on Earth to assess the invasion’s progress.
As I noted before, what unfolds here echoes themes I touched on in my review of the The Underground. That book followed Rachel stepping up to save the day, and while she ultimately does the same here, this time, she is officially voted in as the Animorphs' temporary leader when doing so. My previous stance in my Underground review that she is the clear frontrunner for second-in-command gets tested in full, and the story cleverly takes the usual leadership exploration—often reserved for Jake's perspective—and gives it a fresh angle by telling it through Rachel’s eyes.
While the plot delivers what these books typically offer, its strength lies in its focus on Rachel—how her "let’s do it" attitude holds up when she is the one making the calls. As expected, she begins confidently, but hubris soon takes over, leading to dramatic consequences. Though Rachel’s choices and the fallout they create are open to criticism, the book wisely avoids outright condemning her. Instead, this judgment comes through the right person: Marco. He is often skeptical of her impulsive, action-first approach, but he understands that it has a place in their war against the Yeerks. His ability to acknowledge this—even as he is proven right in his critique—speaks volumes about his character. Rachel is a hammer, and Marco respects that, which becomes evident in his actions after everything falls apart.
Also worth mentioning is something I’ve often criticized—the series' tendency to end books without a proper resolution. While not always the case, there have been many instances where an extra chapter was sorely needed but absent. Thankfully, The Weakness avoids that pitfall. The final chapter, where Jake and Rachel take a walk to discuss the burdens of leadership, is the perfect capstone to this story. Their conversation is packed with revelations and newfound understandings that neither had before this adventure. It’s a crucial moment of growth between them that needed to happen—had it not, I’d be complaining about it. Fortunately, the book gods were merciful this time around.
A bit hurried at around 105 pages, but well done nonetheless.
43 down, 19 to go.
As I noted before, what unfolds here echoes themes I touched on in my review of the The Underground. That book followed Rachel stepping up to save the day, and while she ultimately does the same here, this time, she is officially voted in as the Animorphs' temporary leader when doing so. My previous stance in my Underground review that she is the clear frontrunner for second-in-command gets tested in full, and the story cleverly takes the usual leadership exploration—often reserved for Jake's perspective—and gives it a fresh angle by telling it through Rachel’s eyes.
While the plot delivers what these books typically offer, its strength lies in its focus on Rachel—how her "let’s do it" attitude holds up when she is the one making the calls. As expected, she begins confidently, but hubris soon takes over, leading to dramatic consequences. Though Rachel’s choices and the fallout they create are open to criticism, the book wisely avoids outright condemning her. Instead, this judgment comes through the right person: Marco. He is often skeptical of her impulsive, action-first approach, but he understands that it has a place in their war against the Yeerks. His ability to acknowledge this—even as he is proven right in his critique—speaks volumes about his character. Rachel is a hammer, and Marco respects that, which becomes evident in his actions after everything falls apart.
Also worth mentioning is something I’ve often criticized—the series' tendency to end books without a proper resolution. While not always the case, there have been many instances where an extra chapter was sorely needed but absent. Thankfully, The Weakness avoids that pitfall. The final chapter, where Jake and Rachel take a walk to discuss the burdens of leadership, is the perfect capstone to this story. Their conversation is packed with revelations and newfound understandings that neither had before this adventure. It’s a crucial moment of growth between them that needed to happen—had it not, I’d be complaining about it. Fortunately, the book gods were merciful this time around.
A bit hurried at around 105 pages, but well done nonetheless.
43 down, 19 to go.
August 24, 2024
The thing is that I enjoyed reading this Trainwreck from start to finish, and for that I give it +1 star. The ridiculous escalation... I couldn't tear my eyes away.
The other thing is that this book is not canon. idc. it cannot be. Not this far into the series, where we as readers know how these characters behave and respond to situations. Rachel is impulsive and reckless, yes, but she's not idiotic! And the rest of the animorphs have way WAY more backbone than what they showed here. And Jake literally calls out Rachel for something MUCH more minor in the squid book, but he's all ok here??? Insane. I could follow the logic of wanting to disrupt the yeerks to destroy Visser Three's reputation. Disrupt. not DESTROY and cause thousands in collateral damage. like WHAT.
Ax made sense. Tobias and Cassie have cut in to express their "unpopular "opinions in previous installments, so it didn't make any sense for them to be as complacent as they were. Hell, Tobias I kinda understand, but CASSIE? Tree hugger??? Being okay with killing a random old man?!?!And Marco would absolutely not follow this insanity as easily as he did.
Wew. Rachel you deserved so much better. Subtlety was all but a lost art form in this book
I'm now glad Ax and Tobias books are so sparse. I imagine if they had more installments, their "fish out of water" and "angst angst angst" archetypes respectively would've been flanderized to hell and back.
The other thing is that this book is not canon. idc. it cannot be. Not this far into the series, where we as readers know how these characters behave and respond to situations. Rachel is impulsive and reckless, yes, but she's not idiotic! And the rest of the animorphs have way WAY more backbone than what they showed here. And Jake literally calls out Rachel for something MUCH more minor in the squid book, but he's all ok here??? Insane. I could follow the logic of wanting to disrupt the yeerks to destroy Visser Three's reputation. Disrupt. not DESTROY and cause thousands in collateral damage. like WHAT.
Ax made sense. Tobias and Cassie have cut in to express their "unpopular "opinions in previous installments, so it didn't make any sense for them to be as complacent as they were. Hell, Tobias I kinda understand, but CASSIE? Tree hugger??? Being okay with killing a random old man?!?!And Marco would absolutely not follow this insanity as easily as he did.
Wew. Rachel you deserved so much better. Subtlety was all but a lost art form in this book
I'm now glad Ax and Tobias books are so sparse. I imagine if they had more installments, their "fish out of water" and "angst angst angst" archetypes respectively would've been flanderized to hell and back.
June 20, 2022
The Weakness is correct. There's a lot of books in the next cycle-or-so that are Bad, but in true Rachel stan cavalry, I've come in to say that this one, this one is Bad First. This is the same Rachel who in #30 said that her choice upon being forced to make the decision to kill a loved one would be to wait for someone to make the decision for her. Rachel from #32 who is driven by duty. That's the Rachel who in this book is megalomaniacally competitive with her cousin. I legitimately believe Rachel's not perfect, actually, she's really flawed, but I think that the last half of the series tends to, ESPECIALLY when ghostwriters are involved, believe what the other Animorphs say about Rachel as flawed narrators who are justifying their own actions through the lens of her brutality, and that is how Rachel gets heaped with garbage characterization like this. I don't think Rachel would even take over the team in a situation like this, I think Marco would. Marco has. Jake isn't invincible, and I don't know why this book would want to make a point like "Rachel's bad leadership causes problems" as if they're making a general point on brute strength being bad strategy when Rachel already knows this isn't her position, and other books have hammered the point in much better. There are, at least, some good Rachel/Tobias conflict and some better Rachel/Marco scenes, because their similar feelings on the role of violence gel well and Marco is great at getting to her. Also yeah why did Cassie get fridged in this one? Not like, permanently, but Cassie getting captured made me roll my eyes. Cassie doesn't do enough in this book. Cassie had less and less to do with Rachel, which I'm going to clock as deliberate but disappointing, since the books in the teens, when they were best friends. Probably realistic given their roles in the group but I wish the series had cared more about their friendship.
Final speech from Jake, because even bad Animorphs books can stick the landing sometimes:
“Maybe. But how do you make decisions that get your friends hurt? That maybe someday will
get us killed? How do you keep it from getting inside your head and just eating away at you?”
Then I saw something strange on his face. For just a fleeting moment it was the face of a terrified
kid on the edge of tears. It shocked me. I knew what I was seeing. It was my face when I’d realized
the old man had died. My face when I thought I’d lost Cassie forever.
But then the mask came down. And he was Jake again. “I don’t think about it,” he lied.
Gotta love the Berensons.
Final speech from Jake, because even bad Animorphs books can stick the landing sometimes:
“Maybe. But how do you make decisions that get your friends hurt? That maybe someday will
get us killed? How do you keep it from getting inside your head and just eating away at you?”
Then I saw something strange on his face. For just a fleeting moment it was the face of a terrified
kid on the edge of tears. It shocked me. I knew what I was seeing. It was my face when I’d realized
the old man had died. My face when I thought I’d lost Cassie forever.
But then the mask came down. And he was Jake again. “I don’t think about it,” he lied.
Gotta love the Berensons.
Read
July 29, 2011At this point, it seems like the ghost writers aren't even trying to sound similar to Applegate's writing style anymore. Not to say this was a bad book by any means, but similar to the last book, it definitely feels like this could be considered a great book if it hadn't been a random Animorphs plot. Especially the way it ends, you can tell the ghost writer just did not give a shit-- it was their way or the highway. This was actually my second time read this book, but I couldn't remember this plot at all from the first time I read it (which was a little over a year ago). I definitely didn't remember those weird Andalite-type things. The new species they have been adding to the series lately have become way too ridiculous. I liked it when only one or two species were considered whacky or cartoonish in some way, not when all of them are like that. It just makes the series seem weirder on a "you're trying too hard" level rather than a "weird but it works" level. I can't decide whether this plot is more realistic or more unrealistic. I felt like in Animorphs reality, the others wouldn't have gone with Rachel's plan at all, especially considering how experienced they now are (I'm assuming it's been about 2 years, so they're about 15 years old). Rachel was definitely converting back to her old ways as if she hasn't learned anything from her pas experiences. On the other hand, you could consider this more realistic, because isn't this something you would just do if you were in charge? I feel like the ghost writers have more fun with the scripts than Applegate ever did. They always seem to include more running jokes. However, this weird thing with Marco saying, "I know, I know, I'll shut up" whenever Rachel says his name is really starting to irk me. First of all, when did that start? Rachel never really called Marco an idiot or anything like that previously. She teased him a lot, sure, but they didn't have that weird goofball chemistry that cartoon characters have in that way. Not at all. In fact, it's common knowledge that Marco is one of the smarter Animorphs, so it doesn't even make sense for her to be like this. I guess we could just take this as a subtle hint that Rachel has started her period? That's what I got out of this, anyway.
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