The Threat (novel)
The Threat is the 21st book in the Animorphs series, written by K. A. Applegate, it is narrated by Jake. It is the second book in the David trilogy. After falling from the Blade ship, the Animorphs are snagged from mid-air by Rachel and Tobias, in their respective eagle and hawk morphs, they land on the beach. Jake becomes aware of the tensions between David and Marco, is disturbed by David's unnecessary excesses; the team morphs into seagulls, spy out the area, crawling with security agents armed to the teeth and accompanied by dogs. They're zapped by a security man wearing sunglasses with weak Dracon beam emitters built into them. Jake tells them to leave. Upon his return home, Jake's parents tell him and his brother Tom that their obnoxious cousin, was gravely injured in a car accident, that they were leaving town to spend time with his parents. Jake is presented with the opportunity to advance his plans; that night, David disappears from Cassie's barn. Jake morphs into his dog and tracks David's scent to an inn.
David had morphed into a golden eagle, smashed the window with a rock and entered a room without paying. Jake warns him of the consequences of this action, while saying he won't have time to help David with his living problems until after the mission. David leaves with Jake anyway. Cassie formulates a plan to infiltrate the resort. Jake morphs into a dragonfly, while the other Animorphs, with the exception of Tobias, morph into fleas and latch onto Jake's body. Tobias guides them to the hotel. Inside, Jake tries to find the banquet hall where the infestations will take place. Inside an air vent, he gets caught in a spider web. Terrified, Jake demorphs, the others follow. Cassie is badly wounded when Jake's demorphing creates a human artery that forces more blood into her flea body than it is prepared to hold, he releases them, they begin demorphing. Marco is stuck mid-morph, as a giant flea, they begin to despair. Marco becomes emotional, something unlike him. Jake inspects the banquet room, notices the number of holograms in place.
Here they discover how the Yeerks plan to infest each world leader, Visser Three having infiltrated the facility by acquiring and morphing Tony, the White House Chief of Staff, although there are two schools of thought about why he would do this: Ax theorizes that it was because there would be no way for the man to have access to a Kandrona if he is infested and something goes wrong with the mission, whereas Cassie thinks that it is Visser Three's ego wanting him to take the key role in a plan that could result in the Yeerks winning the war for Earth at last. Now the Animorphs need a plan to thwart it, they return to the resort, knock out the guards, morph into them, reenter the banquet. Soon they realize they have been deceived, have fallen into Visser Three's trap. David is frightened and turns against the Animorphs in order to preserve his own life, Cassie having to attack him to stop him revealing who they are, it isn't long, before they discover that the Hork-Bajir surrounding them are only holograms.
They take the Visser hostage, both groups withdraw on a truce. The Animorphs, angry with David, try to plan their next move before it's too late. However, during the night, David returns to his old home in eagle morph. Jake and Ax pursue him, only to find that David had killed Tobias. David explains that the Animorphs weren't treating him as an equal, that he'd have to take matters into his own hands. Enraged, Jake engages David, only to be ambushed by Hork-Bajir. Ax rescues Jake, they escape. David leads Jake to the mall, they each morph their battle morphs and tiger respectively. After a brief duel, David severs Jake's carotid artery, leaving him to bleed to death. David becomes an enemy of the Animorphs
The Android (novel)
The Android is the tenth book in the Animorphs series, written by K. A. Applegate, it is narrated by Marco. While sneaking into a concert in dog morph and Marco discover that they are unable to detect a smell from their friend Erek King, something impossible, as all living things smell, they realize that he is a member of The Sharing. When the Animorphs investigate further, they find out that he is an android with a hologram projected around him, after he is hit by a bus and his hologram fails for a few seconds. Marco finds out from Tom that there is a barbecue for The Sharing going on at a nearby lake, the Animorphs go there to find out whether Erek is working for the Yeerks. Only certain animals can see through Erek's hologram, so Ax and Marco morph wolf spiders, while the rest of the Animorphs go into their bird morphs to act as lookouts. While in morph, Marco and Ax confirm their suspicion. However, Marco is grabbed by a bird, who tries to eat him, he is forced to demorph in full view of Erek.
Erek projects a hologram from the Controllers. Erek tells Marco to come visit him at his house, to bring the other Animorphs. After some thought, the Animorphs decide to go. In case it's a trap, they leave Rachel behind, who will morph into grizzly bear and storm the place if Ax thought-speaks a distress call. Once they get there, Erek reveals he is part of an ancient race of androids called the Chee, whose creators, the Pemalites, were destroyed by the Howlers thousands of years ago; the Chee managed to escape to Earth with a few of the last remaining Pemalites, fused their essence with wolves, creating dogs. A few members of the Chee are working against the Yeerks. Erek agreed to "become" a Controller; when he goes to the Yeerk Pool, he projects a hologram of the Yeerk going in and out of his ear, realizing that the Yeerks have little ability to communicate while in the pool. The Chee have amazing physical strength, but they have one drawback: their programming means they cannot hurt anyone. Erek tells the Animorphs.
They find out that the Yeerks are in possession of the crystal, have it in a high security facility. They agree to attempt to retrieve the crystal. To get it, they decide to sneak in using spider morphs, they are chased by a rat and just escape being burned by a furnace, but they reach the guarded room. They morph into bats to echolocate and avoid the complex wiring that protects the crystal from normal means. However, once Jake has the crystal in his mouth, the Animorphs realize that he can't echolocate out of there, they go into race out, where they are stopped by twenty Hork-Bajir warriors. Marco sees Erek outside the windows looking in, powerless to help them. During the fighting, Marco ends up by the windows. Gasping, he gives the Pemalite crystal to Erek before dying; when Erek delivers an electric shock to Marco's heart and he comes to, Marco realizes that all of the Hork-Bajir are dead, the Animorphs and Erek are fine, Erek having massacred the Hork-Bajir. Erek says that he has realized why the Pemalites put the pacifist programming in him—as his memory remains perfect, Erek will never be able to move past the memory of the violence that he has committed and will remember it as though it just took place—and changes his programming back to what it was.
He says that he can never join the actual fight. He gives Marco a phone number for a untappable line so they can communicate. At the end of the book, Jake's dog, drops the Pemalite crystal into the ocean; the android Erek King is named after an Animorphs fan who won an online competition to have their name used in an Animorphs book
The Warning (novel)
The Warning is the 16th book in the Animorphs series, written by K. A. Applegate, it is narrated by Jake. Jake is unsure of its legitimacy, he and the other Animorphs can't tell if it's a Yeerk trap, or a place for potential Yeerk-fighters to meet. The Animorphs decide to travel to the Web Access America headquarters, a two-hour flight from their own city; the kids can't afford plane tickets, so they morph flies with Tobias acquiring a fly morph. After Marco dabbles in a first-class passenger's Salisbury steak, the occupants on the plane are alerted. A flight attendant swats Jake, nearly killing him. A shaken Jake survives and tries to hide his fear. At Web Access America, Marco and Ax hack into the WAA records and discover the identities of some of the screen names on the Yeerk website, they need a distraction, so the children morph and create a spectacle for anyone working in the offices. One of the users from the website is the founder of WAA himself, Joe Bob Fenestre - the second richest man in the country.
On the way back to the airport, Cassie objects to Jake morphing the fly again. Jake untruthfully tries to convince the others that he has no issue morphing the fly, getting him into an argument with Cassie, their relationship is strained for the time being. Back home, Jake needs to form a new plan to infiltrate Joe Bob Fenestre's multi-million dollar compound. Cassie objects, instead wanting to save a young child on the Yeerk website going by the screen name of Gump from confessing to his Controller father what he knows. Jake and the others overrule Cassie. Jake, without any prior intelligence or preparation, sends himself and the Animorphs to the billionaire's property, they are attacked by gun-toting humans and pack hounds, Rachel is shocked unconscious by a bug zapper. Ax is captured by the dogs. Jake and the others, need to find another way to break in. Jake travels to The Gardens zoo complex, acquires a rhinoceros morph, he breaks through the entrance to the Fenestre mansion, impervious to human shotguns.
The others follow, morph their standard battle morphs. They find Fenestre, along with Rachel and Ax in a suspended time state known as "biostasis"; the Yeerk controlling Fenestre explains to Jake, Cassie and Tobias that he is Visser Three's twin brother - Esplin 9466 Lesser. Visser Three, unwilling to share his power with his sibling, banished him to Earth as a lowly telephone operator. Esplin, combining his Yeerk technical knowledge with his host's human knowledge, created a web service that would serve as a vast pool of information for the Yeerk invasion; the Visser was enraged, has been plotting to kill him since. Jake asks Esplin. Esplin unemotionally explains; every three days, he has them kidnapped, splits the hosts' heads open, has his human host feed on the Yeerk inside. Fenestre admits. A horrified Cassie tries to attack him. He'd rather allow Esplin to kill as many Yeerks as he could - if it means sacrificing the host. Cassie is enraged at and disgusted with Jake. Jake threatens Esplin, they leave with Rachel and Ax. Jake meets with Cassie, who'd been talking to Gump, from the Yeerk website chat, at his elementary school.
The saddened Cassie tells Gump never to trust his father. Jake tries to to no avail. On, Jake watches a news report that Fenestre's house had been burned down, he hints that he may have burned down the house out of disgust for the cannibal killer
The Departure (novel)
The Departure is the 19th book in the Animorphs series, written by K. A. Applegate, it is narrated by Cassie and secondarily by Jake, who narrates several chapters towards the end of the story. The Animorphs attack the Hork-Bajir bodyguards at a Sharing meeting; the second Jake ordered his team to break off, Cassie tore the throat out of a Hork-Bajir. Cassie, ridden with guilt, runs away, she doesn't pay much attention. She demorphs, has a nightmare, she wakes up, begins scrubbing her teeth and gums until they bleed as she had found a piece of Hork-Bajir flesh stuck in her teeth. The next day, Cassie meets the others at her barn, she explicitly declares that she's fed up with all the violence, quits being an Animorph. The others are disgusted with her scrupulous behaviour, brand her a hypocrite. Marco makes a sarcastic remark about Cassie "going back to playing with her animals". Cassie tells them that her father lost the much-needed funding to keep the rehabilitation clinic open. A distraught Cassie goes on a horse ride to calm her nerves.
Cassie spots a girl being chased by an angry bear. Cassie pursues them, but is knocked off her horse, falls into the icy river; when she wakes up, she realizes. The girl introduces herself. Karen tries to force Cassie to reveal her true identity. Cassie pretends the girl is mistaken. Soon it is apparent that the girl is a Controller, Aftran 942, watching her own father, the president of UniBank, it becomes apparent that Cassie had killed Aftran's brother Estril 731. They are both lost in the forest, Cassie knows that a leopard that escaped from a private zoo is lurking about. During their time together, Cassie reveals her identity. Cassie begins to discuss the morality of enslaving another creature, while Aftran defends the Yeerk's right to experience life as a human or an Andalite does. Cassie tries to turn Aftran against her own people. Aftran tells Cassie that to preserve the freedom of one species, she must surrender her own. Aftran presents Cassie with the following scenario: if she were Aftran, would she stay in the Yeerk Pool forever?
Cassie is uncertain. She allows Aftran to enter her brain, thus freeing Karen - and putting the life of the planet at stake. Cassie convinces Aftran. In return, Aftran compels Cassie to morph to a caterpillar, to live life as a helpless worm like she is asking Aftran to do. Cassie reluctantly agrees, morphs, staying beyond the two-hour limit. Jake and the others soon find Aftran back in Karen's body, Cassie now a caterpillar; the Animorphs are enraged, are more than willing to kill the Controller in revenge for Cassie, to keep their identities a secret. After stopping the escaped leopard - Marco throwing it to the side in gorilla morph, Jake hears her out and lets her live. Cassie spins a cocoon, stays dormant for a couple of days. Cassie emerges as a butterfly, the Animorphs are overjoyed, but saddened, as well, certain that Cassie would spend the rest of her brief life as an insect. Ax is puzzled at. One of the Animorphs explains the process of metamorphosis. Ax theorizes that the morphing clock has been reset by this and she would be able to demorph, which she does after the other team members chase her down.
Again human, Cassie is willing to be an Animorph once more. Aftran keeps her promise, freeing Karen, the Yeerk establishes the Yeerk Peace Movement. At the beginning of the story, the Animorphs use "various morphs" to spy upon a meeting of The Sharing. Aftran is introduced; this is the second time that one of the main characters has become a Controller, as Cassie letting Aftran control her follows Jake's brief time as a Controller in #6: The Capture. This is the first book in the mainstream, numbered series, to be narrated by more than one character. Though the cover shows Cassie morphing a butterfly, she never makes that morph at all
The Predator (novel)
The Predator, published in 1996 and written by K. A. Applegate, is the fifth book in the Animorphs series, it is narrated by Marco. Ax wishes to return to the Andalite home world, to do so, he needs a ship, he intends to build a communicator to broadcast a Yeerk distress signal and lure in a Yeerk ship which he can hijack. He goes to the mall to buy the equipment to build a communicator, he runs wild sampling food left over on tables. He is chased by security guards and, demorphs in the middle of the mall in front of many people. He, Marco run out of the mall and into a nearby grocery store where they are chased by Controllers, they hide in a tank. They escape. Ax needs a zero-space transponder. Mr. Hedrick Chapman communicates with Visser Three from his basement, so the Animorphs morph into ants and retrieve the Z-space transponder that he uses; as they are returning from Chapman's house, they are killed when attacked by ants from another colony. They are able to demorph in time. Ax completes his device, broadcasts the signal, but the Yeerks have changed their distress frequencies, sensing a trap, they set one of their own.
The Animorphs are taken aboard the Yeerk mother ship, where Visser One is visiting. Visser One confronts them and her host body is Marco's mother, alive after all; the Animorphs are put in a cell, they are freed by one of Visser One's Hork-Bajir. The Animorphs return to Earth. Marco's father returns to work. Marco asks Jake, the only one who had met Marco's mom, not to tell any of the others about Visser One, it is revealed. However, only Marco and Jake will know this until the final events of #15: The Escape; the Predator was adapted as part of the Animorphs TV series, which aired on Nickelodeon and YTV between the fall of 1998 and the spring of 2000. The fifth book was covered by the fourteenth and fifteenth episodes, "The Leader", along with plot lines from The Stranger; the TV episodes did not follow the books faithfully, altering many aspects of the characters' roles within the Animorphs, the events in the war against the Yeerks, added plot lines that were not present in the books. Only Marco and Jake are taken aboard the Yeerk Pool Ship, captured while attempting to infiltrate the EGS tower and destroy the Kandrona, leaving Cassie and Rachel behind to complete the task.
The destruction of the Kandrona occurs in The Stranger. Visser Three would not be in human morph while on the Pool Ship. In the book, Visser One's personal guard leads the Animorphs to an escape pod that returns them to Earth. Scholastic re-released The Predator with a new lenticular cover in December 2011. On Goodreads, The Predator has a score of 3.81 out of 5. Official page at Scholastic.com The Predator on Fandom
The Encounter (novel)
The Encounter, published in 1996 and written by K. A. Applegate, is the third book in the Animorphs series, it is narrated by Tobias. Tobias and Rachel liberate a caged red-tailed hawk from a car dealership, Dealin' Dan Hawke's Used Cars, where it is being used as a mascot in advertisements; that evening, Tobias sees a shimmer in the air and is perplexed by it. He decides to check it out again the next day, this time notices a flock of geese run into an invisible wall in the air. Tobias suspects the anomaly to be a Yeerk ship using optical camouflage and tells the other Animorphs about it; the group morphs into wolves to follow the last known direction of the ship into the mountains. They arrive at a lake guarded by Park Service Hork-Bajir-controllers; the ship decloaks over the lake, revealing itself to be a massive logistics ship that collects water and air for the Yeerk Pool ship in orbit. Tobias sees the hawk that he and Rachel freed, has an urge to be with her; the Animorphs return from the mountains and make plans to morph into fish in the lake and get sucked up by the ship so they can disable it from the inside, thus deactivating the cloaking device while it is above a city and revealing the Yeerk invasion to the general public.
Tobias heads up to the lake again to scope out potential hiding places, but his hawk instincts overpower him on the way and he kills and eats a rat. Disturbed by the experience, he flies to Rachel's gymnastics exhibition at the mall and tries to commit suicide, he flies around the mall in a panicked state until Marco smashes open a skylight for him with a baseball to escape. Tobias regresses into his hawk instincts for several days, his human side only re-emerges. He returns to Rachel to talk about what happened, he decides that he needs to keep fighting the Yeerks to remain human; the Animorphs hide in a cave until the Yeerks arrive. They morph trout, Tobias carries them to the lake to avoid notice by the Yeerks who have locked down the area; the others are sucked up into the ship, but they discover that the water tank is sealed off inside. They ask him to bring the ship down if possible. Meanwhile, Tobias is spotted and identified as an "Andalite bandit." To avoid attacks from Yeerk Bug Fighters and helicopters, he lands on top of the logistics ship, the one place he can be sure the Yeerks won't risk firing.
A dozen Taxxons emerge out onto the deck to kill him. The Taxxon, trying to shield itself, accidentally makes it easier for Tobias to grab its Dracon beam, he fires the beam at the ship's bridge, causing it to fly out of control and crash into the other Yeerk ships. A large gash is torn in the side of the ship, the other Animorphs come pouring out with the water, collected, they are able to escape. Tobias again sees the female hawk; the remains of the downed truck ship are disposed of by the Yeerks, thus leaving no evidence for the Animorphs to show the world. Tobias is distressed over the death of the hawk, but realizes that it is this emotion that makes him human, as a true hawk would not care if another hawk had died. Tobias discusses this with Rachel, begins to accept his newfound balance between being a hawk and being a human. Tobias states that Marco had acquired a bald eagle morph and that he used it during the escape from the Yeerk ship. However, Marco never acquired a bald eagle. Tobias is shown morphing into a hawk on the cover page as a brunette, but it was stated that he has blonde hair on page 3 of the same book.
Tobias states that the truck ship is about 700 feet above the forest when the rest of the Animorphs fall out of the ship. It takes less than 7 seconds to fall that distance. Despite that, everyone is able to morph into birds before hitting the ground though the morphing process is described as taking up to 2 minutes; this is the first book where the cover morph does not depict a morph used in the book. In July 2011, Scholastic released The Encounter with a new lenticular cover that changes as the person holding it turns the book back and forth. On Goodreads, the book has a 3.82 out of 5. Official page at Scholastic.com
The Decision (novel)
The Decision is the 18th book in the Animorphs series, written by K. A. Applegate, it is narrated by Ax. The inside front cover quote is, "Ax is about to bug out...." The front cover quote is, "Change a little. Change a lot. Just change...." Thanks to intel from their friend and ally, Erek the Chee, the Animorphs discover that a high-ranking member of the Secret Service, Hewlett Aldershot III, has been intentionally injured by the Yeerks and is being kept secretly in a hospital where he is guarded. Since he cannot be infested while in a coma, Visser Three acquires his DNA in hopes of impersonating him to acquire an more senior official. However, he figures out that the Animorphs are spying on him in seagull morphs, so he morphs a kafit bird from the Andalite home world and gives chase to Ax, Marco, whom he spies at the time, he settles on only chasing Ax, after cornering him on the roof of a McDonald's, they engage in tail-to-tail combat in their Andalite bodies. Ax defeats the older Andalite under Visser Three's control, he forces him to retreat, which gives himself time to escape.
The next day, while meeting in Cassie's family's barn, the team decides to morph mosquitoes with the theory that they can acquire Aldershot by sucking his blood without being in their natural forms, where the Yeerk guards might notice them. However, while in mosquito morph, they are transported to Z-Space when their extra mass is caught in the slipstream of an Andalite ship, the Ascalin, heading for the planet Leera, where there is a Yeerk invasion underway. Just before they suffocate, they are taken aboard. Once on the ship, Ax begins to subconsciously, unintentionally ignore the Animorphs, instead following orders from the captain due to how much he missed being around other Andalites; the humans are told to stay calmly in a room. The captain of the ship, Captain Samilin-Corrath-Gahar, reveals himself to be a traitor, he incapacitates the other Andalites on the bridge, stunning most and amputating the tail blade of the tactical officer, Harelin-Frodlin-Sirinial. Ax is held, unharmed, as a hostage and an offering to Visser Four, overseeing the Yeerk invasion on Leera and is the best friend of Visser Three.
Ax calls out to the Animorphs for help, but they reveal to Ax that they are present in the room. Cassie and Ax distract Captain Samilin long enough for Tactical Officer Harelin to kill him; as the ship is about to be taken by the Yeerks, Harelin instructs them to leave while he initiates the self-destruct sequence, which kills him and every other Andalite aboard the ship. After the Animorphs escape from the self-destructed Ascalin, emotions are running high surrounding Ax. While Jake and Cassie are more understanding of Ax's temporary transference of loyalties to the Andalites during their time on the ship and Marco are angry and annoyed at his decision and browbeat him for it, with Rachel pushing Ax far enough to put his tail blade at her throat for her comments, but after Jake calms the tension down, Ax apologizes to his friends for his treatment of them and reaffirms his loyalty to Jake. They focus on finding a way back to Earth; the Animorphs head across the major landmass of Leera to try to find friendly Andalites.
In the midst of the war going on, Tobias and mysteriously disappears, but the others don't know where he's gone and are forced to move on without him. Ax is struck with a sudden realization about where to find some friendly Andalites, the Animorphs follow him out into the ocean. Rachel disappears like Tobias, the others rescue a group of Leerans from Yeerk control; the Leerans agree to be acquired in order to help fight off the Yeerk invasion. In their new Leeran morphs, the Animorphs enter a Leeran city; the Andalites based there inform the Animorphs that they have planted a bomb to explode the continent, just as Ax had suspected, but that it needs to be activated. Just as the Animorphs volunteer for the mission, Marco disappears, causing a panic among Ax, Cassie. After explaining their problem to the Andalites, the Andalite scientists theorize that the Animorphs' unexplained disappearances are the result of a "snapback" effect, meaning that when the Animorphs disappear, they are reappearing either on Earth or in Z-Space, the latter possibility causing fear among Ax, Cassie.
Soon after they set out to activate the bomb, they meet a Leeran-Controller who reads their minds and alerts the Yeerks of the bomb. After dealing with the Leeran, Cassie disappears; when they reach the explosives, Jake disappears. He activates the bomb. A Hork-Bajir fires at him; the bomb goes off right. All the Animorphs arrive back in the hospital, where they were before they got sucked into Z-Space, despite being pulled away from Leera at different times, they realize that they have all arrived back at Earth at the exact same moment that they were pulled into Z-space. In addition, Hewlett Aldershot III wakes up healthy again, foiling the Yeerks' scheme and leaving the Animorphs' plans to acquire him unnecessary; the Animorphs celebrate their victory at the food court, Ax silently realizes that the Animorphs are the true people that he must follow in light of Captain Samilin's treachery. Glad to get back to normal with them, he is ready for his favorite snack: cinnamon buns; the Animorphs aid the Andalites in bringing about their first major victory against the Yeerks.
This book marks the first time that the Ani
