'Morphing is certainly more fun than Sega -- you can soar as an eagle and walk as a cat. But being an ANIMORPH is by no means just fun and games. Rachel knew better than anyone. One of her best friends, Melissa, is acting very strange. And it looks like Melissa's dad, who is also the school's Assistant Principal, may be connected to evil aliens. Rachel can't tell Melissa what the ANIMORPHS have learned, but Melissa doesn't seem interested in talking to Rachel these days anyway. Could Melissa be one of "them?"
'With the help of Jake, Cassie, Tobias and Marco, Rachel plans to enter her friend's house as a cat, intent on unlocking the secrets from within. If only Rachel could keep her mind off mice...'
In this, the second volume of the Animorphs series our heroes face the result of having failed to stop the Yeerks from using their Yeerk Pool, and that they were unable to save any of the captured humans being used as controllers. Faced with the fact that they have little to no information about the Yeerks and their plans they hatch a plot to infiltrate the home of their vice principal Chapman, in order to gather intelligence.
The Visitor shifts it's narrative, placing Rachel in the lead role this time. At first it was something of a surprise that the books would be changing the narrator, but after a short while it began to make perfect sense. The series has five heroes, so why not make the most of that and allow them to take turns in the lead role. Not only does it mean that we get to spend a greater amount of time getting to know each of the Animorphs, getting to see how each of them thinks and what drives them, but it also means that the story is able to stay fresher over the course of it's run.
Rachel appears to be somewhat of a better hero than Jake did in the first book, not questioning if she should be fighting the Yeerks, but simply accepting that she is one of the few people with the power and means to be able to do something to stop them. This might be because it's later in the story, or it could be because of the difference in their personalities, but at this point it does seem to make her a better hero than her cousin.
We also learn more about what drives Rachel over the course of this book, as she discovers how her friend Melissa is suffering because of the Yeerks, not because she herself has been taken as an unwilling host to the aliens, but because both of her parents have been, and how the changes in their attitudes have affected her. Cold and distant, Melissa believes that her parents don't love her anymore. It's a surprisingly upsetting moment, and one that it would have been easy to miss in the grand scheme of the alien invasion, but this is what Rachel notices, what drives her on to fight. The Yeerks are destroying families.
Despite being a very personal and emotional story The Invasion also manages to pack in drama, as Rachel is captured whilst in a cat morph and taken to Visser Three, the Andalite Controller running the invasion of Earth.
The scenes where Rachel is brought before the deadly enemy are actually surprisingly tense, and whilst you know there's no way that she will be killed off, especially so early in the series, it does prove to be a scary moment. Will she do something to tip the Yeerks off that they're dealing with humans rather than Andalites, or will she be stuck in her morph? Thankfully, the other heroes are there to free her, with explosive results.
A great improvement on the first volume, one that manages to be both a smaller and more personal story, yet pack in bigger and more dramatic action, The Invasion is a clear indicator that Animorphs has a lot of depths that it can draw upon to make a sprawling, epic saga.
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Why do Tobias and Ax only get to star in 1/10th of the books each?
ReplyDeleteWhy weren't the Chapman Yeerks perfecting emulating how the real Chapmans would behave towards their daughter? Surely the Chapmans' memories would tell them how.
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