Retromorphs: Animorphs #11: The Forgotten

Things happen. That's really the best way to explain how my handling of an Animorphs blog sort of hit the rails. The last official blog I did on the book series was back in July of 2019, nearly two years ago with book #10. And, unfortunately I got really lax on this series in ways I shouldn't have. But, with this new blog and plenty of new projects to cover, I think it means we can hopefully be on a more consistent release schedule. But then again, who even knows? But let's try.

Book eleven and Jake's third take at the narration wheel. He's had some solid stories to back his narration so far, but can that trend continue as the Animorphs end up taking an unexpected trip. Find out what I mean as we go through The Forgotten.

We open with a time stamp of 1:22 PM (which is a gimmick for this book. Each chapter features a time stamp)... oh, and the preamble. Jake is square dancing in class along with Rachel and he absolutely dreads it. Much more so when Cassie arrives, making him fear about looking like a goof in front of her. Instead, Cassie square dances with him a bit, while also telling Jake that Tobias has something important to tell him. Suddenly, Jake has a strange vision of falling into a jungle, then suddenly snaps out of it. Marco and Jake meet with Tobias later who tells them to morph immediately. They don their bird morphs and follow Tobias to the local Safeway.

The two are confused, but Tobias tells them that this grocery store seems to be of interest to the yeerks. As they look at the back of the building, the store looks like something massive must have hit it. Something that Chapman and other high ranking controllers have been patrolling. Whatever it is has the yeerks all worried. As the others ask Jake what to do, he gets another vision, this time of a jaguar. They decide to leave for now and return in the evening, particularly as it might get Jake's head away from whatever's going on in his head. They meet with ax and decide to morph fly since it'll be easy recon. 

Jake returns home and watches a PPV boxing match with his dad, his dad's friends and Tom (and of course, Tom's yeerk). After the fight, Jake leaves to Marco's, but not before getting another jungle vision. Only now the others are there too. He arrives to the meeting spot and the Animorphs morph into flies, which like all morphs is given rather grisly detail. But now at the time stamp of 8:19, they're off. However, they didn't account for it to rain, and being flies that makes the raindrops gigantic and enough to knock them out of the air. Jake gets hit by one that sends him falling to the road. He's almost hit by a windshield when he again gets a vision of the jungle. Of a human throwing a poison bamboo point. 

Jake flashes back to reality and had just missed hitting a windshield. The Animorphs make it to the Safeway and manage to slip inside where they can see controllers working on machines, while putting a bunch of rotten food in a corner which attracted other flies, so they can be inconspicuous at least. Cassie spots chapman and rides on his head. She manages to see a new form of bug fighter. Far different than the ones they've dealt with in the past. Chapman is concerned as the news got to Visser Three and he is very, very vissed off. But Rachel comes up with an idea. Why not steal the bug fighter? Ax knows how to drive yeerk vehicles, and if they can get it to Washington, It would be impossible for the yeerks to cover up. Despite the chance this is due to fail spectacularly, Jake agrees that they should go for it.

Tobias provides enough of a distraction so the rest demorph inside the bug fighter with Tobias joining shortly. Despite the tricky controls, Ax manages to get the ship flying. They manage to learn how to use the dracon beams before getting caught by a pair of air force jets. Ax manages to speed up the bug fighter and it flies away. But they soon see they're being chased by Visser Three's blade ship. They try to shoot, but the blade ship fires back, causing an explosion when the beams hit one another. and in the process knocks them out of space and hurtling to Earth. As they fall, Jake sees his visions from earlier in the day, just as they crash into a jungle. 

Jake finds himself alone in the jungle as he wakes up. He searches for the others as well as the bug fighter, though less hopeful in finding the blade ship awaiting him. He manages to find the others and Cassie tells him that she believes they're in a rainforest in the Amazon. However, when is trickier. Ax mentions that the blasts caused a Sario Rip, a hole in the fabric of time and space that either sent them forwards or backwards in time. As they sense a humanoid presence, Jake asks Ax if there's a way to fix the Sario Rip, but Ax tells him that he definitely took the class on that, but was distracted. Let's just say one of his stalks stiffened and it wasn't his eyes. 

So, the Animorphs are without food and water, stuck in a rainforest in an unknown part of the time space continuum with poisonous everything, and due to how damaged the bug fighter is, it might take twenty years to get it working. So, good time was had by all. Oh, and there's still the possibility that the blade ship followed them and that means Visser Three and others to deal with. Suddenly, a spear is thrown at them, the same spear as in Jake's vision. And there are also Hork-Bajir in the area. Jake has Ax remove whatever's possible in the ship as they all leave, meaning that Ax is now in danger due to this decision by the leader of the Animorphs. 

They run off into the hot, deadly rainforest, but when the Hork-Bajir find Ax, Jake and Rachel morph tiger and grizzly and head back. They put up a good fight when Jake gets bitten by a snake, poisoning his morph. He demorphs, but soon learns that Rachel is unconscious in her morph, now being eaten alive by fire ants. Jake's best decision, get another colony of ants to fight with the fire ants, since that was what nearly killed them a while back. Meanwhile, Cassie and Marco return, also beaten up bad by the Hork-Bajir while in wolf morph. Jake tears off clumps of Rachel's ant-covered fur and when the other ants arrive, it certainly works. But what an image there. Giant grizzly bear being eaten alive while its body is being torn to bits. And considering it's Jake with his own cousin's blood on his hands, it's a rather grizzly... err, grisly sight. Rachel manages to demorph, but the fire ants cause Jake and Rachel to fall into a stream... that's filled with piranhas. Boy, this is just not a good day.

As they avoid the piranhas, they find Ax, who has gained a spider monkey morph, just so we can get Marco make a "someone made a monkey out of Ax" pun. Well, it could have also been "I'll be a monkey's associate", but Rachel does at least make a "monkey's second cousin" gag, so he got beat to that as well. He managed to steal the computer core of the bug fighter. But he also knows that they're screwed. Visser Three is still around and might have morphed something from the jungle. There are also human controllers patrolling, making sure to spot out any animals that aren't indigenous to the rainforest. So, they need to morph spider monkeys. Luckily Ax morphed female spider monkey, so he can lure more to them. 

It's also here where Jake finally talks about the visions he's had. About how he got flashes of everything that's gone down so far. Ax suggests it was an effect from the Sario Rip. They traveled back in time, but to the same time that Jake started square dancing. So with the two versions of him existing at the same time he got visions of the other's experiences over the course of the day. But there's a problem with that. Two sets of the same people cannot exist, and once they get to the time of the Sario Rip once more, both versions will cease to exist. But, it's not a bleak end if they can change the timeline before the Rip occurs. That would fix everything. So Jake's big plan is to sneak on the blade ship and get Visser Three to drive them home. So, Jake's plans have all kinda stunk so far.

After acquiring spider monkey morphs, they all morph monkey and play around for a bit, getting used to the energy and climbing acumen of the spider monkey. They spot Hork-Bajir and begin to follow them. However, they easily get caught and fired at. They avoid the blasts, but the other animals in the rainforest aren't so lucky. Suddenly a snake wraps around a Hork-Bajir, then starts to demorph into an andalite. That's Visser Three all right. He's not happy that the controllers are firing dracon beams willy nilly, especially since they could have blown up the bug fighter which they need to recreate the rip. And the Animorphs have the parts to fix the bug fighter, but they certainly can't trust Visser Three and the yeerks. So, again, Jake's hitting foul balls on this leader job.

After demorphing, the Animorphs are caught by the spear-wielding people from earlier. They speak Spanish, which Marco knows just enough of to help them. They had seen the Animorphs morph monkey, so they believe that they are good spirits, while the Hork-Bajir are the devils. The main boy, Polo, strikes a deal with the Animorphs to work together and get rid of the yeerks. As the rain falls, Jake begins to get weak, since it's been a long day so far, so they rest a bit, then press on. He wakes up as a jaguar is in his face. They all manage to acquire the jaguar's morph as they only have two hours left. Jake takes the computer core to return to the ship, since he shoulders all the blame for today's incidents.

The Jaguar morph goes well, they get the hang of it, and its senses and power makes it a formidable morph. They see that the blade ship and bug fighter have been dragged together. So the pieces are in place, but the plan isn't just yet. And Jake is cracking from the pressure of being the leader without a viable plan. But Cassie also wonders why it was just Jake that got those visions. Ax then says that maybe it's because Jake may be the only Animorph actually there and the others are more like a memory. That it's possible that when the Rip occurred, it erased the timeline and there may be one dire way to fix it. But before they can continue that, Visser Three gets the drop on them.

Visser Three had morphed something called a Lerdethak, a sort of vine or tentacle monster, which feels like the perfect segue to some sort of hentai joke. He uses the tendrils to wrap the Animorphs up. All but Jake. Suddenly, Polo and the others show up. Jake escapes and morphs monkey long enough to start climbing on Visser Three. He directs Polo to throw a spear at the Visser, hitting the morphed yeerk. Jake begins to fall, but lands back on the ground at the motel by the Safeway. He's back on the original timeline. No one else has memories of the rainforest. And the morphs are gone, obviously. Jake decides that to ensure this doesn't happen again, they abandon the bug fighter plan. He talks to Ax the next day who suggests that the Jake of that timeline died, so it snapped him back to the regular timeline. So, the easiest way to describe this whole story is wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff.

The Forgotten is an interesting book. In the end, a book that really doesn't matter that much, given that the events really don't matter since they end up never really happening. So it does feel like our first book that ends on a flat note. But its time travel concepts are at least interesting. Going with the idea of what would happen if two of one person existed on the same time line and how it would effect them on a psychic level of sorts. And it does give us a fun trip through a rainforest. With some questionable side characters, perhaps written a bit too misanthropic. But never in a way where Polo or the others are written to be too savage. 

The book's ultimate message is to give us a further look inside the mind of Jake and how much the role of leadership is messing with his mind. How all of this comes from his poor judgment or rash decisions. The bug fighter theft that causes the rift, leaving Ax behind, then rushing to save him which almost kills Rachel. And ultimately how they end up in a no-win situation with Visser Three. It builds as a story where we see that Jake is the only one of the group who doesn't think he could be a leader. Even technically his decision to get Polo to throw the spear ultimately leads to that version's demise. Though at least that one fixed things. 

So, ultimately this book feels like filler. Good filler that never feels like a slog to read, but ultimately one that doesn't affect the narrative in any crucial manner. Ultimately just being bogged down by confusing time travel stuff and that feeling like some things could have been focused on more. One that still works as a Jake tale, but feels like his weakest outing so far. But as a return to form for Animorphs on the blog, it's just good enough. The Forgotten gets a B-.