I skipped book 14 of the Animorphs because I heard it’s skippable and I need the grace period! I’m so behind!
In The Escape (a Marco book), the kids learn that the Yeerks are attempting to infiltrate the Leerans, an aquatic psychic alien species. They hope to control Leerans to suss out enemies with said psychic powers. To aid this quest, they are creating a species of enhanced hammerhead sharks to act as their underwater muscle. This is the highest priority job for the Yeerks, so their supreme leader Visser-1 is in charge of it, who, as a reminder, is a Yeerk controlling Marco’s supposedly dead mother. The kids morph sharks, and get injected with the Yeerk’s super-shark brain chips in the process, and have to destroy the underwater facility to destroy the tech in their brains. This book has a reference to Alanis Morrisette’s “Ironic” and a very funny scene where Marco accidentally cuts himself before morphing into a shark and, smelling his own blood, tries to hunt himself, its very shark chases its own tail. I generally still like Marco as a narrator cuz he is very funny, though sometimes his humor is very sexist and if I were his librarian I’d yell at him.
In The Warning (a Jake book), the kids discover an AOL-esque chat room of people who know about the Yeerk invasion, but is the chat room real or is it a trap?! They infiltrate the internet company to get the identities of the people in the chat and discover the uber-rich CEO of the company is one of them. They spy on him to see if he’s Yeerk-controlled. Jake learns to morph a rhino to bust through the guy’s house. And the answer is, the guy is SORT OF Yeerk controlled! He has a Yeerk in his brain, but that Yeerk is a lone wolf, not working for the greater Yeerk cause. Despite that, internet guy and his yeerk are still creeps because this yeerk discovered that if he cannibalizes other Yeerks, he doesn’t need the Kandrona rays to survive. So he murders people to get the Yeerks in their brains, I think? It was a little unclear but I’m pretty sure that was the implication. I loved this book. It’s sooo 90s, we get John Tesh and Spice Girls namedrops, we get 90s internet technology (including an early discussion on the importance of internet privacy). We also get some bi panic from Jake, who calls Ax’s human morph “disturbingly attractive.” Who was a disturbingly attractive boy in the 90s? Andrew Keegan? Heath Ledger? Someone NOT in 10 Things I Hate About You?
Also, the series is getting a lot of leverage out of Ax not understanding sarcasm, which reminds me of this 30 Rock bit:
The Underground is another Rachel book and another absolutely bonkers entry in the series. Are all the Rachel books balls-to-the-wall nonsense? In her last book, she birthed a crocodile from her back. This book, the kids learn that another way the Yeerks can survive without Kandrona rays is by eating maple-ginger flavored instant oatmeal, but whatever is in the oatmeal that helps them survive is a majorly addictive substance that drives the Yeerks insane. The kids realize this would be a great weapon against the Yeerks, but debate the ethics of drugging a population. Ultimately they do it, exploding a barrel of the oatmeal in the Yeerk pool, tho they do it mostly to escape.
I have questions. 1. Does maple-ginger instant oatmeal actually exist outside of this series? Because it sounds like a terrible flavor combination
2. What the fuck is in instant oatmeal that can paralyze a species with the ability to control minds? I googled this, and went down a rabbit hole because Animorphs fans have created a website called OATMEAL TRUTH which is basically a D.A.R.E. sight for Yeerks warning them against instant oatmeal abuse. I’m telling you, this series has spurned some of the greatest fan art of all time.
3. Last question: What??
The science may be iffy, but the kids morph into moles for a claustrophobic horror sequence, and end up in a cave full of bat poop for a gross-out sequence, so that’s fun. Also it opens in Planet Hollywood! Arnold Schwarzenegger saves a man’s life!