Interesting, but falls short of being compelling. Another daring move in the storytelling of the series, just like the two installments that preceded it. ( )

Two plotlines in this one. The valley of free Hork-bajir is discovered by the enemy, and the Animorphs scramble to deal with that. They want to relocate the colony but the Hork-bajir refuse, insist on standing their ground and fighting even though they are hugely outnumbered. Marco's parents are oddly uninvolved in the planning- I got the impression they were just standing around in the background looking stoic. They never said anything! Anyway, at least there's a new interesting morph in this book- beaver. Part of the plan is to expand a beaver dam they found upstream, so it will hold back enough water that when they break the dam it will flood the valley and wipe out the enemy. Although the amount of time they had between completing the dam work and releasing the flood, didn't seem enough to me, to build up the volume of water they needed. I don't know.

Another key point in this story is that Tobias discovers a bunch of campers nearby, who are right in the enemy's path. Jake and Tobias approach the campers and advise them to leave because there's bad weather coming. The campers don't buy it. They think the Animorphs just want to steal their campsite! So Jake suddenly decides to just morph in front of them, and tell them that aliens are invading. Happens that these campers are huge Star Trek fans, instantly thrilled at the idea of an alien invasion, and eager to play along (turns out in the end, at least one of them thought it was an elaborate LARP). Most of the campers go back to the valley with them to join the fight. Unfortunately, the battle is very real and one of the newcomers gets killed.

Parallel storyline, which I don't really get: at the start of the book, Jake's mom makes him clean up a room in the basement. He finds a box with a uniform and journal from an ancestor who fought in the Civil War. Not clear how much Jake reads of the journal, but the alternating chapters relate this young lieutenant's experiences from the past. It has a lot of obvious similarities to the Animorphs storyline- young leader, small group fighting off the enemy in a rather desperate situation, more people come in to join the fight who are inexperience- in this case it was freed slaves, and a lot of the Union soldiers and townspeople did not welcome their presence. But I didn't see what the point was? I kept thinking there'd be a time-travel thing happen, or that Jake would learn something from the journal to use in the Hork-bajir fight. Nope. Also there's a particular scene in the Civil War storyline that I swear I've seen exactly the same in a movie.

from the ( )

It trades back and forth from Jake and his Great-great uncle Lieutenant Isaiah Fitzheny

The Yeerks are going to come after the free Hork-Bajir. Jake urges the Hork-Bajir to flee, but they decide that they want to stay and fight for their home despite seemingly impossible odds.

Lieutenant Isaiah Fitzheny is with his group of Union soldiers. They find themselves self cut of surrounded by Confederates. There is a group of free Black's who offer to fight with them. Most of the soldiers and the townspeople don't want their help.

I loved the diaries last entry:

"I fear I am killed. I hope I have done my best. I hope..." ( )

A short comment for every book of the series until I get a chance to re-read them. All three of my sons and I loved this series and read every single book - I even bought every single book (most, but not all, used; some through school book sales). I'm excited to re-read them to see how the five main characters develop and to watch all the different transformations again. ( )