It's time for Ax's second turn at bat. I remember this one vaguely. Mainly because it was a book I remember being confused by when I was younger and not really following that well. I guess my brain wasn't quite ready for the concept of Z-Space. But that was younger, more ADHD-addled me, now I'm older, just as much ADHD-addled me, but someone who is somewhat better at following the story and being able to read through books without my brain wanting to drive off to anywhere else but here. Will this book work for me this time? Let's see with The Decision.
Ax opens the book by telling us that this story sees them changing the very nature of Z-Space, being on a ship called the Ascalin and seeing a major incident that painted the Andalite people as traitors. So yeah, we're in for some real "coming to terms that your ancestors might suck" in this one. We then start proper as Ax is in human morph, and being in human morph means he's going absolutely wild for cinnamon buns. He tries to apply for a job at what I believe is Cinnabon. He's denied a job, so he just grabs two buns from people at a table and goes full on into those suckers. And, in any normal situation this would have led to Ax being thrown out on his human-morphed ass, the manager gives him a tray of stale buns. On the one hand, piss poor job at keeping your cover. On the other hand, free food. Win win? Marco saw all of this go down and tells the others, who kind of just gloss over this. Which I'd ignore if they weren't more angry at Rachel for defending herself. And, nah, I ain't letting that one slide.
The Animorphs are at Cassie's barn, waiting for Erek and the Chee to show up. Erek has news involving the second ranking member of the secret service, Hewlett Aldershot the Third, being hit by a car and rushed to a hospital. An extremely secretive hospital with the outside world not even knowing his whereabouts. But the Yeerks are there. Also it was Chapman who ran Hewlett over, so we now know the Yeerks are stooping to full-on vehicular homicide to get their job done. Jake and the others realize that they may have to see what's going on. Marco, Ax and Rachel morph seagull and survey the area. They spot Visser Three in human morph entering the hospital, then see him in his Andalite form chastising the doctors for not having Hewlett up and mobile, because I guess despite all of this Yeerk invasion stuff, they don't know how human anatomy works. But since Hewlett is connected to the president, having him as a controller would give Visser Three access to many important secrets. This book was written in 1998. If he had waited, he could have just gotten them in the bathroom of Mar-a-Lago. Also, Visser Three is a lot more antsy after the incident at the Yeerk pool in the last book, so when he spots some suspicious looking seagulls, he turns into a monstrous kafit bird to attack them.
Ax tries to dodge, but Visser Three strikes, forcing him to go down and demorph, which means we have Andalite vs Andalite action. Ax manages to slash Visser Three, sending the Yeerk leader into retreat which gives Ax and the others time to escape. Ax doesn't take retreating well, thinking he could have beaten Visser Three right there and then, though also knowing that he very likely wouldn't have. Tobias tries to calm him down, but it really doesn't help. Ax is more concerned about the kafit bird morph. The bird is a species from the Andalite world, meaning that it's very possible that Visser Three and the yeerks have found their way to his planet. Or it could have been captured and taken to a place where Visser Three could have found it. Or Alloran may have had that morph before being controlled? That's not out of the realm of possibility. Back to Hewlett, the Animorphs realize they might need to morph him so that they can blow whatever plans Visser Three has. Cassie, of course, is against this, not just morphing another human but acquiring from a comatose man, not to mention Visser Three's on high alert. But they then realize that maybe they can get his DNA another way. Through blood. Which means it's cover animal time, with the Animorphs set to morph mosquito.
They acquire their mosquito morphs and return to the hospital where Ax provides a distraction. He scares the other patients and the controllers try to capture him. But he says that he wishes to defect and aid the Yeerks. But it's a ruse that he uses to lay out some of the controllers long enough to open the window and let the other Animorphs in. He then morphs mosquito and lands on Hewlett. He begins to suck blood and... POP. All of a sudden, Ax finds himself in Z-space along with the others. Ax has no idea what's going on, but the vision of himself and the Animorphs entire bodies being visible from the inside out is a creepy visual. Suddenly, an Andalite ship the Ascalin, shows up and the next thing Ax knows, he's awakened on a table, back to normal, as the Andalites want questions as to what's going on here. These being the captain Samilin-Corath-Gahar, tactical officer Hareli-Frodin-Sirinal and doctor Coaldwin-Ashul-Tahaylik. So the Kirk, Spock and Bones of the operation.
The Andalites ask Ax why there are aliens with him, to which me tells them of the invasion of Earth and the humans getting the morphing powers. He claims it was him to try and save Elfangor's skin, but the captain knows he's lying. Ax talks with the others and says that acquiring extra mass as the mosquito must have popped them through Z-Space and now they're on a space ship headed to Leera, home of the Leerans, the psychic frogs we covered back in book 15. The planet is Yeerked at this point so this crew of Andalite warriors are here to check on what's going on. The kids want to help, but Ax says that to do so could jeopardize their safety. And him being an aristh, a cadet, means he really has no say in the matter and must do what the captain says. He meets with the captain and the T.O. as they arrive on Leera. Leera is mostly water with a few small islands, and whoever controls the land will have control of the planet. The Yeerks may have the advantage in this fight since neither Andalite nor Leeran work similarly in battle, so this might be theirs to win. Suddenly, Dracon blasts hit the ship. A hologram of the Andalite commander, Prince Galuit-Enilon-Esgarrouth appears, telling them to carry out plan seven four.
Things are rough. Force fields, Taxxons, Hork-Bajir, everything that puts the Leerans at a disadvantage. The captain calls to leave, but suddenly the controls send the ship into Yeerk territory. The T.O. tries to stop it, but he gets attacked by the captain, who, oh yeah, is ready to sell out the crew to the Yeerks. He's working with Visser Four, who would love to help Visser Three get rid of his Andalite Bandit problem. Speaking of which, the Animorphs were in bug form and know of what's going on. The T.O. manages to shoot the captain with a Shredder beam, destroying the traitor instantly. The Andalites are now without a working ship, meaning that they're going to open fire for as long as they can before the ship self destructs. The Animorphs morph fly and escape as the Ascalin explodes. Everyone is clearly in a panic, not knowing what to do, with Ax feeling he abandoned his people and he should have died on the ship with them. Ax says they should find their way to the Andalite base, to which Rachel gets pissed since the last time that Ax talked with an Andalite official, it almost killed them. Ax apologizes and says that from this point on, he'll follow only Prince Jake and no one else. But Ax knows that there's no way that Prince Galuit could be a controller as his family died instead of letting themselves be controlled. No way this goes bad for Ax, right? Well we have 60+ pages left for it to go bad.
Since anything in the sky would be destroyed by lasers and the ground is hard to walk on, the Animorphs choose bat as their way of transportation, with Jake noting that they stay out of this fight until they reach the commander. Ax begins to worry that he's selling out to the humans by taking their side, by wanting to be with them on Earth. However they get drawn into battle and blasted. Tobias just disappears and the Andalites appear to retreat. The war appears to be lost. The group are in a panic, but Ax comes to the realization that they have one last shot if they can go underwater and contact the Leerans below. The Leerans live in the water, but the concern is still the Yeerks taking over the land, creating bases and then heading into the water to capture the Leerans. He also tells Jake that should it come to it, to kill him lest he be yeerked. They make it to the water, but suddenly, Rachel disappears. So they're on the clock. Literally. As in they have no clue who's going next.
They morph shark and go into the water. The ocean of Leera is described as beautiful with the life within working in harmony. So it would suck if the Yeerks took over. They find some Leerans and try to communicate, but this is a bad idea as these Leerans are already controlled. They throw spears at the Animorphs, but thankfully they don't hurt shark. But shark can damn sure hurt Leerans. They tear the Leerans apart, to which the Leerans then communicate telepathically. They can regenerate their bodies and by doing so remove the Yeerks from their heads. They morph Leeran (though Cassie almost objects, but the Leerans are cool with it, so non-issue) and find Commander Prince Galuit. They work with Galuit to fight back against the Yeerks and save the Leeran. The plan is to detonate is surface, since the Leerans are mainly underwater anyway. The bomb was supposed to go off thanks to the Ascalin, but Ax tells Galuit about the whole "the captain was a traitor, the ship went to enemy territory and then it self destructed". So it's up to the Animorphs, the only ones with capable attack morphs, to help in getting ot the switch to activate the bombs. All fou-three of them. Marco has now disappeared. It appears that the whole situation with the mosquito brought them to Z-space, but part of their bodies are still on Earth, and they're being snapped back like a cosmic rubber band. So it's Ax, Jake and Cassie left to finish the job.
The group morph shark again and head upstream to find the area to activate the switch. A cavern bubble known as the bright room. Cassie disappears next. Jake and Ax get the cave and morph bat while dealing with snakes on the ceiling that attack them. Jake soon disappears next. Ax makes it into the bright room and finds the switch to activate, just at Hork-Bajir break inside and aim at him. He enters the code in time and soon, Ax disappears too. The six Animorphs return, still in mosquito morph as Hewlett Aldershot wakes up, having been bit by mosquitoes. With Aldershot awake too soon, he's unable to be Yeerked, so the controllers make a run for it and the Animorphs escape. They all realize that when they popped back to Earth, it was at the very moment they left, so it's as if nothing happened. The Animorphs celebrate their victory with Ax wanting more cinnamon buns. Ha ha ha haaaaa that whole situation was kind of fucked up when you think about it.
This book is weirdly structured and I think that's a good thing. You go into the book thinking this is another case of the Animorphs dealing with someone who is either in league with the Yeerks or about to be. Something that does feel in line with the last two books especially. But then you're hit with the Z-Space stuff and suddenly this is a full on action book filled with violence, betrayal and Ax questioning himself as a warrior and as an Andalite. That he felt he should have died with the crew of the Ascalin, but also feeling like he's become so entwined with the Earth people that he's almost willing to betray the Andalites to defend them. Ax even gets to battle with Visser Three in a moment that's great, but does feel like it also just disappears once the book goes deep into the war on Leera. If I can knock the book on anything I would say we sort of rush past a lot of the Ax character development, especially once the Animorphs start disappearing one by one. And it becomes more of a mission to detonate a bomb, which is still a fun bit of action.
If you want morphs, there's a good batch of them. The main being the mosquitoes to set up the Z-Space stuff and the sharks once we're on Leera. You don't get the classic attack morphs, but a whole lot of bug morphs if that's your thing. But more importantly, we give the Animorphs a win this time. The last few books have had them fail in really striking a blow to Yeerk plans. To manage to stop a major part of the invasion by saving Leera is a win for them. I'm curious if the Leeran morphs stay, given the whole time snap thing which trust me, will be more frustrating in the next book. That's the problem with all of this time warp stuff, it can really feel like blue balls to get these cool new morphs and then realize they're temporary.
So yeah, chalk this up as a great book. It suffers from some pacing issues, to the point of feeling breakneck at places, and sets up a lot of character stuff for Ax only to gloss past it to solve the bigger problem of the war on Leera. And it'll really depend if you're big on space adventure or action and espionage. This tries to please both, but I think does both very well to make it the strongest book in quite some time. So this is an easy recommend. Ax just keeps on winning. Well, suffering from emotional turmoil, the weight of his brother's name and the belief of the greatness of the Andalites being shattered, but you know, he does get cinnamon buns. All is well. The Decision gets an A-.
Next up... fuck, it's next isn't it? Well, time to revisit one of the great disappointments of my youth. Open the door, get on the floor, everybody walk the dinosaur.
RELATABLE REFERENCES
Cinnabon
Express
Old Navy
Benedict Arnold
Robin
Dairy Queen
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