Spring 2020 (Animorphs Read 2020 April);

I continue to love Jake books more and more now that there's more showing and less telling about his leadership role. As we hear it in his discussions, and watch it take place as he owns the role of Animorph Leader, stepping up to make head decisions, rather than waiting for everyone to argue out and then force him to be a deciding vote with the excuse of being leader. I love seeing him waffle. I love the discussions about it between Cassie and Jake cropping up more and more.

The near-death fly experience was totally a sad thing, as was watching Jakes instant PTSD from it. And his refusal to let it show, because he now feels he has to be the bedrock to make things okay for everyone else. It was interesting seeing all the integration of the early internet, and definitely super surprising to see the twist with the millionaire and how he's staying alive. ( )

There were so many unhinged moments in this book; the kid getting trapped in the toilet by a butt, stealing poop, the accident in fly morph where a child's guts fall out, cleaning the floor as a bear!?! ( )

Fun fluff series that gets less and less fluff over time. ( )

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This one had me hooked again. In spite of its silly moments (some very literal potty humor, which Ax totally does not get) it turns very serious and dark near the end. At the beginning, it occurs to one of the Animorphs to type "Yeerk" into a search engine- and what do you know, they find some websites about their alien enemies, including a (very clunky) chat room. They can't quite tell if the anonymous users are humans in the know, or Yeerks posing as such in order to set a trap... so they try to hack the system to learn their identities. It doesn't work. Their next plan (which baffled me) is to travel to the headquarters of the online company that runs the chat room, and access the system there. It's very dated, technologically. But amusing. They travel via plane in the form of flies- and Jake experiences some serious trauma- he nearly dies in fly morph when someone swats him and really struggles to pull himself together afterward. A big part of this book is about Jake's difficulty continuing in the leadership role- it's incredibly stressful, he's often at a loss to make the best decision especially under pressure, and his friends start to lash out when his choice goes wrong, or he can't tell them what to do, instantly. In fact at the end of the book Jake and Cassie have a heated argument over a serious moral issue- and it doesn't get resolved.

Several times moral quandaries come up. When at the company headquarters, some of the team immediately suggest secretly morphing the employees so they can gain access without drawing attention- but is it okay to use another person's DNA without their knowledge or consent? Later they attempt to break into a rich person's fortressed mansion- their first attempt to scope out the place as birds of prey goes awry, Rachel gets stunned and trapped inside the building, Ax is nearly torn apart by the guard dogs- so Jake acquires a new morph of rhinoceros and simply storms the place by force. What they discover inside is a shocker and forces them to choose between two evils. This is what Jake and Cassie fight about and it ends on that note.

My only issue with this book is I find it so improbable how readily the enemy explains things to the Animorphs when they have a confrontation in the last chapter or so- of course it neatly explains things to the reader as well, but really? who would just tell it all like that.

from the Dogear Diary ( )