Retromorphs: Animorphs #1: The Invasion

                              

When I did the Goosebumps blog, I made mention multiple times that I did not grow up reading Goosebumps. It wasn't the book series that caught my eye as well as it did for others (yes, mainly because I was a wuss kid who was scared of the covers). So, the question that many people could ask me is "if you didn't read Goosebumps, what did you read?" And that answer, if for a brief period, was K.A. Applegate's Animorphs. What caught me (much like with Goosebumps) was the striking covers, the kids morphing into animals. The general concept of the story, and all the gimmicks within. And, for at least almost the first half of the series, I was hooked in. But it's also been about almost 20 years since I've read them. So, it's also only fair to give them another read, and see if they've held up, improved, or failed to deliver in my mind. And thus I give you Retromorphs. Yet another in my never ending list of blog concepts. 

Animorphs came from the minds of Katherine Alice Applegate and her husband Michael Grant. Prior to Animorphs, Applegate and Grant worked on the Making Out series of young adult novels. In 1996, Applegate and Grant would publish Animorphs, their first major foray into science fiction. Initially planned as a trilogy of books called The Changelings, eventually the concept gained enough steam to become its own series. A series with 54 books in the main series, plus eight specials and two choose your own adventure books. And a television series from the same people behind the Goosebumps series. Which of course means more cheesy low budget Canadian goodness. So, with the major preamble out of the way, let's get into book number one, The Invasion, and see what this is all about.

We open the story with our protagonist, a boy named Jake, telling us that he and his friends can't reveal their last names, they can't tell you where they are. They can't really tell you much about themselves. You see, Jake and his friends have stumbled on a secret alien invasion and they're the only ones who can stop it. Yes, this book series about kids morphing into animals is also a series about a dangerous alien conspiracy. Is there any wonder why it hooked me like it did?

It all started one night when Jake and his friend Marco were at the mall arcade. A normal day like any other, though Jake's a bit down due to not making the junior high basketball team. Not so much upset for himself, but more for letting down his older brother Tom, who was the star of his team. The two kids head out of the arcade and spot Tobias, a kid who just started going to their school. He's quiet and keeps to himself, which also means he's an easy target for bullies. Jake and Marco came to his aid once while getting a wicked swirilie, and that led to a friendship between the three. The three boys run into Jake's cousin Rachel, who is described as being very pretty and fashionable. And with her is her friend Cassie, an African American girl who is more quiet and reserved. It's been a while since I've said this...

Ladies and gentlemen, our protagonists. The god damned Burger King Kids Club!

The fivesome decide that they should head home by cutting through the nearby construction site. Because as we've learned from our foray through Goosebumps, nothing bad can ever happen if you wander through construction sites or abandoned buildings. It's all pretty uneventful until the kids see what appears to be a spaceship begin to land. A strange, egg-like ship that shows signs of damage, like it's been in a struggle. The kids, both paralyzed with fright and curiosity, stay to see what could be inside. As they ask whoever it is to come out, they hear whoever is inside respond to them in their mind in a form of thought speak.

The alien emerges from the spaceship. It's a tall blue centaur creature with no mouth and an extra pair of eyes on stalks above its head. He also has a giant tail with a blade on the end of it. This alien is known as an Andalite. Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul to be precise. He's also dying, and is accepting of his fate. However, before he can die, he warns the kids that there are other aliens on earth. Ones that are trying to destroy them. These aliens are known as the Yeerks. Parasitic slug-like creatures. On their own, yeerks are harmless, but they have the ability to take over the bodies of others and use them for their control. The andalites tried to stop the Yeerks, but were ambushed, Elfangor's ship being blasted by the vaporizing Dracon Beam. Elfangor tells the kids to warn the others, but considering that no one will believe a bunch of kids, he has one final option. He tells the kids to grab a blue box in the spaceship.

The box is a morphing cube. It will give whoever touches it the power to morph into any animal. Simply touching any creature will give you the power to absorb its DNA and you can freely morph into that creature. However, there is one caveat. If you stay in a morph past two hours, you will be forever trapped in that form with no way to morph back. As the kids try to decide if they should take up the offer of the strange blue alien with the shape shifting powers, they notice laser fire in the distance. The yeerks have arrived in their bug fighters, along with the big bad, Visser Three in his blade ship. Unlike the other yeerks, Visser Three has the power to morph. He is also flanked by large bladed reptilian creatures known as the Hork-Bajir, a race of once peaceful aliens that were also enslaved by the yeerks. Another alien creature emerges known as the Taxxons, giant centipede-like creatures which willingly allowed themselves to be enslaved by the yeerks. To say these slugs have been a problem for a while would be an understatement. There are also human controllers, ones who have been taken over by Yeerks.

The kids touch the cube and gain the morphing powers, then run off just as the yeerks arrive. But before they can leave, they get a clear view of Visser Three. He's also an andalite. The first yeerk to control an andalite. He gloats about how he and his army have destroyed the other andalties in their dome ship. When Elfangor asks why the yeerks would want a planet like Earth, Visser Three responds by saying that a planet with billions of hosts to control would help the yeerks in their universal domination. And it would also finally get him the rank of Visser One. Yes, even the guy with the morphing powers has a boss more powerful than him. Then Visser Three morphs into a giant fanged monster and grabs Elfangor. Jake is about to go after Visser Three with a pipe, but Elfangor tells him not to as Visser Three tears apart and eats Elfangor while the controllers, both alien and human, laugh. One voice sounding kind of familiar to Jake. The kids get noticed by the Yeerks who send the Hork-Bajir after them, but they manage to escape through the construction site, though they run into a homeless man who isn't so lucky.

The next day, Jake is pretty much ready to be done with everything that happened last night, hoping maybe it was some fever dream. That is until Tobias shows up bouncing off the walls in excitement. The most excited Jake's ever seen him. Tobias lives with his Uncle, and on occasion with his aunt on the coast. His mother supposedly died when he was really young, and his father is also presumed dead (both of these will be important down the line), so he just lives with relatives that find him to be more of a burden. Tobias tells Jake that he did it. He morphed last night. Specifically to Dude, his pet tabby cat. Jake still doubts all this, but Tobias shows him, and sure enough in front of Jake, he morphs into a cat. We learn a bit more on how morphing works through this. When you make contact with the creature, they go into a trance as you take their DNA of sorts. When you morph into the creature, you retain your human mind, but you also take on the mind of the creature you morphed into, meaning you have to do battle to keep your humanity as well as learning the ropes of your new body.

After playing with Cat Tobias for a while, Tobias de-morphs... naked. Yeah, you can't take the clothes with you when you morph unless it's skin-tight. the two kids talk about what Elfangor wanted for them and Jake is still against it. Tobias says that Jake is the only one who can lead them, Jake scoffs. He's no leader. But, since he's convinced on the morphing, he turns into his dog, Homer. Which is a much better name than Barky. While coming to grips with being a dog, he also sees his brother Tom, and something about him feels unfamiliar and unusual. After talking to Rachel, Marco and Cassie, Jake runs into Tom again who is still acting weird. He's not bothered by Jake not making the team. Hell, he's not even interested in sports anymore, so he quit. What he is down for is The Sharing, a youth group that he really wants Jake to join. Right now, Jake is confused, but no red flags are popping up just yet.

The kids gather at Cassie's barn. Her parents just so happen to work with a lot of animals, which means easy access to most animals. Her father helps injured animals while her mother works at The Gardens, the local zoo, which also means more DNA for the nabbin'. Rachel shows Jake the day's newspaper, which covers up the incident at the construction site as nothing but kids playing with fireworks. Which means that the yeerks may already have controllers in the cops as well. Cassie has also managed to start morphing. As she starts morphing into a horse, but only gets halfway, making me think she ends up looking kind of like a character from Bojack Horseman. Suddenly, a cop shows up and starts questioning them about it, acting suspiciously like someone who is being controlled. He also mentions working for The Sharing, which still doesn't set off the red flags yet for Jake. Marco and Rachel are still against fighting the controllers, while Tobias is going full Rambo. Jake and Cassie are still undecided. Later that day, Jake and Marco are hanging out at Jake's place when Tom shows up and is also questioning about if they know what went down at the construction site. After he leaves, Marco drops the bomb on Jake. Tom has got to be a controller.

Jake, still not ready to accept that, responds by, of course, trying to punch Marco out, only to be subdued. It's then when Tobias shows up as a red-tailed hawk. He de-morphs (still in the nude) and gushes over being a hawk. Jake warns him about the two hour rule, but Tobias says he'll be careful. He also admits to having stayed at the construction site and getting visions from Elfangor on things known as Kandrona and Yeerk Pools. Kandrona is the energy that yeerks feed on, and the creatures need to recharge every three days. To do so, they enter a giant pool filled with kandrona to recharge before returning to their hosts. What does Tobias plan to do about these pools? Blow them up, of course! Jake seems to be for this idea, until Marco tells them that if they have to, they might have to destroy Tom too. We learn a bit more about Marco here, in how his mother drowned a couple years ago and it hit his father badly. But they never did find the body. Keep that under your hat as well.

They ultimately decide that the best way to find out more is to go to one of the Sharing meetings. But it comes off kind of uneventful. Just kids on the beach eating barbecue, playing volleyball and having fun. Jake's ready to finally get over any assumption of Tom being a controller, until later when Tom tells him that he should join and eventually he can become a full time member. In that moment, Jake notices Tom's face shift as if it's trying to fight against what he's saying. As Tom leaves, it finally hits Jake in the gut hard that his brother is indeed a controller.  He intends to go to the full members meeting further from the beach disguised as Homer to see what else he can learn. 

And what he does learn is another familiar face is also a controller. And a higher ranking official at that. It's their schools assistant principal Chapman. He tells the controllers that he wants the kids at the construction site found and Tom assures him that he thinks one of them is Jake and that he'll either be controlled or killed. Whichever comes first. But the yeerks can't go around snapping kid necks, so Chapman tells them not to do so. Jake returns to the others and tells them everything. Rachel is now on board stopping this, but Marco is still very adamant. But regardless, Jake still needs more info on Chapman and needs a way to spy on them. Hence the lizard on the book cover.

Jake morphs a tiny Anole lizard the next day at school and it's here where we get the unfortunate other truth about morphing. It's not all cutesy wootsy fun like as a dog or a cat. With the lizard morph Jake has to fight the creatures paranoid instincts, and is unable to stop himself from eating a live spider. He also gets his tail stepped on by a giant shoe, causing it to break off like a lizard's would. The shoe belongs to Chapman, who Jake follows into a room that leads to an entrance to an underground yeerk pool. And as you'd expect, it's not a pleasant place as screams can be heard within. Jake tells the others, and they decide to finally do something about the yeerk pool. Marco, who is still against this, ultimately joins in for the sake of Tom. But they need better animal forms to fight with, so Cassie suggests going to The Gardens to find better animals to acquire. It's also here where Marco inadvertently calls this group of five the Animorphs.

The kids head to The Gardens (which sounds like Busch Gardens or Six Flags, but they clearly didn't want to get sued), and Marco acquires a gorilla morph. The kids get chased by some security until Jake and Marco end up in a tiger pen, where Jake manages to acquire that as well. Eventually they all escape and look to have gotten the forms ready for battle. That night, Jake tries to prod Tom some more and eventually Tom goes out for the evening. The Animorphs round up to get ready to strike the yeerk pool, but there's only one problem... Cassie's missing! The foursome go anyway (Tobias still in hawk morph) to the school and start to sneak their way into the yeerk pool, when they spot Cassie in line. She's been caught by the police officer from earlier.

When they make it down to the pool, they soon discover that they greatly miscalculated this plan. The staircase leads to an underground cavern that's almost as big as the city, with massive stadium sized pools. We see the many enslaved controllers and the horrors they deal with when the yeerk recharges. We also see controllers that seemed to have given their body of their own free will and get preferential treatment. They see Tom in a cage, meaning he didn't go willingly. The kids come to Cassie's aid, Jake in tiger morph, Marco in gorilla and Rachel in her elephant morph. They manage to kill some taxxons and hork-bajir and free Cassie as they try to get everyone out.

 Unfortunately, Visser Three shows up and is quite Vissed off. He doesn't assume it's a bunch of meddling kids, but thinks it must be andalites who survived the dome ship attack. He then morphs into a giant eight-armed, eight-headed alien that shoots fire. As it seems all is lost, Tom manages to distract Visser Three long enough for the Animorphs to escape. Unfortunately though, they only managed to save one whole person. The kids head home, Jake especially mentally broken from this whole situation. The next day, he sees Tobias still in hawk form at his window. It's here that Tobias tells Jake that he stayed in form for over two hours during the endeavor and now he's stuck. He tells Jake not to worry about it, because now they can't dwell on this anymore. It's an uphill battle, but they have to fight.

The Invasion has to do three daunting things. Being the first book, it has to be the pilot story which sets everything in motion, introduces the characters, and gives us the gist of the story. Next, being a story focused on science fiction, it has to build its universe very quickly to get us up to speed, giving us many fantastical creatures and concepts to keep the reader interested. And third, it has to start giving us the building blocks for later pieces of continuity, making the reader interested to see how certain things pay off. How does the book fare? Pretty good, but it does stumble a bit. The ideas and story are interesting, giving us the scope of five kids flanked in trying to win a seemingly unwinnable war, and the story never slows down, nor does any scene feel out of place.

It just doesn't give us much time with the kids to get to know them. We learn enough about Jake, who feels like a very blank slate character outside of his role as leader by proxy. We learn that Marco is a jokester, but also someone who is also extremely serious as well, often using his sarcasm to mask his own personal pain. We definitely learn enough about Tobias and his broken family situation, making it seem more like his choice to stay a hawk was more intentional than he lets on. Cassie doesn't get too much focus, but we get enough to know she's, at least to this point, the more optimistic and free spirited kid who loves animals. That leaves Rachel unfortunately a victim of having no real build. All we get is that she's fashionable, but also has an aggressive side to her. A real shame, but she is the focus of the next book, so maybe Applegate did that on purpose.

In the end, the book is still as good as I remember it. I remembered so many moments in the book from the construction site with Elfangor, to the first morphs, the sharing meeting and especially the first battle with Visser Three, if you even want to call it that. It was really just five kids really annoying a deadly alien. Like Bugs Bunny getting the best of Marvin the Martian if Marvin was an eight-headed fire breathing beast. In the end, I definitely enjoyed coming back to it and it definitely has me ready to come back for more. Not as rushed as the Goosebumps reviews, mind, but still energetic to keep this blog afloat. Because it's about to get wilder from here. The Invasion gets an A-.