OK I’m not gonna bury the lede here: Rachel gives birth to a crocodile through her back.
But how did we get there?
Animorphs book 11, The Forgotten, would have been a cool little book if it had any point in existing in the first place. Now, I am still only 1/6th of the way through this series, so perhaps its relevance is yet to reveal itself. But plotwise, the Animorphs basically get caught in a time-travel oopsie-daisie when the Yeerks shoot their big laser thingy at the same time that the Animorphs shoot back one of their big laser thingies, and the combination of said laser thingies zaps them all forward in time and space to the Amazon rainforest. KIDS THESE DAYS AND THEIR LASER THINGIES.
There’s lots of good action and intrigue and fun new morphs (monkeys!) and spoiler alert THE ANIMORPHS ALL DIE?!… but then the timeline fixes itself and basically none of that happened. WTFFFFFFFFFF. I should have skipped this one.
Animorphs book 12, The Reaction, is also skippable, but I’m so happy I didn’t skip it, because then I never would have witnessed Rachel give birth to a crocodile from her back. See, she yoinks the DNA of a crocodile at the zoo when she recklessly jumps into the croc den at the zoo to save a kid. But after she does that, she suddenly starts randomly morphing with no control over what she’s turning into or when it happens. It turns out that she is “allergic” to the croc DNA, which is a very funny concept, and it’s fucking with her own DNA and morphing instincts. She can expunge herself of the faulty DNA, but to do so, she has to let her body recreate the crocodile using matter from zero space. KIDS THESE DAYS AND THEIR INTERGALLACTIC CROCODILE ALLERGIES. Also, while she’s birthing the croc, she’s also half-morphed into a bear. I am extremely offended that there is no fan art of RachelBear birthing a crocodile from her back.
Fun 90sish things: Marco sings The Entertainment Tonight theme song, shout out to my baddies Mary Hart and John Tesh. There’s a celebrity character in book 12 named Jeremy Jason McCole, who is the star of a sitcom called Power House, and he is an obvious stand-in for JTT. If you have been keeping up with my reviews, you know that I imagine Jake as JTT so I had to really do somersaults in my brain to make JJM a different celebrity (I settled on Rider Strong.)
Also, these books are hella funny. When Rachel accidentally starts morphing a bear from the legs down while she’s in the principal’s office, he’s like, “what the hell are you wearing?” and she’s like “you like my boots?” KIDS THESE DAYS AND THEIR BOOTS WITH THE FUR.
Onward!