Retromorphs: Animorphs #3: The Encounter

                                 

The Animorphs are an interesting group. All relatively normal kids in their early teens who have their worlds changed when they gained the power to morph into animals in order to battle the deadly Yeerk invasion. And now these kids have to balance alien battling with their regular school life. Well, all of them but Tobias. Tobias is the exception because he stayed in red-tailed hawk form for over two hours. Now he's trapped in bird form forever. And while it's up in the air at this point if it was accidental, or permanent given his broken home life, we still haven't had a chance to understand how things are for him in this new form. Thankfully, we'll get some answers with Book #3: The Encounter.

I don't talk about the covers much, since really they're all the same gimmick. It's not like Goosebumps where each book has its own unique piece of art. But this one deserves to be the exception. I love the concept of the morph on the front leading to a hole that shows the morphed form on a page behind it. But this book has a fatal flaw in that the shape of the hole for the next page leads to easy tear on the bottom right corner. Meaning that finding this in mint shape, especially after 20 years, is nigh on impossible. Hell, even the image I found online for this cover has the tear in it. It's that infamous. Later books rectified that by making the hole much smaller to avoid easy tearing. When I was recollecting these books (as of this writing I'm down to twelve books left to collect), I found three whole copies of The Encounter, all torn up with the edges all folded in on each other. All with the tear. The copy I got wasn't ideal, but it was the best one of the lot. 

We open the book with Tobias riding the thermals, telling the reader about the whole concept of the book series yet again. I do get it, for anyone who may have picked this one up first, but after two books, I get the gist of the story. It's in the sky that he sees the car dealership of one Dealin' Dan Hawke. A sleazeball dealer who uses a caged red tailed hawk for his ads. And Tobias has had about enough. In the middle of a live commercial, he goes down and attacks everyone. Then, all of a sudden, an elephant shows up and starts trampling the cars. It's Rachel in elephant morph. Tobias frees the bird and the two Animorphs head into the woods as Rachel demorphs. They make it to Rachel's house where the other Animorphs are meeting and get yelled at since they could have blown their cover and attracted the yeerks. But they brush this off a lot easier than the whole "Rachel being chased by a rapist" thing. As the others leave, Tobias chooses to fly for some more before sleeping in Jake's attic, much to the concern of Rachel. Yeah, remember that whole "evergreen feelings" thing? Well, this is already getting ramped up.

Tobias has also been seeing something in the sky, but he has no clue what it is, until suddenly he starts to see what looks like ripples in the sky. Something's moving, and it's gigantic. Big enough to plow right through a flock of geese, killing them instantly. Tobias soon realizes it's a gigantic yeerk ship, and it's headed to the mountains. At Cassie's barn, the kids argue some more, Marco still extremely adamant against getting himself killed, and even Cassie is slowly taking his side, but still can't bring herself to let others suffer. Tobias and Rachel are still on board with doing what's right, while Jake is still the middle man. However, despite Marco's concerns, the Animorphs head out to the mountains after school the next day.

Now, they could just go to the mountains in their new bird morphs from the last book, but since that could catch the attention of controller bird watchers (yes, that's a real concern), they morph wolves instead. Marco particularly salty at being a female wolf. Tobias keeps watch in the sky while the others continue to howl and Jake pisses all over trees. Tobias heads to where he saw the sky ripples, and sees a bunch of trucks show up with park rangers. Park rangers carrying assault rifles. And to make things worse, a pair of helicopters arrive with Hork Bajir inside. Oh yeah. The Yeerks are definitely up to something. Tobias goes to warn the others, only to run into an actual pack of wolves. He does find the others as they go to spy on the Yeerks.

It's there that they see the ship. A massive stingray shaped ship that could be the size of a city, complete with more Hork Bajir and Taxxons. Suddenly giant tubes stick out beneath and collects water and air. Apparently the Yeerks don't have the air and water to sustain themselves in space and this ship must serve as a form of tanker. As Tobias flies, he sees a hawk. It's the same hawk that was being used by Dealin' Dan Hawke. It's also here that Tobias starts to wrestle with his own mind. He's trying to keep his humanity, but the hawk form is also winning. With him being trapped in this form, how much longer can he hold out? He manages to hold out here and go to warn the others, only to see them having to battle the other pack of wolves over a dead rabbit.

Tobias takes the rabbit to help the others get out of this battle, but then notices a clock on the dashboard of one of the park ranger vehicles. He panics as it might means that the others are running out of time. He warns them and they slowly morph, almost coming off as they're trapped between morphs. Thankfully, they all return to normal and celebrate in front of Tobias, who ends up somewhat offended. He heads to Rachel's that night and talks to her, saying that he's losing his humanity. That he doesn't even remember who he is. She shows him a photo of himself that she just happens to have (because this is a super duper ship at this point) and it helps him to feel better. The next day, the fivesome are at Cassie's barn and try to come up with idea for stopping the giant ship. Their best idea is to find a way to get inside and turn off the cloaking device. With the ship exposed, it might be just the thing to bring the Yeerks down once and for all. All they gotta do is morph fish and get sucked into the tubes.

But they can't do that until the weekend as they have real life things to do, much like Rachel having a gym exhibition at the mall. Marco mocks her a bit and threatens to go and make her look bad, but nothing much else. Tobias flies some more, thinking about the benefits of being a bird boy. No homework and you can see baseball games for free. Suddenly, he spots a rat and before he can react, his hawk form has already torn into it and eaten it. It puts him in a panic once more as all this fear of losing his humanity is getting worse by the day.

So, how does Tobias react to his first kill? By trying to kill himself of course. He bursts into the mall at blinding speed, zooming past Rachel, then tries to smash through the skylight, only to end up smacking into it. Rachel tries to calm him down as the other mall patrons try to grab him, but Tobias is still frightened by his actions. He goes straight up to the skylight again, ready to either escape or die trying. Good timing for Marco to smash it with a baseball. Tobias escapes and distances himself from the others for a while. So, we just had a character try to commit suicide. I mean, you could construe it as he was more trying to see Rachel, in hopes to be calmed down like before, but his actions and his panic more read as a being that can't handle his shrinking humanity and was ready to end it all. Again, I came into this book series expecting wacky animal adventures, not this level of darkness.

Tobias stays in the forest for a while, now starting to live the life of a hawk. Including getting used to killing prey. He even still sees the hawk he saved. But before he can fight the urge to resist hawk humping, he sees a man being chased by a Hork Bajir. It helps him finally snap out of his funk as he saves the man. He contacts Rachel, who again helps to calm him down and bring his humanity back. The next day, the kids head to the mountains again to get their plan in motion. They hide out in an abandoned bear cave, while trying in vain to catch a fish. Cassie lucks out and catches a trout, which they acquire. But before they can even test the morph, they see helicopters in the sky. They manage to hide without being caught, but now there's bug fighters in the sky, along with the giant ship once more. And there's also the blade ship which means our old pal Visser Three is here too. The Animorphs may need a change of plans pronto.

Regardless, they still go through with said plan and morph trout with Tobias dropping them off one by one. As Tobias waits for Rachel, they suddenly hear noise. A Hork Bajir and a human controller show up outside the cave and notice Tobias fly off. The Hork Bajir fires his dracon beam, which makes a giant hole in the ship. The fishy Animorphs all get sucked into the ship's water tank as Tobias watches on. He sees the Hork Bajir who made the giant hole get killed by Visser Three, who then realizes that those darn Andalite bandits are here, and Tobias is one of them. Tobias, realizing they wouldn't destroy their precious truck ship, lands on it as Visser Three and the others have him surrounded in the sky with Taxxons outside the ship ready to attack. And to make things worse, the others have demorphed and are near death.

This leaves Tobias with one last gamble. He attacks a Taxxon and grabs a dracon beam, using it to blast an even bigger hole into the ship. The result causes an explosion as it starts to go down. The Animorphs manage to escape, morphing bird in time as the five of them start to fly off. The angered yeerks begin firing dracon beams, and Tobias spots the hawk that he saved being blasted. Maybe it would have been better off with Dealin' Dan Hawke. The book ends with Tobias at Rachel's again saying that he's now more content with who he is and is now more at peace with being both a boy and a hawk. He grieves for the dead hawk, meaning that he still has that humanity that he feared was gone so long ago.

The Encounter is the most interesting book so far in that it has to balance two stories at once. One being the continuing battle with the yeerks, while the other being Tobias' battle with himself. Giving us easily one of the more darker stories so far, with Tobias losing himself more and more into his hawk form, to the point that he is ready to kill himself after his first kill. Again, when I first read these books, I wasn't expecting such serious subject matter. And while it's handled in a very absurd manner with the sight of a suicidal hawk, it's still jarring. It almost makes me wish we focused entirely on that and ditched the need for another battle with the yeerks. I get it, the focus of the story is the battle with the yeerks, but in this case, with Tobias' turmoil, it feels a lot more superfluous. Not that it doesn't give us a fun conclusion with Tobias, feathered back against the wall, managing to survive the yeerks on his own.

Then there's this interesting balance for the story between Rachel and the female hawk. The two sides to the scales of Tobias. Rachel being the reason for him to want to cling to his humanity while the hawk represents his willingness to let go and let the hawk part of his mind win out. And the hawk dying, while sad, is kind of symbolic in the human part winning in the end. Compared to the previous two books, I think The Encounter isn't as strong, feeling much like Tobias in trying to fight between which of the stories is more focal. But it's still a great one and a great look into the most troubled Animorph. I give The Encounter a B+ rating.