ANIMORPHS #26: THE ATTACK

"uh, jake?" marco said. "we've been over the line into crazy since elfangor said, 'hey kids, wanna turn into animals?'"

hi hello and welcome back to animorphs weekly, one of many secrets i’m keeping from my parents. sorry i left you morphless last week — i got my second dose of the vaccine (humblebrag) and it ripped away what little grasp i already had on time management. but! at this point next week it’ll be safe to spit in my mouth. too far?

wanna read a book?

CHANGE IS NECESSARY. . . .

do you like this high definition book cover i provided for you today? really wanted to get all those good details, like the tiger toe beans and the small wig he wears. i know i haven’t self-identified as a book cover in awhile, but today reader, i am most certainly a two. just Screaming.

it’s a jake book!

SUMMARY

we start with a prologue

jake’s having a dream — more specifically, he’s reliving a memory that’s warped into a nightmare. y’all remember when he got infested by a yeerk (that had also been inside big brother tom) and he had to wait it out in a cabin for three days? he’s reliving that yeerk’s death. and then, as the yeerk is dying, jake’s mind twists. he feels like he’s seeing into things, like “i was peeking through a tear in a movie screen. on the surface, the three-dimensional movie - my world - played. beyond it…something my mind could not comprehend.”

tax fraud

jk

the thing he cannot comprehend is a creature/machine with no arms on a throne miles high. it radiates power. its head is a single bloodred eye. it turns, and turns, and stares at jake. he writhes in terror and fear, the eye speaks a single word, and then he wakes up.

what’s the word you ask?

“soon.”

cool :)

we get chapter one, which opens with this absolutely relatable line

my name is jake.

who am i? sometimes i wonder.

huge mood

jake’s like, i am possibly the most average human kid you’ll ever meet in your entire life. except for my one gift: morphin’. he describes his friends:

• marco: my main man

• rachel: my cousin, the war goddess

• cassie: the girl i care about more than i do myself (aw)

• tobias: the friend i couldn’t save from his own bizarre fate (bird)

• ax: tobias’s uncle

• jk

• ax: an andalite, an alien

blah blah blah the yeerks are here and they’re invading earth and it’s up to these four kids, one birdboy, and an alien to stop them. sometimes the chee help out and in space somewhere are other andalites, but for the most part, it’s just the animorphs. you get the drill.

jake’s sitting in assembly. julie taymor’s the lion king is traveling through town, and a few of the actors are at jake’s middle school to give a mini-performance. the animorphs are scattered throughout the auditorium: marco in front and to the left of jake, wiggling his ears to the music; rachel and cassie behind and to the right of jake. cassie’s asleep (let her rest) and rachel is getting harassed.

rachel had kind of a dreamy look on her face. you’d have thought she was enjoying the show. only i noticed the guy sitting next to her was trying to hold her hand. and that dreamy look was rachel wondering which of the guy’s fingers she should break.

i looked back at the show. it was a pretty good show. i heard a stifled yelp of pain coming from four rows back and to the right.

good for her

in the middle of “circle of life,” everything freezes. the music, the actors, the auditorium full of kids. the only thing not frozen are the four animorphs. uh-oh!

rachel wakes up cassie, and the four animorphs sort of look around. ax appears onstage, and tobias blips in, too. there’s only one explanation for this!

the ellimist, tobias said.

hell yeah

the animorphs look around the auditorium, and suddenly, a girl named beth stands up. she holds out her hands and is like, it is i! the ellimist picked beth’s image because they’ve come for a humble mission and wanted a humble form. been there. the ellimist moves to the front of the auditorium to stand by the stage, and says they’ve come to tell a story — and the animorphs will tell them how it ends.

look i respect the dramatics of it all! this is good!

the ellimist starts to talk about the history of the ellimist. they’ve been around for almost a billion years; they’ve always been sentient but they evolved slowly. they used to have hands! by the time there were dinosaurs on earth, the ellimists were stopping time and shapeshifting. the ellimists kept tabs on other species in the galaxy, assisting where they could. they wanted companions and they wanted to learn, so they wanted to encourage the growth and sentience of other species. but about a hundred million earth years ago, they became aware of a new force in the galaxy. an individual, chased out of a different galaxy by a power greater than him. greater, even, than the ellimist.

“i thought you were all-powerful,” rachel said.

the ellimist smiled. “no. i only seem so from your limited perspective.”

truly nothing more chilling than an omnipotent god in the image of a thirteen year old girl shrugging and calling you an ant while cast members of julie taymor’s lion king stand frozen behind them

you know?

the ellimist continues. this individual wanted to create an atmosphere of chaos and fear. his goal, ultimately, was to destroy life. and he achieves this goal by pitting species against each other. cassie asks if he’s a nazi — the ellimist is like, in a moral sense, yes. applegate said fuck nazis! but, the ellimist continues, this individual wants to control the strands of space-time, recreate the galaxy in his own image, and grow his power so as to destroy the one power greater than himself.

this individual’s name is crayak, and he’s seen jake.

“when the yeerk died in your brain, you peered across the line between life and death; you broke the dimensional hold that blinds humans to things beyond themselves,” the ellimist said.

yoinks

some things cannot be covered in therapy

the ellimist reveals that once, he and crayak fought. the auditorium disappears, and the animorphs are standing in space amongst a thousand burning stars. one by one, the stars begin to die. the ellimist says that their battle with crayak destroyed a tenth of the galaxy! it also destroyed what little knowledge crayak had on space-time. shit got fucked. so the ellimist and crayak knew that if they were to ever fight again, it could not be a direct war. it would have to be more like chess, with rules and limits.

images float in front of the animorphs of the various times the ellimist intervened on their behalf: when he’d first arrived and offered them an out to live on a game preserve for endangered humans, when he used tobias to help create the free hork-bajir colony in the mountains, and when he’d returned elfangor from his life on earth to the life of an andalite warrior.

elfangor, who was tobias’s true father, and the one who had given us our powers.

READERS

i went back and checked and double checked and triple checked and there were no supplementary books in between tobias learning about his dad and this one single sentence which means applegate wants me to believe that we have had four books in which the conversation about tobias’s dad was off-screen?????

off-screen?????

the kids got shrunk and trapped in the arctic and not once you could have given me the scene where tobias was like oh by the way ELFANGOR WAS MY REAL DAD??????

top ten anime betrayals

what the fuck

ugh

anyway

the ellimist continues. the chess game, as it were, has come to an impasse. there is a species that has not been taken nor saved. they occupy a “unique location in space-time,” and would prove very valuable to crayak if he could annihilate them. it would enhance his powers and make his forces — including the yeerks — deadlier than ever. crayak and the ellimist have reached a deal: to save the iskoort race, there will be a battle of champions. crayak has chosen seven howlers (who infamously destroyed the pemalites and chased the chee to earth). now the ellimist gets to choose seven.

cassie said a word i’ve never heard her use before. then, “you want us, us, to be your champions?”

let cassie say fuck!

the ellimist tells them the choice is in their hands, and then they disappear, returning everyone to where they were before he arrived. once the lion king show is over, the kids all book it to cassie’s barn. tobias and ax are already there (ax, “in his weirdly attractive human morph,” which like, ok we get it). it’s time for a moral debate!

marco’s pissed, of course. so is rachel. she doesn’t trust the ellimist because she thinks he tricked tobias. (jake points out that he didn’t, really — he’d given tobias the ability to morph, and tobias made the choice to keep the power over staying human. this is a very deep observation for jake, who has admitted he’s bad at reading people. growth!) marco wants to know who the seventh would be. jake says, probably ancient erek — but marco’s like he can’t even fight!

which brings them to their next point:

tobias said, why would the ellimist ask for help from this clown college?

“could we win?” cassie asked.

that stopped everyone.

cassie’s like, could we win? could we save a sentient species from extinction — and help ourselves in the process. maybe if they win the yeerks will be weakened in some way. plus, she says, lives are in the balance. who are they to say no? how can they not even try?

:’)

jake normally keeps quiet during these meetings. as a leader, he feels like it’s important to let the others work things out for themselves sometimes. but…he has been having dreams. and rule #1: animorphs don’t keep secrets

rule #2 is stop morphing at school but nobody listens to rule number 2

he tells the others about his dream, the one where crayak looks at him with his one bloodred eye and says, “soon.”

“ooookay,” marco said. “i felt that chill go up my spine.”

rachel asks what this means. tobias says, “side bets.” crayak already knows about jake. the ellimist asked them because he thought they’d have a fighting chance. they start to vote. tobias says yes. cassie says yes. then ax, then rachel. marco’s in, but he voices some concerns. part of the reason they’re saying yes is because crayak has already been poking at jake. but crayak plays the same long game as the ellimist. it’s possible that he’s been poking at jake to get him to say yes to this deal. but. they’re all in.

“unanimous,” marco said.

i shook my head. “no. we’re going to be seven. it’s not unanimous till erek votes.”

“go,” a new voice said.

ancient erek has arrived!!!!

the ellimist brought ancient erek up to speed, and he’s in. he wants to go. rachel points out the obvious — ancient erek swore off violence after he singlehandedly took out a small battalion — but erek points out it’s not just violence or firepower that they need. they’ll have to outsmart the howlers. and ancient erek knows all about them. the ellimist pops in, camera off mic on, and asks if they’ve chosen. jake says yes, but before he can ask for anything else, “a face not even a mother could love” is thrusting towards him.

strangers! strangers! sell me your memories, strangers! sell them to me, i beg of you!

“howler?” i asked shakily.

N O. I S K O O R T, the ellimist said. Y O U R F A M I L I E S W I L L N O T K N O W Y O U H A V E G O N E, B U T I F Y O U D I E . . .

yoinks

the fight has begun!

suddenly, the animorphs are in an mc escher painting the color of many legos, miles and miles in the sky. the iskoort are running, all maddash capitalists that remind me of the scene in anastasia where everyone’s hawking romanov wares. some things the iskoort shout:

• i will buy your memories! (a threat)

• come visit my execution parlor!

• give me your clothing and i will give you credit!

• here! eat this larva! let it gestate and we’ll split the proceeds between your heirs!

rachel (after almost falling off the edge to be saved by ancient erek) knows how to deal with pushy salespeople. she loves the mall! she puts her hands on her hips and and asks where the bathroom is. the iskoort scatter. works every time.

the iskoort, for you sketch artists at home, have heads like vultures. their shoulders are oval platforms, flat across, with two arms that have three joints each. the hands have one long tentacle like finger and two hooked, sharp-clawed fingers. their midsections are flesh accordions, and they have two legs, with knees and calves that extend forward. they shuffle and sound like fran drescher (that is a direct quote from the book).

a new group of iskoort approach the animorphs and offer to guide them around for the small price of rachel’s hair. he wants to shave her bald, rachel threatens to kill him, and ancient erek steps in. he, apparently, used to cut catherine the great’s hair! he gives rachel a classic and elegant bisexual bob, and they give six inches of blonde hair to the iskroot. the iskroot’s name is guide, grub of skinseller, brother of memory wholesaler, or guide for short. the animorphs ask guide if he’s seen any howlers around, and after a creative threat from marco about the andalite’s ability to blow up liars, guide admits that a few howlers have stopped by the city of beauty. they trade their memories for boda salts.

“what’s all this memory stuff?” cassie asked. “you guys keep talking about buying memories. what’s that all about?”

guide looked surprised. i think. you have never seen a memory show? then that must be our first stop! it is the greatest of entertainment!

now, i was going to write a joke about a reel of my own memories is what they’ll play when i inevitably and eventually descend into hell, but the segment of the good place where michael gifts chidi and eleanor their memory reel has me bawling like a baby every time, so

nuance

cassie asks guide if he’s ever seen a howler memory, and guide laughs. of course not. he’s a trader, and therefore not interested in violence and killing and slaughter. (sure jan.) no, the howler memory movies are most often attended by members of the criminal guild and the warmaker guild, two guilds that are probably just one guild. jake gets nervous about standing out in the open (fair, rachel did almost fall to her death) - so guide offers to lead them to just the place! of course, to get there, they’ll need to pass through the level seventy-eight marketplace. they’ve gotta move fast, guide explains, because the market is a favorite gathering place for members of the warmaker guild.

i had about three seconds to think what? before something slammed me violently to the floor.

just like public school

there is a brief scuffle. jake mistakes the warmakers for howlers, which, honest mistake, he’s thirteen - and the animorphs get into two more scuffles as they cross through the marketplace. (rachel makes an offhand comment, wondering why the ellimist wants to save the weird iskroot in the first place, which i’m sure is a question that will be answered soon.) emerging into a new staircase, victorious and a little cocky, the animorphs are cracking jokes. and then ancient erek points out a howler. a real one.

the howler is about as big as a large man (insert your favorite Large Man here). two legs, two arms (longer than his legs), and two hands on either arm. one pair of hands is just hooks! he looks like he was formed out of “still-cooling lava,” with lines of red in between the black, and he has startlingly blue eyes (don’t they always). around his body are several belts, each with a different weapon. and there’s only one of him.

the animorphs are tired from their scuffles with the warmakers, but rachel points out that six against one are odds they can’t miss out on. jake gives the orders: ax takes the lead, tobias takes to the sky, guide and ancient erek stay out of the way. jake starts to morph tiger. he’s really feeling himself and how cool the tiger is, and then he realizes ancient erek has been talking.

“…will paralyze you and numb your senses. if he gets close he’ll use the needle teeth retracted into his upper and lower jaw. he’s not as fast as—”

erek. what did you say about paralyzing? i interrupted.

“it’s the reason they’re called howlers, jake. the voice. be ready to—”

then the howler reaches for his gun!

ax slices off his hand!

his hand grows back!

and then shit gets brutal, y’all

the howler yells, as a howler is wont to do, and jake collapses to the stairs, paralyzed from the waist down. so does rachel. ax runs from the sound, hands pressed against his now-bleeding ears. cassie howls in pain. marco swings, hits; swings again, misses. the howler shoots him with a weapon that makes a “bloody hole you could have pushed a coke can through” appear on marco’s back. he’s out! cassie manages to get her teeth on the howler’s arm. jake scrambles for his leg. tobias goes for his eyes. the howler yells again and jake’s brain practically melts. and then he gets stabbed in the neck!

ancient erek tells him to demorph, and jake staggers away and starts to do so. as he does, he can hear ancient erek talking to the others - giving them the howler’s position, keeping them from falling off the edge, telling them to demorph. (cassie gets gutted, a word applegate employs to full effect.) meanwhile, jake is like, dying.

for a moment, he can see crayak see him. he also watches howlers surround cassie, preparing to rip her to shreds, and then — he comes to in an unfamiliar room. marco grabs one of his hands and rachel grabs the other to stop him from hurting himself or someone else. everyone’s in the room, relatively unharmed. cassie comes and holds jake from behind.

it made me want to cry.

me too!

rachel tells jake the howler got away. six of them - seven, including ancient erek’s instructions - against one howler and they only got a draw. everyone is mentally exhausted. ax is literally cowering in the corner in shame. he can’t look at anyone and he has four eyes. the animorphs have a talk: what do they do now? tobias says the ellimist probably wouldn’t have put them in this position if there wasn’t a chance they could win. cassie points out that they could be just pawns. the ellimist is playing a long, long game. it’s a rotten fucking deal either way. even ancient erek is starting to consider having the ellimist reprogram him so he can be violent, and the last time that happened, he ended up trembling in the woods, horrified at his own brutality. he’s a robot! they don’t tremble!

the howlers are faster, stronger, and better armed than these preteens. but are they smarter? ancient erek says they had faster-than-light ships when humans were figuring out the wheel. but, tobias says, that doesn’t necessarily make them smarter. it just means they got a head start. so. it’s time to learn all they can about their enemies.

ancient erek says he can use his holographic systems to recreate what happened when the howlers attacked the pemalites. but they could also purchase the howlers’ memories of the attack, too, and maybe gain more insight. guide (who is still there, by the way, just sitting in the corner like a grubby little capitalist) jumps at the offer. he can download all the howler memories into ancient erek for the small small price of the animorphs’ memories of their fight with the howler.

(a note on memory-selling: it doesn’t mean the animorphs will lose this memory. the iskroot just make a copy.)

after determining that their memories couldn’t end up in the hands of the yeerks, jake strikes a deal with guide. they’ll sell him their memories in exchange for the howler’s and guide can’t ask them for anything else and he has to advance them anything else they might need. guide’s in! sick deal!

ancient erek downloads the howler memories. he can show them what he sees, but he politely requests that they don’t view the annihilation of the pemalites. fair request. instead, he chooses to show them a nameless planet. the people there call themselves graffen’s children. he plays the hologram.

they’re standing in a lush rainforest. beautiful, colorful. creatures jake describes as gumby-like emerge, sort of toddling about. and then graffen’s children spot the howlers, and then the howlers descend in full-force. it’s so brutal jake yells for it to stop.

“i shouldn’t have let you do this, erek. can you erase this stuff from your memory?”

“no, jake.”

“i’m sorry,” i said. “how much more did you absorb?”

erek powered up his human hologram. his face was human again. now i could see the emotions erek was feeling. “i have memories of seventeen howler attacks. all successful. they have never been defeated. they have attacked highly advanced civilizations and simple people like graffen’s children. they have never taken a prisoner. they simply kill and kill and kill until there is no one left to kill. then they go and find something else to kill.”

could you imagine picking up book one of this series and thinking hm this might be a nice book to buy for my child who is ten and likes animals

like i’ve been watching a lot of criminal minds and this is ,,,, almost as vicious. this is like, literally a line mandy patinkin would say on the show!

and then ancient erek drops more knowledge: the howlers didn’t evolve from anything. they were created. by crayak.

woWOwoOWOowoWOw

crayak’s children v literal children!!!

the animorphs take shifts to sleep. jake spends the whole night awake, trying to figure it all out and avoiding his dreams. cassie, in apocalyptic sleepover mode, asks him what he thinks it’s like to be a howler. they’re smart enough to fly spacecraft, she says, and they know they were created by crayak. what do they think of themselves? this becomes a very interesting conversation. jake thinks they’re probably happy being what they are. but cassie cannot imagine that all of the howlers are evil. jake wants to know why not.

“because that’s what nazis and slave owners and people like that believe. that you can just take a whole race or whatever and say ‘they’re all this or all that.’ that’s never going to be true.”

damn cassie ok

jake’s like well. sure. but even if there are soft howlers, i highly doubt crayak’s chosen seven are remotely close to tender. before cassie can respond, something slams into the door of their tiny apartment. twice. and then a red circle begins to smoke and burn in the door. everyone’s up in a panic. jake tells everyone to morph — small. flies. their objective here is escape, not combat. not yet.

ancient erek holds the door as everyone begins to morph. everyone except ax, whose shame is solidifying into stupidity. jake tells him to morph, ax says no. jake tells him to morph again, ax says no. jake tells him to morph again, and this time, he pulls the prince card and uses ax’s full name.

ax morphs into fly

well, he tries. he’s midmorph when the howlers start to howl, and his eyes start to bleed. as they’re bulging into fly form, so just sit with that for a minute. one of the howlers taunts ancient erek in perfect english! the howlers finally bust down the door, despite ancient erek’s best efforts, and emerge into a room with seemingly only two creatures: guide, and a half-fly-half-andalite-all-lump ax. all seven howlers are inside now, and they’re all aiming their weapons at ax.

crayak is a huge, walking, talking pimple, a thought-speak voice said.

marco!

that gets the howlers’ attention. they can dish it, but take it they cannot. guide crawls out of the room as the rest of the animorphs join in marco’s taunting game. jake lands underneath a howler eye and gets him to slap his own face, which is…objectively funny. or would be, if i wasn’t so terrified of these tweens getting toasted. the animorphs escape through the still smoldering door. no, taylor swift, we are not out of the woods yet.

the animorphs find guide and hover over him. ancient erek uses his holographic technology to make them look like a group of warmaker iskoorts, and they demorph inside the hologram. they make it onto a plaza built like a greenhouse, filled with tightly packed planters stuffed with flowers and trees of all kinds. as they’re blending in with the crowd, jake tries to figure out what the game is. why did the ellimist send them? why did the howler not recognize them on the stairs? why do the iskoort need to be saved?

suddenly, they’ve arrived at their next destination: the temple of the servant guild. guide has paid for their stay, and the temple will care for the animorphs until he returns. returns? from where? i’ll let him tell you.

i must feed. you see, we iskoort are not precisely what we seem at first. the body you see is of our symbiote. we are a symbiotic species - a large outer body, the isk, and the inner self, the much smaller portion, called the yoort.

a symbiote? ax demanded, speaking for the first time. do you mean that you are parasites?

long ago, yes, guide acknowledged. but what began as a parasitic relationship has become a truly symbiotic one. we function as a single creature. the two parts, halves, only separate every three days, when the yoort must feed by swimming in the yoort pool and absorbing—

sound familiar?

ax swings his tail to the iskoort’s throat before he can speak. they shuffle like that, i guess, into the temple, because the next chapter opens with them inside a room. it’s very white, and not because it’s decorated like the inside of a pier one imports. the animorphs surround guide and start to ask questions. yes, the yoorts feed on kandrona rays. yes, the yoort used to be parasites and infested other species. but unlike hork-bajir and taxxons (and now humans), the isk were not conquered by the yoort. they were created. being a parasite is limiting — like the yeerks, the yoort used to conquer and infest other species, but it couldn’t last forever. so they created the isk.

the isk were true symbiotes. the isk cannot live without the yoort. and to ensure that this symbiosis would be real, the yoort, too, were modified. now yoort cannot live without isk and isk cannot live without yoort. they are one creature with two parts.

dead silence. no one said a thing. the reality of it was sinking slowly into our suspicious brains.

“oh, my god,” cassie said at last. “of course. it’s the way. the only way.”

it falls into place, then. this is why the ellimist wants to save the iskroot — and why crayak wants them to be destroyed. if the yeerks discover that there is a way to exist other than conquering and enslaving, they could take it. they could become true symbiotes and all of the chaos and harm would come to an end.

this is like

huge news???

of course it’s not a guarantee that the yeerks would take the painless path. but it sounds like a pretty sweet deal. they would get to live their lives with color, sound, feeling — all the things that rachel elizabeth talked about in her extended time with cassie during the butterfly book. and they would no longer have to be parasites.

there is, of course, always going to be yeerks who prefer violence. just like humans. but we’ll get there when we get there. for now, the animorphs have just unlocked their part in the crayak/ellimist showdown, and have a renewed vigor and investment in winning

which is good, because the room starts to fill with poison

bug poison!

jake has everyone morph into birds, since the howlers have caught onto their bug morphs. he asks ancient erek to project a hologram of them escaping through a window on the opposite side of the room, and then the birds are out of there, using their precious few seconds of distraction to put some distance between them and the howlers. this peace doesn’t last long (of course) and soon, the howlers are chasing them through another plaza. cassie’s wing gets melted off (another Lost Limb) and jake tumbles into a warmaker iskroot after trying to distract the howler from killing cassie.

the howler aims his dracon beam, but doesn’t fire. the warmaker iskroot tosses jake away and he and his pals start to swarm the howler — and the howler doesn’t fight back. aha! rules of engagement!

they can’t kill the iskoort! i yelled to the others. use the iskoort for cover!

jake tells cassie to demorph. she’s rapidly losing blood, and sounds lost and out of it, but she does start to demorph. jake is faced with a difficult choice: go to cassie, and lead the howlers right to her; or trust that she’ll morph back in time, and go fight alongside the others.

i flapped away, feeling like my heart was being ripped from my body.

he’s just a boy!!!

he flies towards the others. he can see only three birds — both cassie and rachel are down. the howlers are leaping from tree to tree, chasing after tobias, marco, and ax. furious, frustrated, and frightened, jake decides to lead the howlers on a wild peregrine chase.

did y’all know peregrine falcons are the fastest animals on earth? you do know! applegate animal fact of the week: in a dive, a peregrine falcon can break two hundred miles an hour. too fast!

jake slices a howler that’s chasing after tobias. he cuts the eyes of a howler that took marco down. he gets three of the howlers to chase him, and he leads one right to the edge. it leaps after him, and charges right off the edge, beginning a seemingly endless fall to the planet below. and then jake has an absolutely wild yet incredible impulse. he chases after the falling howler, demorphing to human, and then acquires the howler’s dna mid-air. as he’s acquiring dna, he plucks off all of the weapons on the howler’s belt, and once he’s done, he shoves the howler away and starts to remorph peregrine. he nearly beefs it, but at the last possible second, the morph is complete and he’s able to skim above the treetops as the howler falls to its death.

from below, jake gets a good look at the “dr. seuss towers” the iskoort have built. he isn’t sure, really, how he’s going to find his friends. but a part of him is afraid to. he is (rightfully, tbh) worried that when he goes back, he’s only going to find the corpses of his friends.

i had to get back. but i couldn’t stand thinking about what i’d find. i couldn’t live without them. couldn’t.

he’s just a kid and life is a nightmare

he suddenly feels anger towards ancient erek and his peaceful programming. he knows the chee were designed to be kind, but with the threat of his dead friends looming above him, he can’t bring himself to care. it does, however, lead him down an interesting line of thought. if the pemalites had changed the chee’s programming and sent them after the howlers, what would have happened once the chee annihilated the howlers? the pemalites would have needed to be sure they could rein them in and control them. just like crayak must need a way to control the howlers. but what would an out of control howler look like? probably one that was peaceful, that didn’t enjoy violence, that wasn’t a killing machine.

before he can get any further in this line of thinking, tobias arrives. tobias!!! always bringing a sense of relief to the others. everyone is alive and okay — a little shaken up, but it’s book 25, so what’s new — and guide has found them a new hideout in the industrial district of the iskroot towers. tobias leads jake to the others (who, by the way, all believe jake to be dead). i was going to just summarize this, but i actually just want you to read along with me.

i thought i was past the emotion. i thought i was over that feeling of hollowness i’d felt, imagining them all gone. but then there they were.

rachel scowling. marco looking down on the floor, withdrawn. ax off by himself, still no doubt blaming himself. erek with his hologram turned off, an unemotional android face.

and cassie.

prince jake! ax cried, the first to see me.

cassie was on her feet and running toward me, and i was running to her, and i wasn’t past any emotion, i was exploding with emotion. cassie jumped into my arms and i wrapped her up tight and before i knew it i was kissing her on her lips and she was kissing me back.

“it’s about time,” rachel grumbled.

A KISS! AN ANIMORPHS KISS!!

marco cracks a joke - “what, no kiss for me?” - and turns to rachel, who threatens to break both of his arms. even on a strange planet in the middle of a chess battle for the survival of the universe, there’s always time for a joke.

still, they are in the middle of a chess battle for the survival of the universe. it’s six howlers to seven animorphs (ancient erek is, at this point, an honorary animorph). jake tells them about the howler dna he acquired, in case that ever comes in handy. ancient erek asks if jake has a plan, and he does. kind of.

he talks about what they know of the howlers. they have some kind of collective memory — what ancient erek absorbed goes back thousands of years. no biological creature can live that long, and they know the howlers are biological creatures, because jake was able to acquire the dna. so they’re designed to share memory, probably to be able to share all that battle experience. but not a single memory shows the howlers defeated. not one. which is incredibly unlikely.

jake asks guide how the memory viewing experience is created. the iskroot have memory headsets, which ties directly into brain waves and plays the memories as if the person wearing the headset is recalling them directly. guide confirms that the headset works on all species.

jake then says they’re going to need a volunteer for a dangerous mission. he glances at rachel and shakes his head no — and then ax volunteers. jake confirms, and rachel sort of smiles, understanding. (i think i say this in every jake book, but i am really proud of how jake is consistently trying his best to live up to the leadership position. he knows his team!)

“swell,” marco said impatiently. “…how does any of this let us take out these six howlers?”

“we don’t take out the six howlers,” i said. “crayak does.”

jake asks guide to take them to a place filled with iskroot. there’s a bit of bartering here — guide wants to get paid more in body parts; ancient erek offers instead his holographic technology — and then guide takes them to a shopping plaza filled with shopper iskoort. it’s crowded, so it’s perfect. guide gets the memory players and finds a rumor iskoort (not a bit! that’s a job!) to let the howlers know where the animorphs are. and then jake talks privately with ax.

jake is like, hey, pal. i notice you’re still pretty upset with yourself over that first battle. ax is like yes, i ran away. jake is like, look, i get it. but the howler’s howl is designed to affect the brain of sentient creatures - and your andalite brain is the most sentient brain we have. ax understands, but still, that andalite pride is eating him alive, so jake sets him loose for his part of the mission. but first, he gives him an order as his prince: ax is not allowed to get himself killed, no matter how heroic he thinks it might be.

:’) they grow up so fast

now, it’s time to put the plan into action. ax catches the attention of the howlers and begins to lead them through the plaza towards the animorphs. rachel morphs grizzly and stands behind jake, who starts to morph howler. rachel is under strict orders, too: if jake loses control of the morph, rachel’s responsible for doing whatever it takes to subdue him.

we all have our strengths

jake morphs into the howler — along the way getting a real life look at his spine, which i’m sure will haunt him as long as it will haunt me. once he’s morphed, he gets some truly chilling information. one, the howler eyes can see through outer layers of skin to the organs beneath. and two, the howlers aren’t angry or rageful. they’re playful.

woof

then come the memories. jake sees all of the memories, all of the destruction, all of the slaughter. and through it all, no anger, no rage. the killing is all a game to the howlers. and then it really falls into place.

the howlers. the killing. it’s a game to them. they’re having fun. they’re enjoying it. like when dolphin leap into the air just for the fun of it and play follow the leader, it’s a game.

they’re destroying entire races for fun?

yes. they don’t know what they’re doing. cassie … they aren’t adults. the howlers are all children.

jesus christ

i need a second

i had to like, physically just lean back and close my eyes

they are children designed to be weapons. they’re grown in a factory, and they have a life span of three years. there is no mature phase.

a lot happens at once. tobias, from above, tells them that they’ve got thirty seconds before the howlers are on them. jake asks ancient erek if he knew the howlers were only children, and ancient erek admits he learned that when he downloaded all of their memories. he didn’t tell anyone because they are responsible for the slaughtering of his creators. there’s a rapid fire moral debate. they’re just kids! they don’t even know what they’re doing is wrong! but they still, you know, slaughter people!

there’s no time. ax gets shot and is barreling towards them. jake calls for places. the plan needs to be put into action. ax comes into the room in which they are all hiding, followed closely by a howler. ancient erek picks up guide and steps in front of the door, momentarily halting all the other howlers. (rules of engagement!)

inside the room, rachel, marco, and cassie try to take down the howler. he stabs marco in the gut. before he can do more damage to the others, jake grabs his attention. he hits the howler in each of its weak spots, and then slaps the memory probe onto the howler’s head.

all of jake’s memories begin to pour into the howler’s head. all the memories from his life: his mom’s face above his crib, riding his dad’s shoulders at an amusement park, meeting elfangor in the construction site. and it’s not just his memories. marco’s, rachel’s, tobias’s, ax’s, cassie’s, guide’s, even ancient erek’s. the memories flow into the howler, and then into the collective howler memory.

and then the howler disappears. and so do all the others.

suddenly, the animorphs are no longer on the iskroot planet. they are kneeling in front of a giant throne. in front of crayak. the terror that fills jake is almost indescribable, but (growth!), he admits that he’s scared. and that they won.

the ellimist arrives in an old man guise, and gets crayak to admit that the iskoort will live. crayak threatens jake: “sleep well, human. i’ll still be there in your dreams. and someday, when the time is right, you will suffer for this.”

then, still holding cassie’s hand, jake morphs into the howler. he searches the collective memory for what happened on the iskoort planet. but he can’t find anything, which means his theory was correct. the howlers may have faced defeat before, but crayak always intervened, destroying the evidence before the memories could taint the collective pool. sharing memories is good for battle strategy. it’s bad if you’re trying to keep your murderous children from realizing that killing isn’t a game, and that their victims are people with hopes and dreams and loves.

and then jake discovers one memory. one something that crayak couldn’t erase: he and cassie’s kiss.

i demorphed back to human. and when i had my own mouth again, i said, “you were too late, crayak. something got through to the howlers’ collective memory.”

“what?” he demanded.

“love.”

look i know it’s cheesy but dAMN c’mon that’s good shit right there!!!!!!!!!!

the ellimist pops them back to cassie’s barn, and tells them what they’ve done. the future isn’t certain, of course. but now it’s more likely that the yeerks will encounter the iskroot in the future and realize there is a better way. crayak will send the howlers to annihilate a race called the sharf den, and the howlers will try to kiss them instead of kill them. and guide is very, very rich.

that night, jake dreams about cassie. but he also dreams of the howler, the one he led to the edge and killed. he tries to focus on cassie, but even in her eyes, he can still see the howler, falling to his doom.

and that’s how it ends

REVIEW

5/5. wOOOOOF. lots of moral dilemmas in this one! some character advancement - jake is really coming into his own in the leadership position, and i’m hoping that applegate will expand more on his relationship with ax now that he’s starting to employ the prince title when he needs to. plus a jake and cassie kiss! and the reveal of the howlers being children…there’s a lot to unpack here about child soldiers but i don’t have the brain space right now. just know that i’m thinking about it.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

• do you like these plot-heavy books more? or do you prefer the more episodic monster-of-the-week type books?

• what is the cherished memory you would sell?

PREDICTIONS

• marco’s mom

• tobias’s mom

i am. simply. exhausted. i don’t know why this book took a chunk out of me but it did!!!! i have nothing else to say have a good week!!!