ANIMORPHS #34: THE PROPHECY
"this is so television for women. two strong, independent girls. one body."
hi hello and welcome back to animorphs weekly, the blog that never says die! (i think that is a movie reference, but it is to a film i have never seen. just want to be clear.) hey friends. me again. been awhile, huh? how’s everyone holding up? oh, sorry, lemme just stop screaming for a sec, hold on—ok. how we doing?
boy howdy has it been a minute since i sat down to write one of these. i want to apologize to all of you, but mostly i want to apologize to jackie. hey jackie. sorry it’s taken so long. thank you for your consistent support and expectation that i will pick this blog back up. to be honest, it really helped keep me motivated. i hope you find this to your liking.
wanna read a book?
WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW CAN’T HURT YOU. EXCEPT FOR THE YEERKS . . .
the hork-bajir look more bird-like than i was anticipating. i know i’ve read their descriptions like, a bazillion times, but i was really more focused on the knife attachments and razor blade feet.
i’m always so nervous about the cassie books. i’m nervous about all of them, always, because something horrifically batshit is going to happen to this group of preteens, but the cassie books always hold a fifty/fifty chance that cassie is going to be isolated from the others. sometimes, her books are wacky adventures: remember when they all turned into horses to infiltrate area 51 and found out the government was studying an andalite portapotty? or when they all got shrunk by those weirdy little aliens in the toy rocketship?
other times, she’s having to convince a yeerk that parasitic enslavement of the human race is not the way, or performing brain surgery on her alien friend in the barn in her backyard.
the cover gives me no solace
also, wild that it’s taken us thirty-four books to get to a prophecy. any prophecy! sci-fi books are seriously lacking in prophecies.
reader, today i’m a 2. my neck is a little over-extended, my mouth is agape in shock, and my binder is working its absolute hardest.
it’s a cassie book!
(true to form: this recap is so long it exceeds the email character length. if there is a way for you to read this post on substack (i think you can just click on my dweeby little icon up there), you can. or you can read what the email will give you and then click the link that appears at the bottom. just want to give you some options, since i know what’s coming and you don’t. ok! business over! back to the madness!)
SUMMARY
we open with cassie delivering a surprisingly self-depricating introduction. her name is cassie. just cassie. not because she’s special enough to only go by one name, like “jewel or brandy or beck”, a wide variety sure to reach any and all ages, but because if the yeerks knew her last name, everyone she’s ever loved would be dead.
dark!
she runs through some facts. normally i’d skim these, but it’s been a minute for all of us, so let’s just look over them together.
fact: yeerks are slug-like parasites who infest their hosts by crawling through the ear canal to lay themselves over the brain of their host
fact: yeerks have enslaved many species, including the hork-bajir and the gedds, and have entered into a parasitic relationship with the taxxons. now their sights are set on the humans.
fact: someone you know is a yeerk!
fact: the animorphs are your only hope of survival
the animorphs, of course, are cassie and her five friends: jake, her sort-of boyfriend; rachel, her best friend; marco, the funny one with deep-seated mommy issues; tobias, the bird; and ax, the andalite. normally, they all go on missions together, but tonight, cassie is on a secret mission. it’s just her and rachel against the world.
you should see rachel. she’s like stone cold steve austin crossed with miss teen USA. unlike me, rachel is someone who could pull off the whole i’m-so-special-i-only-need-one-name deal even if she didn’t have to keep her identity a secret.
right into the camera
starting off dark and gay, just like i like it!!!!
the two of them are standing outside an old victorian house. one light on in the window. a loose shutter swinging in the wind. cassie makes the call: they’re going in. before rachel can deliver what i’m sure is going to be constructive criticism on the plan, her morph begins. she’s turning into a housecat. cassie lets her go into the house first—cassie will be morphing rat, and she wants to give rachel enough time to let her instincts settle.
smart
cassie begins to morph. it’s horrible. as usual. morphing happens out of order, as we know, so there’s a solid minute where cassie has tiny rat hands and the body of a human girl. then she feels her internal organs “sloshing” and her eyes shrink, and then she gets the body of a rat.
sloshing!
rachel and cassie scramble in through the little doggy door and scamper up the stairs to the room with the light on. a tea kettle goes off. the woman inside the room emerges. it’s cassie’s math teacher!
cassandra! are you stealing homework????
rachel darts into the room and climbs onto the desk.
what am i looking for exactly?
a doodle. it’s, um, of a…a heart, i stammered. i tried to climb up the desk leg. but it was metal. my claws couldn’t get a grip.
think i see it, rachel answered. if the heart has “cassie loves jake” printed in the middle with a really dorky cupid drawn next to it.
cassie confirms: that’s the culprit. she begs rachel to grab it and say nothing.
rachel laughed and leaped down off the desk with the sheet of paper in her teeth. okay, you’re my best friend. so not one word. especially not “awww, isn’t that sweet?” and definitely not “cassie is in lo-ove, cassie is in lo-ove.” and no way i’d ever say—
i knew i should have done this alone.
the unconscious trope of one queer girl helping another queer girl win over her average white male love interest is everywhere if you’re looking for it and boy howdy am i always looking for it
cassie flies home as an owl, the doodle clutched tightly in her talon. she can’t BELIEVE she turned it in with her test!! love is making her into a fool!!! she wonders if jake ever does stupid shit because he’s daydreaming about her.
we never talked about things like that. we’d never even used the “L” word to each other. that’s what rachel calls it. the “l” word.
the jokes write themselves
still, cassie knows jake loves her, even if they’ve never said it out loud. she can totally tell when they kiss! even if most of their kisses have happened after a battle, when they’re riding the adrenaline of near-death. coincidentally, that is also a tactic used by the producers of the bachelor. any one-on-one date that involves ziplining or skydiving or any other fear-inducing dangerous shit is to trick the brain of the contestant and the star into thinking the heart-pounding is because they’re so into each other, and not because they just did an immensely dangerous thing on television
anyway
cassie makes it back to her house and spots: gasp! a hork-bajir! instantly, she kicks into fight mode. if a hork-bajir is here, does that mean the yeerks know everything? she has a horrible daydream about her parents being ripped to shreds by the hork-bajir, rachel and jake getting shot by dracon beams. but she can’t focus on the horrible possibilities! she has to fight! what would rachel do???
(that’s not an editorial on my end, by the way, she does genuinely ask herself what would rachel do. best friends!)
cassie swoops down, talons at the ready, and then at the last second—WOOSH. she veers hard to the left and crashes into the grass.
i lay there on my side in the dirt, a wing crumpled beneath me. hi, jara hamee, i said. lovely night for a walk.
nice! it’s jara hamee, one of the free hork-bajir that live in that free hork-bajir colony nestled among the mountains. cassie quickly demorphs and asks jara hamee what he’s doing taking a little stroll behind her barn. it’s like, mega dangerous for a creature like him to just be wandering around.
jara hamee tells her the hork-bajir need the animorphs help. an alien has landed in their valley. cassie’s first thought is, of course, the yeerks. but no, jara hamee tells her. not yeerks.
“arn. from the old world. arn … make … hork-bajir.”
papa
a brief note: i am reading these books using totally legally obtained PDFs from the internet (thank you, adrian), so in some places in the book it’s typed out as A R N, and in some places it’s typed out as A M. a classic phishing technique. for our purposes, i will be using ARN, because i think it’s a more fun word to say. arn
the next morning, bright and early, the animorphs fly to the valley. there’s a little banter between rachel and marco about the phantom menace, and cassie delivers a brief history lesson on the arn. tl;dr:
the arn’s planet suffered a cataclysmic event that stripped away their atmosphere, and the arn needed caretakers to tend to the absolutely humungous trees they planted to revive the oxygen levels
the arn genetically engineered the hork-bajir, a peaceful, low-intelligence species who eat tree bark
sure
the hork-bajir didn’t even know the arn existed; they were just happy to be eating trees
the yeerks came
you know the rest
the animorphs reach the hork-bajir valley. it’s cool! there’s a little welcoming party, including some hork-bajir kids, the first to be born out of captivity for a handful of generations. also there is toby hamee, jara hamee’s kid and the resident Seer. she’s the one to approach and thank them for coming.
toby lays it out: they need the animorphs’s help in deciding what to do with the arn who crash landed. she’s specifically interested to know what ax might think, as an andalite perspective is warranted here. jake’s like, alright. show us the arn. the crowd parts, and there he is.
the first thing i noticed about him was his eyes. they glittered like diamonds from within. their intensity dazzled me.
i blinked a few times, and began to take in more details of the arn’s appearance. he had four legs, two elongated arms, and a pair of short wings. he was about half as tall as ax and his skin was a vibrant emerald-green.
cassie also notes the unmistakably deep sadness in his eyes, a look i think we all carry around with us now
he makes a couple comments about the rudimentary build of humans (no complaints there, i think he’s right, cannot believe we still have wisdom teeth) and then cuts to the chase: his name is quafijinivon, and he is the last of the arn.
he’s come to earth because he has a plan to give the hork-bajir freedom and vengeance, and his plan requires their help. basically, he wants to take the DNA of the free hork-bajir back home, to grow some new hork-bajir to fight off the current yeerk invasion. yeah, he admits that he’d be growing them to be soldiers, but it would help them regain their home planet, and more help in fighting the yeerks isn’t exactly something the animorphs can immediately shut down.
jake asks how a handful of hork-bajir will be able to fight off the invading army of the yeerks. quafijinivon tells them two hork-bajir, aldrea-iskillion-falan and dak hamee, stole a transport ship filed with alien weapons, including dracon beams and some “sophisticated explosives”. for those of you back home asking “who’s aldrea and dak?” don’t worry. the next page illuminates that aldrea and dak are toby’s great-grandparents. two hork-bajir soldiers who fought against the yeerks and lost their lives to the fight.
toby agrees to provide her DNA to further the efforts of her dead great-grandparents. the other hork-bajir chime in and agree, too. but! quafijinivon has one more thing to add. aldrea and dak hid the weapons, and he has not been able to find him.
so what do you propose? ax asked. do you plan to create new hork-bajir and send them out to search for the weapons?
“no. that would be self-defeating. i have something rather more … unusual in mind.”
classic!
quafijinivon reveals he has the ixcila of aldrea. an ixcila is “her stored persona…her brain wave patterns. her memories. her personality. her essence.” there is a ritual that will allow the ixcila of aldrea to enter a “strong receptacle mind,” which is a comment i got a lot on my report cards.
if the ritual is successful, and the ixcila finds a host suitable to its personality, they’ll be able to communicate with aldrea and figure out where the weapons are stored. and don’t worry—the receptacle mind will be undamaged. it will simply share space with aldrea until the ixcila is “returned to storage”. (applegate’s phrase!) there’s a 75% chance the ritual will fail.
“the appropriate receptacle mind is essential. aldrea’s ixcila will be attracted to someone most like she was. someone strong, fierce, independent. presumably female. hork-bajir or andalite, most likely, but i suppose she might gravitate toward a human. if such a human female existed.”
“oh, i think i know where one could be found,” marco said. “and the next words out of rachel’s mouth will be …”
that is that short king / lesbian solidarity we like to see!!
true to form, rachel volunteers to be a part of the ritual. toby, too, steps forward. cassie doesn’t say anything. to her, the obvious choice is her super cool, smart, tough, fierce, beautiful best friend. the description of “strong, fierce, and independent” doesn’t fit her.
oh, cassie
it’s your POV
the hork-bajir lead the arn and the animorphs to a nearby cave to begin the ritual. ax asks quafijinivon what happens if aldrea does not want to return to storage. a fair question! quafijinivon agrees that, yes, aldrea will have to choose to release her hold on the receptacle mind. toby thinks ax is only asking because he doesn’t trust aldrea.
to an andalite, cassie muses, it must be strange to think that an andalite would willingly remain in hork-bajir form. but cassie understands the choice aldrea made, and more so, she admires it. another brief history lesson:
aldrea discovered her fellow andalites made a virus to kill the hork-bajir, because they were about to lose the hork-bajir planet to the yeerks and they’d rather the hork-bajir were dead than yeerk soldiers
(later, the andalite people disavowed this move. cassie says, “sometimes, in war, even the “good guys” do awful things. too true queen!)
aldrea learned about the virus and had to choose between her people or the hork-bajir seer she’d fallen in love with, dak hamee
she chose dak
they fought together til they died
ixcila
quafijinivon admits that there’s no way to force aldrea out. both toby and rachel consent to move forward. enthusiastically! quafijinivon pulls a small vial out filled with glowing green liquid, and the ritual begins. as soon as he unstops the vial, cassie’s nostrils begin to burn.
girl
quafijinivon leads the ritual and cassie feels her heartbeat align with the pulsing of the glowing green liquid. then, suddenly, she lurches forward and she’s on her hands and knees on the cave floor.
“the receptacle has been chosen!” quafijinivon shouted.
aw dip
quafijinivon asks if cassie accepts the ixcila. jake yells no, but cassie’s body cassie’s choice!!!! she says yes!!!!!!!!!
cassie braces herself. she’s had a yeerk inside her head before (shoutout to you rachel elizabeth), so she’s pretty familiar with the invasive feeling of losing control of your entire body, but that…doesn’t happen. instead, there’s a wall inside her brain.
have you ever been taking a test and totally blanked? you read a question. you know you know the answer. you know you memorized it when you were studying. but you can’t get to it. it’s like there’s a wall in your brain separating you from the information.
that’s how i felt now. and the wall was enormous. high and long and solid.
this happens to me every time someone asks me my favorite movie except the wall is a huge billboard and the billboard is advertising the 2005 film sky high
warren peace the og gender envy
anyway
cassie thinks aldrea is on the other side of this mental wall, but she doesn’t really know how to communicate with her. everyone’s asking her questions, and way more polite than is necessary, she asks everyone to shh. fully within her right to use the allotted f-bomb, but whatever. i didn’t write these books.
cassie tries to speak to aldrea. she tells her that she’s safe, that she’s sharing her body. she introduces herself. her name is cassie, she’s a human girl, she lives on earth. an arn performed a ritual—
arn?!
red dots exploded in front of my eyes. the question in my head was so loud and forceful it made me dizzy.
there she is!
cassie’s like, okay, arn is a no-go topic, heard chef. she quickly backtracks. she explains to aldrea that she was brought here because there’s a colony of free hork-bajir who need her help. among them are her grandson, jara hamee, and her great-granddaughter, toby. aldrea tells cassie she can’t see. cassie, a genius, realizes aldrea’s just not used to processing information the way cassie does.
(i’m reading a book right now about eels and the author was lichrully discussing this! we’ll never really be able to know what it’s like to be a bat, for example, because the way they take in information is so different from us!)
once aldrea recognizes toby, cassie has the impulse to move forward and touch foreheads with toby. she recognizes the impulse as aldrea’s, but different from a yeerk, cassie can choose whether or not to follow through on the impulse. she starts to (kind sweet generous cassie) but is stopped by aldrea’s rapid-fire questions.
what year is this?
where is dak?
how did she get here?
where’s her body?
cassie, gently, asks aldrea if she remembers providing her ixcila to an old arn. aldrea says yes, and then the penny drops.
but that is what has happened, isn’t it? a successful transplant. aldrea continued. this can only mean that—
i hesitated. but she had to know the truth. “yes, aldrea, you are dead.”
then we get a POV change!!!!! aldrea time!!!!
she’s…processing. at first, she thinks maybe this is all a yeerk trick—there’s no way the arn would be sophisticated enough to pull off a successful transplant ritual. but her body is weak and doesn’t have enough fingers, so…
yeah, damn. she’s dead.
she asks cassie if dak is alive. cassie says no. the arn informs them both that his lab was destroyed, and along with it, the ixcila of dak hamee.
was it true? if so, then dak was truly dead. dead like my parents. like my brother, barafin.
then let me die, arn, i said. let me die, too.
she’s just an ixclia and life is a nightmare
aldrea asks after her son, seerow. toby answers: seerow was captured by the yeerks, and died in their army. but it’s not all bad! seerow’s son, jara hamee, escaped with the help of the animorphs. and toby was born in freedom!
aldrea realizes that toby is a seer too, just like her now-dead husband. toby tells her they’ve brought her back because they really, really need her help.
tell her there is nothing she could ask of me that i would not give, i said to cassie.
my rebirth had brought me a pain that felt almost unbearable. my dak gone. my seerow gone. but it had brought me a gift as well. the chance to know my great-granddaughter.
i wouldn’t give that up for anything. perhaps i would even see toby’s child one day.
well, uh,,,,,,
did y’all ever read the host? this is giving me major the host vibes. except i don’t think this book is going to end with the protagonist taking over a sixteen-year-old’s body and lying to her twenty-something love interest about her age.
stephanie meyer, am i right?
we switch back to cassie’s pov. aldrea tells cassie she doesn’t know where the weapons are—if such weapons do exist, the hiding happened after aldrea’s ixcila was taken, so she has no memory of it. (she also has no memory of how she died, which is cool, but she doesn’t know if she got to say goodbye to dak, which is sad.)
the arn’s like, well, okay. if you found the hiding place once, maybe you can find it again? aldrea’s like, absolutely the fuck not you tell that greasy four armed little winged dick bitch that i say—
wait, wait. you’re going too fast, i told her. i found i could communicate mind to mind with her now. as easy as any internal dialogue.
then let me use your speech centers. i will speak to them directly.
cassie’s like, well, i don’t really have a good reason to say no, so…
girl you don’t need a good reason to say no!!!! ur body ur choice!!!!
aldrea starts to speak using cassie’s mouth. it’s slow-going at first, as she figures out how to use a human tongue and teeth, but she picks it up pretty quickly. i imagine it’s easier to figure out talking when you’re ready to deliver an absolute smackdown. aldrea’s like, no fucking way am i helping you get these weapons, arn. quafijinivon is like what??? you wouldn’t fight to give the hork-bajir their planet back???
aldrea laughed. it was a harsh, ugly sound that hurt my throat. “no, arn. i am refu-sing the chance to give you your planet back. that is what you are tru-ly asking. you care no-thing for the hork-bajir. your kind never did.”
we get into some moral debates. aldrea’s like, if you make hork-bajir to fight against the yeerks, they’ll be fighting against their own kind. hork-bajir killing hork-bajir. toby steps in. yes, great-grandmother, she concedes, there will be hork-bajir fighting hork-bajir, but it will be to stop the yeerks and give the free hork-bajir their home. the hork-bajir must fight.
aldrea spread my hands wide. “why?”
“because we must be a free people, great-grandmother. so far our freedom here, in this valley, on this planet, has been bought and paid for by these humans, our friends. but freedom can’t be given. it must be taken and held and defended. our freedom has to be our own creation.”
i know for a fact if i put that quote over a picture of mlk jr white people would go bananas
eventually, aldrea concedes. she will go with quafijinivon, toby, and the animorphs to the hork-bajir home planet to help find the weapons. it’s then that she notices ax. she asks cassie why an andalite is present, and cassie explains: he’s a friend. aldrea’s like yeah, sure, we were also friends to the hork-bajir. look where that got them. then ax and aldrea get into a little back and forth. she’s like, i’m a hork-bajir; ax is like, no, you’re an andalite trapped in a hork-bajir’s body, no matter what you want to believe. that distinction is important. he stares at aldrea through cassie’s eyes.
i want to be sure, daughter of prince seerow, that you realize you only have one function to perform. as soon as you show us the location of the weapons your ixcila will be returned to storage. you are dead, aldrea-iskillion-falan. when you have performed this one duty, this illusion of life will be ended and cassie will be cassie alone.
the wall between me and aldrea went back up. it felt even stronger than before. i had no idea what her true reaction to ax’s question was.
yoinks, scoob
aldrea says she understands why the ceremony was performed and why the arn brought her back. she also says, “i will do what i must,” which is…not a very reassuring thing to hear when you’re a twelve-year-old girl currently housing the dead spirit using your voicebox to say, “i will do what i must.” cassie agrees. she’s like, uh, ok. i’ll…take my speech controls back now. aldrea’s like yeah girl no problem.
but i think there might be at least one problem
the next chapter starts with rachel and cassie+aldrea walking back home from the hork-bajir colony. since the animorphs are going to be gone for a hot minute hunting down some weapons on an alien planet, they’re going to have to chat to the chee about those handy-dandy hologram replacements.
rachel’s explaining cassie’s morphs to aldrea. on the hork-bajir planet, aldrea will be in charge, and the animorphs want her to know the arsenal she’s got at hand. cassie, on the other hand, is trying really hard not to look in the bushes and trees.
…if i knew jake he’d left at least one or two others [animorphs] behind to watch us secretly. jake was no happier with aldrea’s careful reply than i was.
this leisurely walk through the woods was a test. if aldrea did anything troubling, rachel was on hand, and probably tobias and ax, as well. i didn’t spot either of them. but i’d have bet anything they were close by.
smart!
as rachel explains cassie’s morphs, she takes a second to brag about her own as well, and then blurts out the question she’s been dying to ask: why did aldrea not choose her? cassie’s curious, too. why did aldrea pick cassie?
aldrea admits: she doesn’t know. she doesn’t remember making the choice. cassie reports her answer to rachel, and then offers to share control of her speech centers with aldrea. surely that won’t cause any problems in the future!
now, it’s time to try the morph. cassie begins to explain morphing to aldrea, before aldrea cuts in and reminds her: yeah, she was an andalite. they literally invented morphing. cassie’s like ok cool haha yeah right :’) totally :’)
if you thought morphing was fucked up before, it only gets worse from here. when cassie isn’t the one morphing her body, “each sensation [feels] magnified by a hundred.” she tries to pretend she’s watching a movie, but it’s harder to do once the morph is complete and aldrea is taking off in the wolf form. cassie tries to wag the wolf’s tail—and she can’t. she has no control over the morph, nor her own body.
i wondered again why aldrea hadn’t chosen rachel as her receptacle. but maybe the answer was all too clear: maybe i’d been chosen because she sensed that i was the weakest.
had she felt that i would be the easiest to control? had aldrea, even in her inchoate ixcila form, marked me as an easy victim?
nice sat word there, cass
the next chapter finds our animorphs at cassie’s barn. ancient erek is also there, squaring away some final details about the chee who will be covering for the animorphs. marco requests his chee ask out a girl named holly perry, who will probably never be heard from again; rachel requests her chee stop being so nice to her little sisters. jake has no requests. cassie starts to ask: if something goes wrong on the mission, if they don’t return…
“we could stay with your families,” [ancient] erek said. “if you really wish.”
“no,” i said quickly. “forget it. no. i…i don’t think i want anyone being me permanently.”
[ancient] erek nodded. “no. i’ve lived a long, long time. seen a lot of death. i’ve never seen the point in denying death. people die. people grieve. it’s better than playing games with it.”
very poignant thing to say with the spirit of a dead person present
they fly back to the hork-bajir colony in silence. once there, jake instructs anyone who doesn’t have a hork-bajir morph to acquire one. as cassie is acquiring jara hamee’s DNA, she can feel aldrea’s grief. the wall between them is a little more porous now. aldrea is allowing cassie glimpses of her own emotions, and right now, her main emotion is grief.
for aldrea, dak hamee died yesterday, and she wasn’t with him. “maybe in reality,” she thinks, “but not in my memory, which is all the truth i have.”
applegate is dropping BANGER LINES in this book!!! speaking of banger lines: quafijinivon announces it’s time to board the ship. he turns back to the free hork-bajir and delivers a little speech promising to atone for the sins of his people by winning back the hork-bajir home planet from the yeerks. the free hork-bajir respond by cheering FREE OR DEAD. when cassie tears up, she doesn’t know if it’s her or aldrea. maybe both.
they board the ship. it’s a newer-generation yeerk ship, according to ax’s calculations. he notes that they’ve made innovations in space travel since, well, “we all know who gave the yeerks the capacity for z-space travel.”
aldrea speaks. yeah, her dad, prince seerow, gave the yeerks the ability to travel through space. everybody knows that. but really, what he did is no different than the andalite who gave the humans their morphing ability. ax won’t stand for brother slander. rachel also jumps in: the humans are not like the yeerks! marco makes a joke about how all the kids are already fighting in the backseat. tobias is about to jump in when jake makes the call: conversation over.
“we have to be a team here,” jake said in a voice so quiet it forced everyone to lean forward to listen. “we have to be able to count on each other. we’re going deep into enemy territory. the hork-bajir planet is yeerk-held. ringed by yeerk defenses. and we’re relying on two people we don’t know: quafijinivon and aldrea.”
he shot me/aldrea a hard look. “we’ll be advised by quafijinivon and aldrea. and we’ll always listen to toby. but this is an animorph mission.”
“meaning that you are in charge?” aldrea demanded, almost laughing.
“that’s exactly what i mean,” jake said.
WHAT TEAM
WILDCATS
WHAT TEAM
WILDCATS
WHAT TEAM???
WILDCATS!!!!!
GET UR HEAD IN THE GAME!!!!!!!
i love when jake goes prince mode.
cassie can feel aldrea’s worry and resentment and she’s quick to address it. jake’s led them through more missions and battles than aldrea and dak ever fought. aldrea notes that cassie cares for jake, the way she cared for dak. cassie agrees.
i wish you better luck than we had.
woof
aldrea says she’ll follow jake as if he were her prince. ax opens the observation panels, and they jump through z-space.
the next chapter is an aldrea POV. she’s standing on a small platform nestled high among the trees of the hork-bajir planet. dak is there, too. soon, they know, they’re going to die. she turns to look at their son, seerow, who speaks with more fluency than a child hork-bajir should have. he tells her the yeerks will take him. she will not save him. then dak disappears. then seerow disappears, replaced by cassie, who tells aldrea she’s having a nightmare. cassie disappears, replaced by ax, sneering at her. the entire time, aldrea is screaming her son’s name.
cassie forces her awake by plunging their face into a bowl of cold water. aldrea looks around. ax watches her, as does jake. cassie soothes them both, explaining aldrea was just having a bad dream.
a nightmare. a dream of death from a person already dead.
hey kids could you lighten up a little back there
the best marketing scheme to date is the covers of these books. they look so fucking rad and then you open them and have to confront the idea of war crimes, parasitic possession, and what lies beyond live. jesus christ
good thing we’re all adults
back to cassie’s POV. life with aldrea is weird. understatement of the century. thankfully, they’re almost to hork-bajir homeworld. they leave the “blank white nothingness of zero-space” (horrifying) and enter the black star field just outside the hork-bajir planet. jake tells everyone to prepare themselves for what’s to come. marco asks if they have enough money for the tolls. jake laughs.
the moment is brief. TSEW! they’re being fired on!
ax and cassie/aldrea run to the bridge. it’s an andalite ship! on deep patrol, harassing the yeerk defenses. it thinks they’re yeerks too! the andalite ship fires again. it misses, but only barely.
jake asks if they can outrun him. quafijinivon says they might be able to, but the andalite fighter is between them and the hork-bajir homeworld. (for clarity and honesty, two things this blog really cares about, the arn keeps referring to it as “arn homeworld” because he’s being racist, but for simplicity’s sake i’m referring to it as hork-bajir homeworld because i want to.)
rachel suggests firing back. quafijinivon is like, that is literally an andalite fighter. we will never win against him. (on that, ax and aldrea can agree!) tobias points out they shouldn’t shoot an andalite; they’re technically allies. and he’s like, half-andalite, kind of. ax suggests communicating with it, but aldrea says no! if the yeerks pick up a voice transmission, they’ll all die.
ax leaps into action as the andalite fighter turns on them to shoot again. he veers the ship to the left, sending everyone careening sideways. cassie flies into toby and gets cut by her blades! the andalite ship fires!
it hits one of their engines. the ship jolts forward. marco topples into cassie and makes a joke about jake being jealous. cassie’s bleeding from the mouth now. the andalite fighter is coming in slow—so he can be sure of his shot. ax cuts lights and artificial gravity to give power to their remaining engine. jake asks if they can outmaneuver the fighter. ax says no.
jake calls out for aldrea. though he doesn’t have to ask, she knows what he wants. ax protests—he doesn’t want them firing on an andalite, but it’s jake’s call. pushing forward, aldrea takes the controls. she aims the crosshairs of their weapon on the cockpit of the ship.
if you were not in my friend cassie my tail blade would be at your throat now, ax said in thought-speak only aldrea and i could hear. do not miss.
damn son
aldrea adjusts the crosshairs to aim at the engine instead. she fires. TSEW! the engine pod explodes! the andalite ship spins out of control. four proper yeerk ships arrive to finish him off. quafijinivon wants to fly forward, now that the yeerk ships believe them to be bona fide yeerks. but jake says no.
“ax? aldrea? four of them. if we fire on the yeerks, will the andalite figure it out. will he join in?”
yes! ax said. he is already wondering why we do not finish him off.
a plan forms! tobias, the natural flier, helps set them up for success, and BOOM BOOM BOOM! they take out three of the bug fighters! the andalite goes to finish off the fourth, but not before giving a little wave with his ship. everyone cheers! jake’s like, yeah, yeah, cheer it out. we may have just made things harder on ourselves, so be prepared for battle morphs as soon as we land.
cassie, i believe i like your boyfriend, aldrea said.
yeah! that little white boy’s not so bad!
we switch to aldrea’s POV as the ship lands on the hork-bajir homeworld. quafijinivon says the yeerk automated defenses accepted their codes, which means they won’t get shot out of the sky with a dracon cannon, but there’s one more threshold to cross when they make it to the valley proper. aldrea’s not really paying attention to all of this. she’s thinking about how she hasn’t seen her home planet from space since she arrived here as a child, with her disgraced father and her scientist mother and her brother. all of them dead now. including her.
kids book!
the ship drops into the valley where aldrea lived—and died—with dak. most of the trees are gone, devastated and flattened by the yeerk forces. cassie asks if aldrea is alright, and aldrea asks her to look away. she can’t stand the sight of her home.
“two minutes,” quafijinivon said. “we will land just above the vapor barrier, within the former range of the monsters we created to restrain hork-bajir curiosity.”
well gee mister i sure hope those monsters aren’t still down there!
aldrea muses on how she doesn’t really know anyone’s intentions. not toby’s, not the arn’s, nor the humans who accompanied her. what she does know is this: she’s here now, and she’s going to make the yeerks pay, no matter the cost.
we move back to cassie’s pov. she feels aldrea put the wall up between them again, but she can’t really blame her. if the situation were reversed, she wouldn’t want an audience to her discoveries of a destroyed earth.
quafijinivon goes to open the hatch. jake asks what’s out there. should they morph to hork-bajir? no need, says the arn. all the monsters are dead, so the yeerks don’t come this way. quafijinivon needs to reach his lab and start the cloning process before the DNA he collected starts to deteriorate, so he leads the animorphs down a very skinny staircase on a very steep cliff. the bottom of my feet are tingling just thinking about it.
down below, marco points out some lava. quafijinivon is like yeah, that’s the core of our planet. rachel’s like, the core core? the center of the earth? the arn’s like yeah, the core core. keep up, human girl. cassie’s like, can we please shut up about the magma below? ax is like, it’s okay, cassie, you don’t have to worry about the lava.
if you fell, i believe you would be incinerated before you hit the actual magma, he continued.
sometimes i think hanging around marco so much has given ax a totally twisted sense of humor. very un-andalite.
[studio audience laughter]
finally, the staircase ends, and quafijinivon leads them through an arch carved into the cliffside. it’s his lab! it took him years to rebuild, he says, because the yeerk raids destroyed everything. toby asks if it’s true that the arn altered their own physiology to escape being yeerk hosts. arn confirms that yes, the yeerks did not hunt them down to make them into hosts. rather, the yeerks hunted them down for sport. target practice.
eesh
we switch back to aldrea POV. jake snaps to action. they’re not here to sightsee; they’re here to get the weapons, and then they’re going home. toby, aldrea says, is home. this surprises toby. tobias is like yeah, okay, but that’s her call if she wants to stay or not. the rest of us are definitely going home. aldrea wonders what would happen if she decides that cassie stays here as well, but doesn’t voice that out loud. probably for the best. because,,,,,
jake’s like, okay, aldrea, show us the way. she says okay, but feels uneasy. she doesn’t remember where the weapons were hid; the decision must have been made after her ixcila was recorded. cassie’s quick to pick up on this. she tries to warn jake, but aldrea tries to stop her.
let me talk!
i released my hold, shocked at my own behavior. i hadn’t meant to stop her, hadn’t meant to battle for control. a mistake; i’d had no time to think it through.
cassie is clear: aldrea is not to fight her for control again. then, she reveals to the group what aldrea was hiding: aldrea doesn’t know for sure where the weapons are, but she does have an idea. ax’s eyes light up; he was right. jake’s face is impossible to read. aldrea asks for permission to speak, and once it’s granted, tells the others that she’s confident she can find the weapons. she does remember where she intended to hide them, at least.
jake goes into prince mode. aldrea is no longer to be trusted. he understands she’s in a very strange situation, that she’s mad at the andalites and the arn and she doesn’t trust the humans as allies. but she will not jeopardize their mission. aldrea bristles. this is her homeworld, and she will guide them in the right direction.
sure jan
once that’s settled, jake takes in a deep breath. they’ll all morph hork-bajir, except tobias, who will be their eyes in the sky. avoid earth morphs if they can, and move quick.
it’s morphin’ time!
(a brief aside: did y’all know that jared leto said with his actual mouth, “it’s morbin’ time,” in the 2022 film morbius? i thought it was a joke. it isn’t. you can watch it here.)
aldrea watches as cassie morphs into hork-bajir. she’s, admittedly, impressed. cassie is a talented morpher—so talented that she can control the appearance of the hork-bajir arm blades, so they fan out one by one, followed by her horns. aldrea compliments her on her skill, and then asks—is it okay if she controls the hork-bajir body for now?
cassie acquiesces. aldrea is thrilled. she runs straight for a gigantic tree and begins to climb. she can tell that cassie is nervous of heights, but comfortable with climbing. they talk a little about evolution—cassie tells aldrea that human predecessors lived in trees—and aldrea explains to the other animorphs that traveling through the trees is how travel is done here. jake asks for a status report from tobias.
i don’t see any hork-bajir, or anything else except some small, fuzzy, monkey-looking things.
chadoo, i said.
bless you
they reach a long branch that extends south—south, towards the home where dak and aldrea shared, where she gave birth to their son. if she hid weapons, she hid them there. so homeward bound they go.
we switch back to cassie’s POV. they’re running through the branches now, full on sprinting, slingshotting from the ends of one branch to another. it’s fun! they’re all having so much fun! cassie and aldrea pause at the end of a branch to let the others catch up. aldrea watches toby, flying through the trees, laughing and smiling.
she’s all i have left, aldrea said.
you must have relatives, i said. andalite relatives.
she is all i have, aldrea insisted. and i don’t even have her. i have oblivion.
jeeeeeeeepers
cassie’s like, yeah, damn, i guess she’s right. aldrea isn’t really truly alive. unless…
(literally that’s what applegate types out. unless…)
unless, cassie thinks, aldrea lives through cassie’s body. she goes back and forth: no, it would be crazy, and that’s not up to her. is it up to her? aldrea is technically kind of alive now, she can think and feel and learn. but she’s only alive because cassie permits it. is she going to have to be the one to kill aldrea?
as an adult, this is where i would place my hand on cassie’s shoulder and say, you are not the one that kills her, she’s already dead. this is a crazy piece of technology that fucks with our understanding of life and death, but she is still dead. the yeerks killed her.
but this is YA so there are no adults
aldrea can sense that cassie is kinda freaking out. she asks what’s wrong. what can cassie say??? “oh just debating the immorality of asking you to vacate my body and return to the sweet nothingness of death?”
there it was, i thought, the fatal weakness that had drawn aldrea’s ixcila to me. at some subrational, instinctive level, aldrea’s spirit had sensed the weakness in me. she had known that i could not, would not, demand her death.
tobias sweeps in. he asks aldrea how much further. she says a quarter mile. tobias says there are no more trees up ahead, but there is something else: trouble.
right here in river city!
we switch back to aldrea POV. she is sprinting ahead of the others, so she comes to the end of the branches first. a hundred huge trees—huge, y’all, they’re like, 100 feet around—have been decimated. torn out. the valley’s end, aldrea’s home, has been transformed into a gigantic yeerk pool.
the humans did not understand, of course, not really. this was my home. not from decades ago, but from just the other day. just the other day i left my husband and my son there. just the other day they were alive.
i’m just like trying to picture a classroom reading this book together, you know? like, chapter by chapter out loud.
aldrea’s like, i am actually dead. my life was my husband and my child, and they are gone. this—feeling, seeing, hearing, this is just an illusion. all i’ve known is gone.
:/
four large trees make up the bulk of the dam just beyond the yeerk pool. on one, aldrea can see some scarring. she asks tobias to use his special hawk eyes to look, and he confirms what she suspects: one of the trees has the hork-bajir equivalent of “A+D 4EVA” scratched into it.
the weapons will be there, i said firmly. inside that tree. it has a hollow base. dak and our fellow fighters used it as a hideout. there is a chamber inside, all smooth wood, silent and dark…large enough to conceal a small transport ship.
ax points out that it’s part of the dam, which means it will be heavily guarded. marco notes if they fuck with that tree, the whole dam might come crashing down. jake asks if aldrea thinks she can get the entryway to open for her again. she confirms. it was well-constructed, and the water pressure will have kept it shut.
water pressure?
yes. the opening is on the far side of the tree. it is beneath the surface of the yeerk pool.
of course it is
we switch back to cassie’s POV. she tells us the plan they hatch is absolute insanity, which she knows because aldrea declares it as such. jake says they need a whale. rachel tries to volunteer, but cassie shuts that down quick. she’s faster at morphing. it will be her.
aldrea tries to get the animorphs to do things her way: take their time, raid the yeerks, capture a few hork-bajir and starve their yeerks out. but there’s no time for that. the chee can’t cover for them forever. and as jake says, they’ve been “doing crazy since ax’s brother showed up.”
you can say that again!
they vote. i love when they vote. little democracy. aldrea begs cassie to vote against—if she’s off even by a little bit, she’ll die. and not just her, but aldrea too! cassie’s like yeah, i know. c’mon. we’re morphin’.
cassie morphs to osprey while the others—sans toby—morph into flea or fly. the insects crawl into her beak and she flies up over the dam. she gives the others a quick status report: the dam is lit, there’s a bug fighter on the far end, and hork-bajir patrols. anyone need anything before they get started?
i could use a soda, marco said.
[studio audience laughter]
applegate is employing a classic YA tactic, which we’ve talked about before, where she reveals the plan as it’s happening rather than laying it all out for us. which is great for storytelling, but not incredibly conducive to blog-writing. from what i understand, the plan looks like this:
cassie carries the animorphs in her mouth down down down into the yeerk pool, demorphing from osprey into human
quickly, she will morph into whale, which has a big enough mouth to allow the other animorphs to access the door as hork-bajir
they’ll get in, cassie will ? demorph ? and swim ? into the tree ?
they get on the ship, get the weapons, get the hell out of dodge
of course, this all hinges on whether or not cassie can pull off the absolutely insane maneuver that is “aim for a spot not too close but not too far from the dam at the right speed so as not to immediately splat on impact while also not opening her mouth to release her flea/fly friends to the mercy of the yeerk pool.”
but like, if she can’t do it, who can?
aldrea instantly starts to panic. she’s screaming at cassie how impossible this is. cassie tells her to shut up, please, she needs to focus. and then cassie pulls off some absolutely CRAZY shit.
as she falls, she begins to demorph into human, but keeps her osprey wings. and not just like, osprey wings as they are for an osprey, but the wings change size to stay relative to her human body. she soars past the hork-bajir guards, who begin shooting at her. aldrea tells her to fall. cassie says it’s too soon. jake tells cassie it’s her call—he trusts her. cassie keeps falling. it’s imperative the hork-bajir don’t see a human girl. that would fuck everything up, humans sighted on the hork-bajir homeworld, because it would cause galaxy-wide panic and put more pressure on visser three.
(i’m not sounding the alarm because he’s not here, but it is the first time anyone’s said his name!)
aldrea yells at cassie to let go and fall. cassie says no. MID-AIR, while she is morphing from HUMAN to WHALE WHILE KEEPING HER WINGS, aldrea tries to take control of cassie’s body, and cassie FIGHTS HER OFF.
THE STUDIO AUDIENCE GOES WILD!!!!!
we switch to aldrea POV. she’s stunned, to say the least. she couldn’t take over cassie’s body. even while she was performing an act of morphing that would have rattled the andalites to their core, aldrea was not strong enough to take over.
DAMN STRAIGHT THAT’S OUR GIRL!!!! SHE’S PERFORMED BRAIN SURGERY!!!!!!
cassie tells aldrea to use her eyes and echolocation to guide them to the entrance. they only have a few minutes of relative safety. once the yeerks are able to get the little yeerk slugs to the far end of the yeerk pool, they’ll begin boiling the side with the animorphs using dracon beams. science is fucked up.
what’s more fucked up is alien science. aldrea can feel the animorphs morphing inside cassie’s whale mouth. they need air. cassie skims the surface to breathe, taking dracon fire. she goes back underneath the water. something splashes into the pool. taxxons. don’t worry, cassie tells aldrea, jake and rachel will take care of them.
cassie resurfaces again, mouth wide open. ax and tobias leap from her mouth, both in andalite form, and marco, who’s in hork-bajir, follows suit. they land on the dam. cassie goes back under the water, towards where the taxxons entered the pool, and opens her mouth again to release jake and rachel, who are both in hammerhead form. (remember that batshit book?) more taxxons fall into the pool. cassie reassures aldrea: jake and rachel will handle it.
cassie begins demorphing. she needs to breathe. aldrea’s like, they’ll see you!!!! but cassie’s like, i trust my friends.
:’)
she pokes her head up. ax and tobias are ferociously fighting the hork-bajir controllers. marco is screaming for the other hork-bajir to run. cassie takes a second to breathe. aldrea notes that she’s tired. cassie’s like, yep.
it’s a miracle you’re alive!
yeah.
yeah.
i don’t know if it was intentional—even for someone as great as applegate, i’m hesitant to assume it’s all purposeful—but i would Kill to read an essay on the cassie’s status as the only Black girl (and only Black person) on the animorphs squad. i’m not qualified. but there’s something to be said there, i think.
cassie starts to morph hork-bajir. it’s slower-going than her other morphs. give her a break! she gave her whale wings!
we switch back to cassie’s POV. she’s fully morphed hork-bajir, but she’s fucking exhausted. she tells aldrea to take over. aldrea climbs down the long trunk of wood. jake and rachel arrive, bits of taxxon trailing in their teeth. tobias, ax, and marco leap into the pool. marco helps aldrea with the entrance, and then WOOSH!
the animorphs are sucked inside the tree. there’s air. aldrea speaks:
“computer, identification: aldrea-iskillion-falan. code: …” she hesitated, then said, “code: mother loves seerow. ship, acknowledge by turning on exterior lights.”
bada bing bada boom! mother knows best. the lights of the ship turn on and illuminate the interior. there it is: the yeerk ship filled with weapons. they all demorph (except ax) and climb on in. aldrea heads to the ship controls, and ax steps beside her to help with weapons. they’re going to burn their way out.
once we create a hole, the water will rush in and through. it will create a vast drain that will empty much of the pool and suck many of the yeerks to their doom.
“yes,” aldrea said. “do you object, brother andalite?”
no, sister hork-bajir. i do not.
:’)
TSEW TSEW! they burn their way out of the log and fly!!!!! the water drains from the yeerk pool, leaving thousands of yeerks to die. cassie doesn’t feel great about that.
i do!
but i get it. she’s tender-hearted, and she knows firsthand that the yeerks have, at least, the capacity for change. sweet, sweet cassie.
for our final chapter, we switch back to aldrea’s POV. they deliver the weapons to the arn. they’re reunited with toby. but there’s no big celebration. it’s quiet, almost awkward. cassie is basically napping inside her own body, letting aldrea take over. aldrea pulls ax aside to ask why the humans seem troubled by the victory.
yes. they regret doing what they know they must. they have an almost andalite sensibility.
i smiled. “i was going to say that they remind me of our hork-bajir warriors, who never forgave themselves for learning to kill.
let us agree, then, that all civilized species must share a hatred of war, aximili said.
not pulling any punches!
and yet, aldrea points out, they’ve helped to continue this one. the arn will arm the new hork-bajir with the weapons they rescued, and those hork-bajir will fight against the yeerks. toby has been working with the arn. she wants to lead these new hork-bajir, but aldrea thinks, no. her place is with her people on earth. ax doesn’t think toby will go willingly, but aldrea has a plan for that.
cassie stirs from her haze. aldrea explains her plan to cassie and ax. cassie knows what this means. and, more importantly, so does aldrea. cassie tells aldrea it was an honor to share a body with her, even if she doesn’t know why aldrea chose her.
don’t you know? even now? the ixcila is drawn to a mind that reflects it. and i like to think even that inchoate, nonconcious version of me was honorable enough to know that i might be tempted. that i might be tempted to cling to life. and that i might need someone strong enough to return me to the path of my own fate.
cassie doesn’t say anything in response. i don’t blame her! what do you say to that!
then, they set their little plan in action. cassie pretends like aldrea is trying to take control of her body. ax puts his tailblade to toby’s throat and demands aldrea leave cassie’s body. they’ll take toby with them to ensure aldrea’s good behavior in the future.
it doesn’t make a ton of sense, but…whatever man i’ll give them this
aldrea leaves cassie’s body. she sees her son’s face, her husband’s. and then it all fades…
REVIEW
4/5. what a killer book to come back on. i love cassie books because i love getting into moral debates about life! how fun! also cool to visit another planet and learn a little more about the world. i hope those chee weren’t too nice to rachel’s sisters!
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
who in your life would you NOT be surprised to find out was a yeerk? mine would be my old manager darryl. not because he was evil or anything, but because he was so level-headed and even-keeled that we never knew how he was feeling. he was also obsessed with good food, which feels like a yeerk thing.
would you want an ixcila to be made of you?
PREDICTIONS
for the final battle i hope aldrea comes back in a new hork-bajir body
that’s all i have for you today!!! drink some water. share this post if you feel so inclined. i know i said this last time (sorry) but i am going to try to be more frequent with these. we WILL finish this series together!!!!