Maybe she wanted it to be Yosemite and the publisher wanted it to be Yellowstone?
It's definitely a case of "But Yellowstone has the wolves and Cassie is a wolf, so..."
Unrelated but I always forget how much older Patagonia is as a fashion company. It feels like I only noticed it in 2015 but nah, it's been there all along.
I do like this little bit we get of Tobias. Even with how much he hasn't coped he's still at least in touch with Toby and Cassie (and hopefully Loren) which is better than him going full hermit at least. Like he seems more functional than Jake was pre-Hague which is an interesting contrast, even if his choice to live as a hawk in the middle of nowhere is not something most people would ever choose.
It has a different air of melancholy doesn't it? Jake you feel bad of what was lost, and Tobias you feel bad because of what was denied. I suppose that's a minor semantics difference, but contextually you know what I mean.
I appreciated the small line about Tobias using a bear morph to scare away wolves/cougars. He really does carry the few things he has with him everywhere.
Berenson, you son of a bitch, I'm in
I do like this little bit we get of Tobias. Even with how much he hasn't coped he's still at least in touch with Toby and Cassie (and hopefully Loren) which is better than him going full hermit at least. Like he seems more functional than Jake was pre-Hague which is an interesting contrast, even if his choice to live as a hawk in the middle of nowhere is not something most people would ever choose.
In memory I had Tobias at the bottom of the ladder when it comes to Who's Coping After The War, but I had completely forgotten that he was in touch with not only Cassie but also the free Hork-Bajir. I think that actually makes a world of difference. He never really wanted to go back to living as a human, he sure as hell doesn't want to do that without Rachel, so staying as a hawk is by no means a negative decision and he's still maintaining contact with the people he wants to maintain contact with. Not saying he's healthily processing the trauma of losing Rachel, but I no longer think he's doing worse than Jake was either.
I appreciated the small line about Tobias using a bear morph to scare away wolves/cougars. He really does carry the few things he has with him everywhere.
Must be a hell of a shock to encounter a polar bear in California
Fuck I just realized how deep into this book we are. They're gonna get the band back together and the book will end, won't it? FUCK!
I do wish we heard something about Loren. She met her son after who knows how long, then he disappears?
I do wish we heard something about Loren. She met her son after who knows how long, then he disappears?
There is unfortunately a lot of people and plot threads that we don't really get a real resolution for, and it's kind of a shame.
If they ever revisit the series, I would LOVE like, an Alloran book dealing with his PTSD and what he does post-war and how he reintegrates with Andalite society, if he's even able to do that at all.
We're talking tonight off. The next two chapters will be tomorrow, and the book will be done on Wednesday.
We're talking tonight off. The next two chapters will be tomorrow, and the book will be done on Wednesday.
And then it's time for Alternamorphs!
And then it's time for Alternamorphs!
i like you all better than that,
i like you all better than that,
I don't. I could do it.
Chapter 19-Marco
quote:
I had nine million four hundred and thirty-two thousand dollars in my Merrill Lynch account. Mostly in stocks, some bonds.
My TV show was doing fine, winning its time slot, although viewership in the critical demographic was falling off a little.
I had a girlfriend. She was a model/actress. She was not, shall we say, a genius. But she was beautiful and sweet and about a foot taller than me.
I had seven cars. A butler named Wetherbee. (Actually his name was McPherson, but I liked the sound of 'Wetherbee.') I had two maids. I had a time-share deal on a jet. I had the house in Santa Barbara, the pied-a-terre in New York and was looking at a little place in Tuscany. So exactly why was I spending my time morphing to lobster in order to crawl along the bottom of my swimming pool?
I hadn't done the lobster morph in a long, long time. It seemed like a million years ago I'd used it
to escape the Yeerks by hiding in a grocery store's fresh fish tank.
The days, man. Those were the days.
I watched, fascinated, as my skin turned hard. It was cool. Like my fingernails were expanding to cover my entire body. Not red, by the way, no lobster wants to be red because you don't get red until you've been boiled. No, this was more of a mottled blue thing. My fingers melted together and covered over with blue fingernail and my whole hand began to swell up. Like I'd hit it with a hammer. Then this big mass split in two, separating into the halves of a pincer.
Tiny, waving legs erupted from my diaphragm and that's when the doorbell rang. Wetherbee would get it and get rid of whatever fan was there for an autograph. I was just losing my legs and eyes when Jake walked in.
"Well, if it isn't Lobster Boy."
<Hey, Jake. Remember this morph?>
"Uh-huh. Some reason why you're morphing to lobster?"
<Ummmm ... I dropped my keys down in the pool? I was going to go get them?>
"Well, then it's a good thing you have the ability to turn into a lobster, because otherwise, what would you do? I mean, normal people, they drop their keys in the pool, they're just totally helpless. Those keys stay down there. Forever."
I stopped the morph before I lost my eyes and began to reverse it. As soon as I had a mouth I said, "You seem perky, today. You want something to drink?"
"What are you going to do, morph to cow and squeeze me out a glass of two percent?"
"I take that as a no? Wetherbee? Can you bring out a diet Coke?" I looked closely at Jake. "There's definitely something wrong with you, Jake. You're being way too clever. Way too quick. What's up? You finally go on Prozac?"
He winced a little and I was sorry I'd opened my mouth.
I flopped into a chaise lounge and waited. He had something to tell me. Jake has no poker face.
He sat down, too, but on the edge of his seat. He glanced up and smiled a little. I looked up and saw a hawk, circling high in the air, directly above us.
In a heartbeat it was as if everything around me turned translucent, like it was all fake, a set created with the help of trick lighting. Now, with the sudden change, it was like I could see right through the walls of my very nice house. Right past old Wetherbee and the silver tray with my Coke.
The last three years were magically reduced to a daydream. An old reality emerged from beneath the illusion.
I reached for my drink and my hand was trembling.
Jake waited, patient now that he knew that I knew. He was watching me, waiting for my reaction.
Waiting, but not like he had any doubt about me, the smug jerk.
"You're about to ruin my life, aren't you?" I asked him. I sounded more self-pitying than I'd intended to.
"That depends."
"Yeah, right. So, what is it?"
He told me, and every word was another nail in my coffin because, what was I going to do? Refuse to help save Ax?
At last Tobias swooped down and landed on my patio table.
"So where's the other Horsewoman of the Apocalypse?" I asked.
"Cassie? She's not coming on this one," Jake said.
I nodded. "Good for you. At least you have that much sense."
Jake shrugged. "She's doing what she needs to be doing."
"And I'm not?" I demanded.
He ignored that. Which made me mad, because it's not like what I do for a living is just negligible. Granted what Cassie does is more impressive and admirable, if you care about that, but I had a TV show. I was a millionaire.
"So now you're rounding up the old gang, huh? Like one of those over-the-hill-gunfighters movies? Like our parts should be played by Clint Eastwood and James Garner?" I glanced at Tobias.
"And Foghorn Leghorn?"
<Marco, you're not even twenty,> Tobias said. <I'm old, for a red-tail. You, you're not even old enough to drink.>
"Yeah? Well, I aged in gorilla years." I pouted for a moment, very annoyed that neither of them was buying my act at all. And, being annoyed, I lashed out a little.
"You sure you're up for this, Jake? You haven't exactly been living the American Dream since your last war."
That got him, and again I was mad at myself, which made me madder at him.
Jake said, "Well, maybe we live and learn."
"What have you learned?" I challenged. "You've been all depressed, and now you see a way out of it because someone's giving you another chance to play war?"
"Maybe," he admitted softly. I groaned. Being ticked off was stupid of me. And we had important stuff to discuss.
"Okay, Jake-man. I'll cut the baloney if you will." I leaned toward him. "You're my friend. Ax is my friend. On a good day I can even stand the flea-bitten buzzard here. But you have to get real: You've been messed up behind some hard decisions you made. And now you want to go make more hard decisions?"
Jake glared fiercely. "I learned from my mistakes. This time, maybe I'll do it differently. Some things at least."
Ah, so there it was: Jake was going to give himself another chance. This time he would be the warrior who never sinned. He would be Sir Galahad. I felt sorry for him, and I knew I should probably just shut up. But I was his friend, and a friend tells you the stuff you don't want to hear.
"Okay, Jake, I'm in. I'll go with you. You know that. But here's what you need to realize going in: If you're in charge you're going to end up right back in the same swamp you didn't like the first time."
"Marco, I -"
"Shut up for a minute. Listen. If I'm putting my life on the line with you again, the price you pay is to listen to me now." I took a deep breath. "Back in the day, Jake, you made more heavy decisions than any ten men would have to in a hundred lifetimes. You made life-and-death calls. You got us up
to our butts in alligators, and you got us back out. And, sorry, but it's not what people think, that you were some kind of military genius. I'm better at tactics than you are."
<And humble, too,> Tobias muttered.
"It's true, and Jake knows it," I shot back. "Jake, you won because you didn't scare. You didn't
panic, you didn't scare, and you didn't play a part or strike poses wondering what history would think. You made the right calls without regard to all that. But then, when the shooting was all over, you started questioning everything you did. You armchair quarterbacked your entire life and decided you
made mistakes. Well, no kidding. Surprise: You're not a god."
Jake nodded. "This time I won't make mistakes."
"Don't tell me that," I said. "You want a zero-screw up fight?"
"I got Rachel killed. Wouldn't you like me to keep that from happening to you?"
"Yeah, I really would. But you start thinking that way, and that's when you'll get me killed. You have to trust your instincts, not your doubts. I'll trust my life to your instincts. If we're fighting again you have to be able to make the same kind of crazy, reckless, ruthless decisions you made before. We
beat an empire, my friend, the six of us, and we did it in large part because you didn't know any better than to trust your own instincts."
I stopped talking and Jake didn't say anything. I could tell I'd had no effect on him. Or at least not the effect I'd hoped. All I'd managed to do was send him spiraling back to that awful day aboard the Pool ship.
After a while, he shook himself, smiled and said, "So, you're in, right?"
And of course, I was.
The gang's together. The thing is, Marco's doing this for Ax and Jake. He's pretty well adjusted and could live his entire life successfully.
Chapter 20-Jake
quote:
We drove through the desert night, silent most of the way. Me, Marco, and a human-morphed Tobias crammed in the front seat of a truck borrowed from the Twenty-nine Palms motor pool. A Humvee followed behind us with the now-permanently human Menderash and two volunteers
recruited from my counterterrorism class.
I'd put it to the class that I needed volunteers for a mission that would very likely prove suicidal, that was illegal, that would involve their disappearing without a trace, without the approval of their governments, without notice to their families. They wouldn't be paid, promoted, or well-treated. I would be in charge and they would be low men or women on the totem pole.
All but three volunteered. It was a measure of my fame, I guess. It made me feel a little bad, like I was taking advantage of them. I decided to take two of them, Sergeant Santorelli, a U.S. Army Ranger who was five years older than me, and a French Deuxieme Bureau trainee named Jeanne Gerard. I chose them both on the strength of their lack of any close family.
I could have had more, but I felt six people was the right number. It had worked before. Unfortunately, Jeanne was beautiful. A problem I should have foreseen.
We hit a hard bump and Marco said, "See? You really should have put Jeanne up here with us. A bump like that might bruise her. I could have protected her."
He made a point of carefully pronouncing her name Zhann. I sighed. "This is going to be a problem, isn't it?"
"What? Me and Jeanne? No problem at all. Obviously she wants me, and what woman doesn't? So I don't see any problem at all."
I looked at him. "Marco."
"Yes, Jake."
"If you wanted to chase women you could have stayed home."
"Believe me, I wish I had. I had a good life. I had it all. They're going to have to cancel my show, do you realize that? But, hey, without me who would take care of you and the winged wonder here?"
"
Marco, you were bored out of your mind."
"Yes, I was."
"If I hadn't asked you to come you'd have killed me."
"Yes, Jake, I would."
"But that's not going to change the fact that you'll be whining endlessly about the wonderful life you gave up, is it?"
"I really doubt it."
"Uh-huh. What's GPS say?"
Marco peered at the dimly glowing display. "Better turn off your lights. We don't want to just drive up and look like complete amateurs."
I killed the lights and slowed way down. The Humvee followed suit. We drove on till Marco said we were there. I stopped and turned off the engine. In the black desert night I could see a slight glow. It was impossible to tell the distance with no visual points of reference but the GPS said we
had only three hundred yards to go.
We climbed out and stretched our legs while the rest of our troop joined us.
I said, "Okay, Santorelli? Jeanne? Call this your first nontraining mission. Our job is very simple but it can be easily screwed up, so pay attention. Ahead is an Andalite shuttle. There are two Andalite crew on board. They've been told to park their craft there and wait for a terrorist turncoat who will
bring them vital information. Nothing else. Everything is on strict need-to-know basis."
"Hi, I'm Marco," Marco said to Jeanne. "I have my own TV show."
"Here's the deal: We need to take down these two Andalites but not hurt them in any serious way. Is that crystal clear? A good pop alongside the head and they'll go down. But no cutting, slashing, or stabbing. These are our allies. We want this to look real, but we don't want anyone to go
to the hospital."
Everyone understood. Or so they said.
It was all a setup. Caysath had made the arrangements. We needed a ship to reach orbit where we could "steal" the parked Yeerk craft. And the Andalites needed deniability.
After we used the shuttle to reach the Yeerk ship we would crash the shuttle back into the desert.
The official story would be that terrorists seized the Andalite shuttle but were unable to fly it and crashed. The two Andalite guards would testify that they were overpowered. The State Department would yell at the Andalite government for being careless. Everyone would be happy.
"Six against two," Jeanne said. "This is perhaps overkill?"
"Keel. Ovair-keel," Marco echoed. "I love your accent."
"They are Andalites," Menderash grated. "Six is hardly enough."
I smiled. "It's all in which morph you choose. Okay, tell you what, we'll do it with just two of us. Tobias? Please demorph and then to Andalite."
It was a test for both of us, Tobias and me. Would he follow my orders? If not, best to find out now. He said nothing. But he began to morph.
A few minutes later the two Andalites on the shuttle thought they heard a thought-speak cry. They opened the hatch to investigate and out in the desert at the limits of their vision, they got the impression of a running Andalite. Maybe it was a wild mustang, but they couldn't be sure so they
trained all their eyes forward. It was thanks to this that they didn't see the gorilla drop from the top of the shuttle and knock their heads together.
It was a severely disgruntled Menderash who took the controls of the shuttle as we lifted off.
"They were shamefully careless. Andalite warriors taken from behind? Shameful."
"You know, I could be kind of a mentor to you," Marco said to Jeanne. "If we worked closely together I could teach you all I know."
"But what could I possibly do to repay you?" Jeanne asked.
"Well ..." Marco leered, and was about to offer some specific ideas when Jeanne interrupted him.
"I know! Perhaps someday I could introduce you to my cousin Michelle. She likes short men. Even as short as you."
Marco winced. "Ah. Beautiful and mean. I like you." He caught my eye. "Jake, when you get a minute could you help me pull this knife out of my chest?"
We reached orbit and I watched both Jeanne and Santorelli closely. It was their first time offplanet.
Santorelli tried hard to be cool about it but there was no hiding the slow smile of pleasure.
"Cool, huh?" I said, nodding toward the day-night line of Earth far below.
"I've seen it on TV," he said. "This is better."
"Objective locked in, Captain," Menderash reported.
It took me a beat to realize he meant me. "All right. Take us in. Let's see what she looks like."
The ship in orbit was unlike any Yeerk craft I'd seen before. It had the usual air of danger and hostility - the Yeerks favored the tapered, sharp-edged look generally. But in this case the aggressive, muscular silhouette achieved a certain beauty.
I
t was a quarter the size of a Blade ship, maybe five or six times as big as a standard Bug fighter. The overall impression was of a sharpened boomerang, ends raked forward and ending in nasty looking Dracon cannon. The core of the ship was a flattened and tapered cylinder placed above this
seeming wing.
"It looks tough enough," Marco said.
Menderash said, "It is very fast and packs a very powerful weapons array, for its size. It carries no Bug fighters but does carry two small shuttlecraft. The Yeerks intended these cruiser-class ships to keep track of what they imagined would be a far-flung empire. As well as for escort duty."
"Well, it's ours now," I said. "Okay, Menderash. Let's go aboard." He hesitated.
"What?" I asked. I had worried from the start that a former Andalite first officer would have a hard time taking orders from me.
"It's nothing, Captain. Just a custom. An Andalite custom. We always name a ship before the first crewman boards - it's an old notion, a superstition, really. The thinking is that the ship must know who it is before the crew can know it."
I relaxed. "Fair enough, Menderash. Our own superstition is that a ship is never an 'it,' it's always a 'she.' Even if the ship is named after a male, it's a 'she.'"
The six of us stood there contemplating our dangerous-looking new home, set against the sunrise over Earth.
"So what do we call her?" Marco wondered.
<She's beautiful,> Tobias said. <She's beautiful and dangerous and exciting.>
I turned in surprise to look at Tobias. He stared back at me with his eternally fierce hawk's gaze.
Marco laughed, realizing what we were thinking. "She would love it. A scary, deadly, coollooking Yeerk ship on a doomed, suicidal, crazy mission that no one can ever know about? She would love it."
So it was that we went aboard the Rachel.
Hr's right. She'd love it.
Also, bad news. The Deuxième Bureau was broken up after WWII.
Also, bad news. The Deuxième Bureau was broken up after WWII.
Honhon, that's what they
want you to theenk.
I'm going with the Watsonian approach and saying France recreated it after the Yeerk invasion as a catchall agency to combat morph-capable and other alien technologic criminals
and a human-morphed Tobias
But morphs don't age, right? He's just a perpetual tween?
That sounds like a fate worse than nothlit
quote:
The days, man. Those were the days.
This wistful line sums up all my feelings about the series as a whole. For all the body horror and PTSD and brutal experiences... it really was a grand, exciting adventure that's inextricably wrapped up with memories of my childhood. The days, man.
Marco and Jake's dynamic is more enjoyable than I remember. It's still a bit tough with Marco's tell-over-show for being the "charming" character despite most people not finding him charming, but having him land as a TV personality feels... appropriate for that type of guy.
While Jake is doing the worst out of the survivors, this is my evidence that Marco isn't doing as well as he claims. There's never a question he's going, but Jake is the villain for a brief moment for blowing up whatever happiness Marco has built.
But he's never not going to go.
Also, while the books don't draw attention to it and it may just be *the 90s*, adult Marco does come off as a creep even in his own narration. Like he might be doing okay ish, but an aimless peace, endless celebrity, and isolation from his friends hasn't helped him as a person at all.
It's because they're kids. They're still idiot kids in way over their heads.
Yeah apparently Marco is not even 20 at this point in the story. Most of us are stupid when we are 19, and I can't imagine what unbridled fame and money would do to a showman like him. I can't imagine he has many people in his life who can tell him no except for Jake.
But morphs don't age, right? He's just a perpetual tween?
That sounds like a fate worse than nothlit
When they're in morph form, that's true. So, most of the time, he's an aging hawk, but when he becomes human, it's as a 14 year old. if he becomes a nothlit, he starts aging again normally.
While Jake is doing the worst out of the survivors, this is my evidence that Marco isn't doing as well as he claims. There's never a question he's going, but Jake is the villain for a brief moment for blowing up whatever happiness Marco has built.
But he's never not going to go.
When I read this as a kid I thought he'd genuinely dropped his keys in the pool and morphed to lobster to get them because, hey, why not. But now I see he's morphing just for the hell of it, because he's bored. Cassie is doing something she finds fulfilling and constructive. I don't think Marco is unhappy, but he's started to get a little disillusioned with his life, and he's bored.
Marco seems like he got caught up in it once the media was all over the Animorphs. One thing led to another, now he's a celebrity and riding it out.
There's a darker version of this story where he's absolutely detoxing off of coke for this mission
There's a darker version of this story where he's absolutely detoxing off of coke for this mission
If the series was written even 5 years later Michael Grant would have been all over that angle, I've no doubt.
Chapter 21-Marco
quote:
The Rachel was fast.
We blew through normal space and into Zero-space before either of the two Andalite ships in orbit could react.
Later we picked up their Z-space communications. They made a lot of noise about the "theft" of the Yeerk prototype ship. It was almost too much. But I guess they wanted the news to get out: The Rachel was not Andalite, not associated with Andalites, not sanctioned by Andalites. Nope. Clean
hands and innocent looks all around. The fact that this Yeerk ship was fully stocked with human food? That the quarters designed for Hork-Bajir had been converted to human proportions? That certain controls designed to be manipulated by Taxxon pincers now perfectly fit human hands? Well, what would the Kelbrid ever know about that?
Santorelli and I went to do an inventory of the supplies. We found water, vitamin pills, a good supply of various awful-looking freeze-dried foods and six dozen Cinnabons.
"Do Andalites have a sense of humor?" Santorelli wondered.
"We've never been entirely sure," I said.
The cinnamon buns didn't last long. We spent four days in Zero-space, which is like being buried in marshmallow sauce, and before we reemerged into the familiar universe of black space and white stars, all fresh food was long gone.
Menderash was in charge of piloting and flying the Rachel, but Jake wanted as much crosstraining as possible, so we all took turns under the nothlit Andalite's tutelage. Menderash was a taciturn guy - as I guess you'd expect from an officer who'd lost his entire crew and chosen to permanently abandon his usual body. He was careful to be deferential to Jake, and I think he had real respect for our fearless leader. But when he taught navigation or piloting skills he was a whole different guy. He was like that psycho drill sergeant from Full Metal Jacket.
Four days of Menderash and I was a long way from being an Andalite-quality pilot, but I could take the ship from point A to point B. With lots of help from the computer. Menderash naturally plotted our course. Jake had talked it over with all of us, but it was Menderash who knew the last course taken by the Blade ship, so my opinion was not all that valuable.
The theory was that we would simply draw a straight line. (Well, figuratively straight. Turns out space is curved. Who knew?) And try to jump past the place where the Blade ship would now be, assuming it had continued on its merry way for the last three weeks. A big assumption, but it was all we had.
We emerged into real space with all guns loaded and the six of us ready for trouble. What we found was a whole lot of nothing. We were six light-years from the nearest planetary system. It was back the way we'd come.
So it was back into Z-space, and throw the ship into reverse. (Menderash grits his teeth when I say things like that.) We popped back out of Z-space practically on top of the second biggest of four planets around a star that was ready to go nova at any minute. And of course, in celestial terms, "any
minute" means maybe this millennium, maybe the next.
"This is Kelbrid space," Jake said, "so we have to assume that this planet may have Kelbrid remote sensors or even a Kelbrid outpost. Let's remember that we are a peaceful ship on a mission of exploration."
We spent the next six weeks wandering around the system, seeing some cool things on strange worlds, but no evidence of Kelbrids. We were starting to wonder whether there was any such thing as a Kelbrid. And we definitely saw no sign of the Blade ship or the mysterious alien craft that had fired
on Ax's Intrepid. We moved on to the next nearest system. And the next.
Half a year went by, but it seemed longer. I had brought along some DVD's but there are only so many times you can watch Airplane!, especially when you have to explain every joke to a former Andalite.
It became obvious that this was going to be a long trip. You can't just go toodling around a billion square light-years and find what you're looking for.
In the end, even after many months, we didn't find the Blade ship. They found us. I was manning the sensor station (and using the ship's computers to play Tomb Raider V), when I spotted the orange squiggle indicating an unknown ship within range.
"Hey, Menderash, I have a ship here. Um ... I think they're hailing us. That's the red numbers, right?" It was just the two of us on the bridge, everyone else was either sleeping or eating.
He stalked over and stared at my screen for about a second. Then, "Captain, to the bridge!"
"What is it?" I asked.
But before the Andalite could answer, Jake was there, looking frowzy and flat-haired. He'd been sleeping, I guess.
"What is it?"
"That was my question," I muttered.
"Ship approaching in normal space, Captain. They've hailed us. Standard inquiry: our point of origin and destination."
"Okay. Answer them."
We gave out our story, that we were the Enterprise, a peaceful, deep-space exploration ship from The United Federation of Planets. We figured no one in this far corner of the universe would have seen Star Trek reruns. It was our little joke.
Here was the problem with that thinking: The Yeerks we were chasing had spent years on Earth, many with human hosts.
"Receiving response," Menderash said. "And a request for visual, two-way communication."
<Uh-oh,> Tobias said. He had rushed to the bridge, along with Jeanne and Santorelli.
"What do we show them?" Santorelli wondered.
"Not me," Jake said. "If it's the Blade ship they may recognize me. Or Marco, or Tobias, for that matter." He looked quickly at the faces of his people. "Santorelli, you're the best B.S. artist aside from Marco. So you're the captain. Jeanne, you stand with him. Everyone else out of view. Narrow the audio channel to pick up Santorelli only. Okay, open communications."
The image that appeared to us was of a human. A man, maybe forty years old. Laughing, with hands on hips. "So, you come from the Federation, do you? And where is Captain Picard?"
Santorelli shot a look at Jake. But this was more my specialty than his.
"You've always thought of yourself as more of a Captain Kirk," I whispered.
After that first panicked glance Santorelli betrayed no sign that he was listening to anyone. He assumed a wide, cocky stance and said, "I've always thought of myself as more of a Captain Kirk."
"Sensor confirmation: It's the Blade ship," Menderash hissed.
That tightened a few sphincters.
The Yeerk captain nodded in a genial sort of way in response to Santorelli. "That's quite a ship
you have there ... excuse me, I don't know your name."
I made a slashing gesture with my hand, cutting Santorelli off before he could say something wrong. "You're Rakich-Four-Six-Nine-One of the Flet Niaar Pool."
Santorelli repeated it.
The Yeerks seemed to buy that. "I am Efflit-One-Three-One-Eight of the Sulp Niar Pool," their captain replied. "Well met. And what exactly are you doing here, brother? And how do you come to be flying a new cruiser-class ship?"
"I might ask the same of you," Santorelli shot back. "I find it hard to imagine what business a ship of the Yeerk Empire has in this far-flung quadrant."
Menderash whispered, "He's powering up his weapons and maneuvering to bring them to bear."
"He thinks we're from the Yeerk Empire. Maybe here to hunt him down as a traitor," Jake said quietly.
Efflit 1318, his voice considerably more guarded now, said, "My mission here is classified."
Santorelli nodded skeptically. "As is mine."
For a long moment the two ships were silent. Both had powered weapons. Both were maneuvering for an edge, should firing break out. But in a fight we were toast. We were tough, but we couldn't win against an alert and ready-to-rumble Blade ship. And the real problem was that although we were fast enough to run away, we were aimed toward the Blade ship. We'd have to turn around if we were going to run away, and while we turned, they'd blow big holes in us.
"We have to blink first," Jake said. He gave Santorelli instructions.
Santorelli said, "It occurs to me, Efflit-One-Three-One-Eight, that it would be a tragedy if any misunderstanding occurred here between us."
"Indeed? And what misunderstanding could occur, Rakich-Four-Six-Nine-One?"
Santorelli sighed. He acted the part of a deflated man. "There is no empire, Efflit-One-Three- One-Eight. The empire is finished. I ... my crew and I seized this ship and escaped as the Andalites closed in. We had heard that a Blade ship had escaped and survived. We have been looking for you ever since. For more than three years."
Efflit nodded. But would he buy it? He and his people were all alone in the universe. We represented the only brother Yeerks he was ever likely to see.
Was he lonely enough to be careless?
Would he trust us enough to let us destroy him?
"You will place yourself under the command of The One?"
Santorelli's eyebrows shot up. "The who?" he blurted.
I looked at Jake. At Tobias. At Jeanne. There was a sort of collective shrug.
"I command this ship," Efflit 1318 explained, "but I serve at the pleasure of The One Who Is Many. The One Who Is All. We are not alone, Rakich-Four-Six-Nine-One. We are not this ship alone. We are the seeds of a new empire that will far outshine the old, under the leadership of The One."
Weird to see that wild, messianic glow in the eyes of a man you knew was really just a Yeerk slave. It was a disturbingly human expression.
Santorelli said, "Urn, who is this ... this One?"
"I will invoke his presence," the Yeerk said. He closed his eyes and raised his face.
"Okay, this is unexpected," I whispered.
There was a long, silent pause during which time the two ships drew closer and closer. Too close now to do anything but play the game through. If this was a ruse, it was a convincing one. If it was a ruse, we were dead.
I glanced at Jake and wished my heart wasn't jackhammering away.
Suddenly the screen image went blank. The human-Controller was gone.
<What the -> Tobias demanded.
But then the screen glowed to life. More than the screen. The whole front of the bridge was glowing, a light so bright it seemed to shine right through the bulkheads.
Within the searing light, an image appeared. It was alien, not Yeerk. That was to be expected from the Yeerks, they were, after all, parasites, so you never saw the Yeerks themselves.
But there was something very wrong with this particular alien.
The face that filled the screen and more was a shifting image, a slow dissolve from what might be a robot's face, a machine with a rat-trap mouth and steel eyes, into a sweet, feminine, almost elfin visage, and last, and most enduring, into the face of Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill.
<Ax?> Tobias whispered.
The face that belonged to our friend Ax split wide open across the bottom and revealed a newformed mouth full of red-rimmed teeth.
"Save your tricks for this Yeerk fool," The One said. "I see the truth. I see all. Step into view, Jake the Yeerk-Killer. I know you are there, I feel your mind."
There was no doubting that voice. No way to imagine that it was just bluffing. The sound of it reached deep down inside you, beyond speech, beyond thought-speak.
Jake stepped out in front of Santorelli.
"I'm here," Jake said calmly.
"You have done well to come this far. You have come to find your friend. But the Andalite is part of me now. As you will soon be."
Jake stared back at the foul thing on the screen. I saw what he saw, and I felt as if my brain was shutting down. In that shifting alien face was every corruption, every evil, and such power that it seemed impossible it could be present in just the narrow confines of the onrushing Blade ship.
"Can we shoot?" Jake asked Menderash, making no attempt to conceal his words from the alien.
"His Dracon cannon have longer range and greater power," Menderash reported grimly. "And his defensive fields have been enhanced. I doubt our cannon can penetrate them."
"Thought so," Jake said, still weirdly calm. "But we're faster."
"Yes."
"Okay." Jake took a deep breath. He looked around the bridge at each of us. At Tobias. At me.
"What was it, Marco? 'Crazy, reckless, ruthless decisions'?"
I nodded, wishing I had kept my mouth shut.
There was a dangerous smile on Jake's face.
Rachel's smile.
"Full emergency power to the engines," Jake said. "Ram the Blade ship."
If you remember back to Andalite Chronicles, ramming the ship was Elfangor's tactics. Also, Ax (Or the One in Ax's body) smiling is pretty creepy. It's also ironic that the Yeerks started their invasion of Earth by starting a cult, and now the only Yeerks we know to still survive, are in what seems pretty much like a cult.
A Letter to the Fans
quote:
I know, I know, it's rotten of me to leave you hanging at the end like that. But I figured the
Animorphs should go out the same way they came in: Fighting.
Well, here it is at long last: the final chapter in the Animorphs story. It began in the summer of
1996. It ends in the summer of 2001. Five years, 54 regular titles, 4 Chronicles, 5 Megamorphs and 2
Alternamorphs. An amazing number of you have read all those books. I am deeply grateful.
I had a lot of fun writing these characters. I know it sounds pretentious to say that I'll miss them,
but I will. It seems strange to think that I won't ever again write "My name is ..." It makes me a little
sad to say good-bye to Andalites, Hork-Bajir, Chee, Taxxons, and even Yeerks. It was fun sitting
down every day at my computer to invent that strange universe.
There are a bunch of people to thank. (Hey, what is this, an Academy Awards speech?) First of
all, Scholastic, in particular Jean Feiwel, Tonya Alicia Martin, and Craig Walker. Also the talented
folks who created such great art for the series. And, of course, the people who never get mentioned
but who are responsible for the crucial step from publisher to bookstore: the sales and marketing
force. Mostly, I want to thank you guys, the readers. You praised, you complained, you extolled, you
demanded, you asked questions that sometimes I couldn't answer. You told your friends, you started
Web sites, you sent letters and e-mails, and wrote fan fiction. You pointed out every error I made. You
were thoughtful and critical and imaginative. You were loyal.
I want you all to know that it is my choice to end Animorphs. Much as I'll miss it, the time had
come. Time to say good-bye, Jake. Good-bye, Cassie. You, too, Tobias and Marco and Ax. Goodbye,
Rachel.
And now would be the time for me to say good-bye to you ... but, I'm off to a new series called
Remnants, and I'm hoping I'll see you over there, in that new universe. If not, thanks from the bottom
of my heart for everything.
If you're coming along on the next trip, grab onto something because we're going to start off by
blowing up the entire world. Then the real trouble will start.
You may now demorph.
- K.A. Applegate
So we're not actually reading Remnants next. The winner of the poll was the Everworld series, which started in 1999, and is partly responsible for the ghostwriters....only partly, though. Applegate also gave birth and was raising three young children, and someone in her family...i believe her mother, but don't quote me on this, was experiencing serious health problems, Anyway, tomorrow, you're going to get Applegate's response to people whp criticized her ending, and then we can spend a few days discussing it, and then start the new series.
Meanwhile, demorph, everybody, mission is over.
When in doubt, ram the bastards. Farewell, sweet Prince Jake, and flights of Andalites sing thee to thy rest.
And there we go, everyone but Cassie is dead/about to die/or suffering a fate worse than death. Incredibly bleak ending but definitely fits for the series.
I also think its interesting how unmoored from time the last book becomes. It ends up covering a longer period of time than all the other books combined (with the obvious exception of the Chronicles books) and you get a sense of severe detachment from all our survivors just because of how much time we end up skipping past. I think it works really well for showing the aftereffects of the war even if I think you could have done like 2 other series on things just this final book touches on
Meanwhile, demorph, everybody, mission is over.
I feel like that ended about the best way it possibly could.
Also glad you're going to post Applegate's letter. I've avoided it because I was sure it would be full of spoilers. Was it really added to later printings of this book? Not just this one? And what were people upset about, Rachel's fate in the last seconds of the war?
I also think its interesting how unmoored from time the last book becomes. It ends up covering a longer period of time than all the other books combined (with the obvious exception of the Chronicles books) and you get a sense of severe detachment from all our survivors just because of how much time we end up skipping past. I think it works really well for showing the aftereffects of the war even if I think you could have done like 2 other series on things just this final book touches on
Yep. The last chapter alone could fill a whole full-length novel. Kind of reminds me of The Andalite Chronicles with its pacing, though it feels more deserved and warranted in this case.
If I read that ending at age 12, I would not have been happy! Was the decision to end the series brought about by publishers, or the authors deciding they'd said what needed saying, or something else?
A thing I've noticed in sci fi in general, and in this series too, is that the majority of authors really suck at writing about space. Like, looking at a starry sky is a really moving experience; seeing a planet from orbit is life-changing; but I can't really think of any authors beyond KS Robinson who actually engage with that. It's disappointing to see that same oversight in a series which, back in book one, was careful to describe the sounds, sights, static electricity fields etc etc of spaceships.
I mean thinking back I wasn't particularly happy with the ending when I read it as a 10 year old. It was probably some of the first media I ever consumed that didn't have a fairly happy ending. Having 4/6 Animorphs die on suicide missions and 1/6 get possessed by a new even more body horror alien was uh, a lot to swallow after reading 60 other books where I got incredibly attached to these characters.
Definitely formative and impactful, but to this day it makes me shy away from stories with depressing endings or pyrrhic victories because of how much of a gut punch it was to me at 10.
I feel like that ended about the best way it possibly could.
Also glad you're going to post Applegate's letter. I've avoided it because I was sure it would be full of spoilers. Was it really added to later printings of this book? Not just this one? And what were people upset about, Rachel's fate in the last seconds of the war?
To my knowledge, it wasn't added to any versions of the book. It showed up on the Animorphs fan site morphz.com. Applegate and Grant were active with the community, and Jeff Samson', the site's co-owner, emailed her about criticisms the last book got.. Applrgate responded and gave him permission to post her response.
If I read that ending at age 12, I would not have been happy! Was the decision to end the series brought about by publishers, or the authors deciding they'd said what needed saying, or something else?
A thing I've noticed in sci fi in general, and in this series too, is that the majority of authors really suck at writing about space. Like, looking at a starry sky is a really moving experience; seeing a planet from orbit is life-changing; but I can't really think of any authors beyond KS Robinson who actually engage with that. It's disappointing to see that same oversight in a series which, back in book one, was careful to describe the sounds, sights, static electricity fields etc etc of spaceships.
I believe they said it was their call. They wanted to do Everworld full time, audiences wanted them to keep doing Animorphs. So even Everworld sputtered out, they decided to close up shop on Animorphs because things in their life beyond it were developing and they transitioned into doing Remnants, which again lasted for a fraction of the time Animorphs did. At which point, they took a few years' hiatus and it allowed Michael Grant to step out of the shadow of "KA Applegate" with the Gone series which started in 2008.
If I read that ending at age 12, I would not have been happy! Was the decision to end the series brought about by publishers, or the authors deciding they'd said what needed saying, or something else.
i believe there was a contract for four more series books and another Megamorphs book, but the negotiations fell though (see the letter to the fans talking about five Megamorph books when there were only four). Grant has said one of his regrets about the series was that they didn't develop the auxiliary Animorphs enough). They did say that the series ended the way they hoped.
i'll also point out that the series ended in May of 2001, which meant if they had continued, there probably would have been overlap with 9/11, which changes the mood entirely,
The cliffhanger non-ending is lame. All the other stuff with how and where everyone ended up after the invasion was very well done though.
I read the final book right before I started high school in summer 2001. Before that, I only ever read books 1-3, 5-8, 10, 20-26, 28, Megamorphs 2 and 3, and the Andelite and Hork-Bajir Chronicles.
l I would see the books progress in the book section at Safeway, looked at them, and thought none of it. I bought this because it said it was the final book on the cover. I don't remember how I felt about it twenty-two years ago when I was fourteen. Rereading it, it feels so very rushed and written to prevent anyone from getting any ideas of reviving the series, at least not with five out of six Animorphs dead in space.
I'll never feel quite right with the Chee or the Ellimist and Crayak. My feelings towards them are as an adult with better literacy. The Chee's holograms have always seemed like complete bullshit that bailed the kids out of unwinnable situations. Applegate did her best to not make the Ellimist and Crayak's game one about destiny and prophecy, so the characters had most of their agency. The Ellimist is a god damn liar and totally influenced the Animorphs where they could get away with it by showing them the Kandrona ray in book 7 and restoring Tobias's morphing ability. But then there's the time matrix, and I've grown to absolutely hate time travel in science fiction. I will concede that Elfangor became a nothlit as a human and is Tobias's father and the Ellimist pulled off some bullshit to thrust him back into the Andelite-Yeerk war as an Andelite and wiped out Loren's memory. All of that could have been done without the time matrix. I absolutely do not understand the point of all that.
Man. There it is.
I never really minded the bleak realism of the war's effects on the Animorphs, and I do like the idea of them going out fighting, but the specifics of it...I wondered if I'd feel different reading it now, but I still feel pretty ambivalent. The first time around, I read it is a virtually futile suicide run, and I disliked that the the books seemed to be indicating that there really is no real hope for a better life after something as traumatizing as war, that everyone but Cassie would be dead and that's just how it had to be.
Rereading everything slowly in this thread, I think that's a little harsh and there is a little more wiggle room for hope but I still kinda hate how it leaves Ax.
The rest of the book is pretty amazing and I had a great time in the thread. When the series originally finished, I was a freshman in college and I remember huddling in an aisle of the university bookstore where they sold a lot of children's books for the childhood education program, kind of embarrassed to be seen reading the last book, but you know what, screw that. Animorphs holds up incredibly well, even with the uhh less good books.
Thanks for taking us this far, Epicurious.
Thanks Epi for posting the series, I never finished the books growing up!
I really wish we had gotten a little bit of time talking about their parents. When is the last time we hear from any of them? So much to explore with Jake's parents being captured, Rachel and Jake's families dealing with her death, Marco's dad with Nora and Eva, Loren and Tobias.... It's wild how they just don't mention any of it at all.
There's quite a few things that by the end of the series are either dropped or forgotten or not developed as well as they should be.
The parents. The auxiliary team. The Chee. As I mentioned before, Alloran. The Yeerk peace movement.
Probably more things I'm forgetting...
Bleak as that ending is, I think it resonates perfectly with what is to me one of the most powerful lines in the series, from the Andalite Chronicles: "Even those who return from war may never come home."
War doesn't really end. There's always some new call to bloodshed, some worthwhile cause, some new threat over the horizon. Either you decide to stop fighting, war becomes your life, or you die.
Man, y'all are way more pessimistic than I was reading ahead a couple days ago. Yeah, maybe Ax is captured or infested by Father or whatever other new unspecified threat this turns out to be, or maybe he's not even there at all and it's a ruse or illusion or just a psychological trick drawing on a fear in Jake's mind. But I didn't take this as a suicide mission, certain death, a "yeah they're all
four five dead Animorphs floating in space plus The Girl Who Lived" situation, so much as a "hoo boy them Animorphs sure have gotten themselves in a mess of trouble, now how'll they manage to get out of
this one?" kind of thing. It's a return to the status quo of where they were for most of the books, in that way, for these four or five Animorphs, which is partly what they had been hoping or searching for in these intervening years after all. And I think that was part of Applegrant's point.
Bleak as that ending is, I think it resonates perfectly with what is to me one of the most powerful lines in the series, from the Andalite Chronicles: "Even those who return from war may never come home."
War doesn't really end. There's always some new call to bloodshed, some worthwhile cause, some new threat over the horizon. Either you decide to stop fighting, war becomes your life, or you die.
Yeah, this.