The Animorphs stumble across a new ally in their fight against the Yeerk invasion -- but how far their new friends are willing to go to help the fight, and how far the Animorphs themselves are willing to push them to win -- that's the question. Not one that seems to give Marco much in the way of pause until after the fact, but still an interesting installment. This book and Cassie's before it both feel like books that examine whether the ends justify the means, from wildly different points of view.

Oof this is a heavy one. It truly does amaze me going back as an adult how these books pull no punches regarding violence and the push and pull of whether it is a moral response. They are questions with no easy answers and the books never shy away from wrestling in that complexity.

I wouldn't go so far as to call this a series-best Animorphs volume, but it's one of the stronger entries for sure. It's also the rare case of an item in this franchise with an unambiguous, straightforward title: this is in fact a story about an android!

Specifically, he's a Chee, a race of cyborgs who long ago fled to earth to escape their enemies the Howlers (and to graft the dying essence of their Pemalite creators into wolf DNA to create dogs, the sort of goofy worldbuilding detail that I absolutely adore). None of these alien species have been previously mentioned, and so to some extent, this novel functions to widen the scope of the fictional universe, forming a more complex continuity by introducing threads that can and will reappear later on. Erek himself is positioned as a new ally for the group, able to feed them information and suggest future missions, another valuable plot engine now available for the sequels to draw upon.

Once the introductions are past, the main task here is to retrieve the latest K. A. Applegate macguffin, an extraterrestrial jewel which would enable the Yeerks to take over every computer on the planet. (Again: I love it.) There's a personal angle to the threat too, since Marco's dad has recently begun contracting with the company working on that project. And the action is great, with the gem held behind a security system that requires elaborate heist-movie shenanigans to bypass, including a fun new bat morph whose echolocation allows for a kind of vision that won't set off the light detectors.

What really elevates the book, however, is the Animorphs grappling with the pacifism of their metal friend and his people, both as an inherent moral position and as something they do or don't have the right to interfere with by providing the tool to overcome that programming and join in the fight against the parasitic invaders. Cassie, playing her customary role as conscience to the team, is particularly concerned throughout this discussion, to the point where I almost wish she were narrating instead, despite my enjoyment of the current protagonist's wisecracking. Of all the teens, she's by far the most aware of how much blood is on their hands, and of how the trajectory of this war is only making them more dangerously ruthless as time goes on. It's hard enough for her to sleep at night already, even without the extra weight of ending millennia of Chee nonviolence added to her soul.

As usual, this is heavy material for the middle-grade age of the intended audience -- not necessarily inappropriate, just uncommon -- and the traumatized robot weeping at the end is one of those images that has lingered at the back of my mind for decades now. It's probably a bit exposition-loaded overall, but it's an excellent expansion of the narrative canvas as we bring the first phase of the larger tale to a close.

[Content warning for PTSD, body horror, and gore.]

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Aaaah, I totally forgot about Eryk, the Pemalite, and the Chee! This one is a good one.

I’ve come to recognize that audiobooks are a separate artform unto themselves, such that listening to the audio version of a book can be a different experience than reading it yourself from the page. While driving home from Bellingham recently, my wife and son were both napping and I decided I wanted to listen to an ANIMORPHS book. My first choice was ‘Megamorphs #4’, but unfortunately it seems they haven’t gotten that far recording audiobooks yet, so my second choice was book #10, ‘The Android’. I already had mostly positive feelings about the book; I don’t recall now for sure, but I think I rated it four stars from when I read it in 2020. After experiencing it again as an audiobook, though, I feel it is an unqualified five stars. This is an excellent book.

‘The Android’ is, of course, the introduction of the Chee Erek King; as such, it’s a big moment in the series lore. It’s also a great exhibition of precisely what makes ANIMORPHS so wonderful, which is to say: it leans into the difficulty inherent in making ambiguous moral choices and the shocking depths of violence and trauma that can result from making the wrong—or often even the right—choices in wartime. ANIMORPHS goes to some dark places especially as it gets into the later books in the 54-part series. As a reminder, this is book #10. But even now, even this early, it brings the characters low and essentially leaves them there at the end. It’s brutal, not just because of the depiction of violence, but because of the damage done to the psyches of these children (they’re around 13 years old when the series begins).

This book is narrated by Marco. That narration is performed by Ramón de Ocampo who is… decidedly not 13 years old. I was a little disturbed at first by de Ocampo’s voice because of how ill-fitted it is to the character, but I do think that despite being so obviously not a teenager de Ocampo nevertheless manages to find Marco’s “voice”, making some of Marco’s eccentricities—namely, the character’s identity as comic relief—feel more natural and less forced than they may have read on the page. While I got on board with de Ocampo as Marco in the end, there are two complaints that I still hold in full force:

(1) Throughout the book, he pronounces “Yeerk”, the name of the species which constitutes the Animorphs’ main antagonist, so that it rhymes with “ear” (Y-ear-k) rather than so that it rhymes with “jerk” as I’ve always read it. And he says the word “Yeerk” a lot. It made me grind my teeth every time I heard him pronounce the word that way because it sounds so stupid. No, seriously: pronouncing the word that way makes it sound silly, not menacing. And he says it SO MUCH.
(2) de Ocampo voices Ax in a stilted, formal way that evokes Mr. Spock from ‘Star Trek’ or Bird-Person from ‘Rick & Morty’. Since listening to this book, I’ve begun listening to another ANIMORPHS audiobook (Book #6, ‘The Capture’) which is narrated by a different performer, and he portrays Ax in a very similar way, so it seems this is the official interpretation of the character. I hate it. Ax is approximately the same age the other Animorphs are. He’s a kid! He’s the kid brother of Elfangor! He struggles with human words and concepts, sure, but he’s not a dispassionate drone. I really loathe this reading of the character.

In this book, after sniffing out that something is weird about a heretofore unmentioned acquaintance of Marco’s name Erek, the Animorphs decide to infiltrate a meeting of The Sharing to figure out what he’s hiding. Marco and Ax go as wolf spiders and the description of Marco’s morph into the spider is gross in all the best ways. That’s something the books have always excelled at and it is on full display here: the visceral description of what it looks, feels, and sounds like to morph. The disturbing feeling of watching your body split open and rearrange. The crunching sounds of bones collapsing and regrowing. The giddy terror that comes with quickly shrinking to 1/1000th your original size. Then, shortly after this, Marco as the spider gets eaten by a bird. The way he speaks of his body being chewed apart in the bird’s beak, the horrible feeling that this is it, this is the moment when you’re going to die, you are in the process of dying right now, that’s stunning stuff. And then when Marco, unable to bear the pain and fear, screams in thought-speak broadcast to The Sharing as a whole, the tension is palpable. It’s just top to bottom a tightly written scene.

I would say that the sequence of events later on when the Animorphs set out on a ‘Mission: Impossible’ or ‘Ocean’s 11’-style heist is also hugely effective in keeping you as reader on the edge of your seat. Frankly, it’s the whole final 1/3 of the book at least. Erek reveals the pacifist, human/dog-hybrid robots, the Chee, to the Animorphs and suggests a MacGuffin held by the Yeerks would allow him to change his programming to override his pacifism protocol. He and the other Chee could then attack the Yeerks directly rather than through subtle influence as had been their primary method of opposition to the invasion of Earth until now. The Animorphs agree to get the MacGuffin and then, in spider, cockroach, and bat morphs, sneak through the air ducts, rush through a temporarily inactive furnace, and duck lasers in order to retrieve it. It’s all very cool. But before they agree on this plan, the Animorphs wrestle with whether it’s the right thing to do. They agonize over it. They very nearly literally ask, “Are we sending the Chee to their damnation if we go through with this?” And then they decide to go through with it.

This all comes to a head when the group realizes they cannot lift the MacGuffin as bats and recognize that the only option left is to go big and try to fight their way out. As they choose their battle morphs and begin to transform, the feeling, once again, that this is it, this is when you’re going to die, this is the moment of death starts to bubble up again. Then the doors open and there’s lines of human Controllers, behind which are two or three dozen Hork-Bajir Controllers, and suddenly this feels insurmountable, like a ‘Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid’ moment. It feels very cinematic. In a split-second, as the eye takes all of this in, in the far background beyond the rows of attackers, is a window. And staring through that window is Erek, awesomely strong and invulnerable, but programmed not to fight and therefore powerless to intervene. He watches in abject horror at the bloodbath which is about to unfold, and Marco sees all this just before the carnage begins. He and his compatriots slash and claw and tear their way forward, but before long Marco is bleeding out and essentially being disemboweled, a thing that happens to the Animorphs with alarming regularity. With his last remaining moments of consciousness, he thrusts his gorilla arm through the window to hand Erek the MacGuffin, and…

He wakes human again with the Animorphs all surrounding him in numb shock. As Marco is caught up to speed on what happened while he was unconscious, he learns that Erek managed to change his programming and immediately went berserk on the Yeerks (see, that joke wouldn’t have landed if you were pronouncing it “Yeark”), eviscerating not just those Controllers who were an immediate threat, but every last individual in the building. And the way they describe it is like that, too; it doesn’t go into detail, but they describe Erek as not just having killed but having completely annihilated those people. Erek is there, too—sobbing. Despite being a robot, he is absolutely wrecked by the knowledge of what he had done. He’s quickly changed his programming back to the way it was before, but the price has already been paid. The book even makes a point of noting that, as an android, Erek doesn’t have the luxury of having the memory fade over time. The first-person images of the unholy violence he committed that day will always be clear and present in his mind, for the rest of his eternal life. Holy shit! That’s Book #10! Book #10 of FIFTY-FOUR.

This book goes n  hardn. And all I can think about is the fact that Erek King—the real Erek King, because Erek is an actual person who won a “Get Your Name in an Animorphs Book” contest and accidentally became a major recurring character (!!!!!)—was interviewed on the Animorphing Time podcast and said that, as a child, when he read this book, his only thought was that it was cool that he had a switch in him that turned him into a super-murder machine! Don’t get me wrong, the action in this book is very cool. But it just goes to show how much of the book can fly over the heads of the quote-unquote “intended” audience, and why I honestly feel that Animorphs, despite being putatively a YA series, is much, much better read as an adult.

It feels kind of outrageous to feel an inclination to re-read a 54-entry series so soon after having read it before, but listening to this audiobook makes me want to relive it, to experience the whole of the narrative and emotional arc of these characters over again. I don’t know if I’ll seriously follow-through on that (most likely I’ll stick largely to the released audiobooks and maybe read a select book or two from the later installments in physical format that I’m most interested in revisiting). Nevertheless, that ‘The Android’ is making me mull this over at all points to how effective it is. Five stars for this book, and five stars for me, for rediscovering this incredible series.

And hey! Back to the darkness of child soldiers, ptsd, horrific injuries and war crimes :)

Marco isnt my favorite perspective, but I do appreciate the viewpoint and the struggles he brings to the group. Each character grounds the story in a unique way (except ax so far) and Marcos is one based in overcoming profound fear for the sake of family and friends, and compensating for trauma and that same fear with humour.

This one was particularly heart wrenching in some ways. And the three laws of robotics come into play here a little a very interesting way (its a story about androids, cmon).

Anyway, im still loving this blast from my childhood and the nostalgia it brings me. I also still cant believe the PURE NERVE it must have taken to get these books okayed for children but im incredibly glad they pulled it off.

Five teenagers gain the ability to morph into different animals to save the world from the Yeerks.

As a person with a spider phobia, maybe I should have skipped this one or over the parts where they morph spiders because the descriptions were absolutely disgusting and made my skin crawl. I had to hold off reading this book because I kept having nightmares about the spiders. Apart from that, I quite enjoyed Marco’s POV but there seemed to be way more repetition in this book than any other I’ve read within this series.

I really liked seeing more of Marco’s serious side come through in this book as he is typically known as the jokester of the group.

⚠️ CWs: Body horror, Violence, War, Death, Genocide, Blood, Bullying, Gun violence, Slavery ⚠️

(Originally reviewed at thelibraryladies.com.)

Narrator: Marco

Plot: After convincing Jake to join him in an “inappropriate use of morphing” escapade to crash a concert in dog morph, Marco and he discover that a friend of theirs from school, Erek, is not what he seems. He has no scent! He’s also handing out pamphlets for “The Sharing,” the Yeerk front group for recruiting new Controllers. All highly suspicious! Let the sleuthing begin! Some more scouting has Marco and Tobias in bird morph see Erek get hit by a bus and then pop right up as if nothing had happened. Even more amazing was the flicker they see, revealing a bizarre metallic body beneath what seems to be a hologram of some sort. The Animorphs then conclude that they need to use “non traditional” eyes to see beneath this hologram to discover the truth of Erek, so Marco and Ax end up morphing spider and infiltrating a “Sharing” lake-front gathering to sneak up on Erek. I’m unclear why they couldn’t have used their fly morphs which also have compound eyes and would be much safer than spiders due to the simple fact that they can fly. This is even more true since Marco gets eaten by a bird at one point and must demorph THROUGH THE BIRD’S NECK to escape! But, they do discover that Erek is definitely some type of android when he comes upon Marco and Ax morphing and “invites” them back to his house to discuss things.

What follows is the introduction of a completely new set of aliens into our growing catalog of interstellar life. Beneath Erek’s house is a whole host of androids that they learn are called the Chee. The Chee are the creation of an extinct species called the Pemalites, a technologically advanced, but peaceful, species that was wiped out when they were attached by another race. The last of their kind escaped to Earth where the Chee were able to somehow connect the remaining essense of their creators into the most similar species to be found on Earth: wolves. The result was the modern dog, the happy-go-lucky animals that share the same spirit as the lost Pemalites. But due to their peaceful perspective, the Chee were programmed in a way that doesn’t allow them to commit violence in any way. Now that the Yeerks are threatening Earth, the humans, and the dogs that contain all that remains of their creators, Erek and some other Chee wish to join the fight. And this is where the Animorphs come in.

Turns out that the Yeerks have somehow acquired a Pemalites crystal that they are using to develop a super computer that will be able to take control of all the computers in the world. Further, this same crystal could be used by the Chee to re-write their programming and allow them to more actively join the fight. All of this is enough motivation to get our heroes involved.

What follows is an action sequence right out of the movie “Entrapment.” Morphed as cockroaches and spiders, they must navigate a piped tunnels, fall great distances (seriously, there’s so much falling in this series as a whole), evade a rat, almost get burned alive by a furnace activating at an inopportune time, and then morph bats to sneak through a pitch black room full of trigger wires. All of this to discover that once they get there, they have no way of carrying the crystal back. So, because no Animorph book can be completely without them all using their battle morphs, the team decide they must bash their way out. This is…not successful. There was a reason they were told by the Chee that sneaking in was the best option. The Animorphs are sliced and diced and only saved by Marco’s dying push to shove the crystal through a window to Erek who is waiting outside. He is then able to re-write his programming and save the day by massacring the remaining Controllers. But he discovers the price of this violence is too high, especially for an android whose memory is always clear, giving no relief or escape from these acts. The story ends with the Chee offering to help by providing information as they can, but refusing to take the crystal. Marco and Jake have a final moment on the beach with Homer and some other dogs where, majestically, Homer carries off the crystal to be lost in the ocean. The end.

The Comic Relief: Marco is definitely my favorite narrator. His voice is the most distinct, and, especially as I re-read this series as an adult, he is the character I most relate to. He’s highly pragmatic, but also comfortable admitting when things are getting too real and scary. As far as character-growth, there’s not necessarily a lot of that in this book for Marco. Probably some of the least as far the series has gone so far. Usually the POV narrator has some distinct arc to go through. But I’m guessing that there was so much action and world-building that came with the introduction of the Chee and the Pemalites, that some of this had to take a back seat. We get some nice moments between Marco and his Dad (see Adult Crying portion), and some fun friend moments with Jake, but at this point in the series, Marco is pretty committed what with his Mom being Visser One and doesn’t need much more motivation to keep this fight going. He does have a strong reason though to have a very frank approach to getting the Chee involved in the fight. No moral concerns from him, really, about tainting a peaceful species’ (?) soul with violence. Not when their help could make the difference in this war and save his mother and humanity. When Cassie is blathering on and on about the wrongness of tainting the Chee species, Marco has this to say:

“Look, no one likes violence. All right? But we didn’t ask for this war with the Yeerks. When the bad guys come after you, when they start the violence, they leave you no choice: fight or die.”

On the other hand, he doesn’t fight against Erek’s and the Chees' choice to abstain from the war after he sees the effects Erek feels after the violence to save the Animorphs towards the end of the story. This whole approach to the Chee conundrum just felt very real and true to Marco’s character as a very practical guy, but also a very empathetic one. He’s just a very well-rounded character. And, funny, never forget funny.

Our Fearless Leader: It’s fun to see Jake get wheedled into just being a regular teenager by Marco early in the book with the concert escapade. Their relationship is very similar to Rachel and Cassie’s in that Jake is more serious, but Marco allows him to just be a regular kid who wants to see a band for free. Marco also mentions how much he appreciates the work that Jake does as a leader when they are all trapped in the building needing to decide how to break out. They all know they’re going to need to go the almost-suicidal-route and barge their way through in battle morph, but it takes Jake saying it for it to be real. And Marco notes the strength it must take to always be in that role.

Xena, Warriar Princess: I don’t know if this is “shipping” per se (though, again, re-reading this series, while I love Tobias/Rachel, I more and more can see a Rachel/Marco thing working), but it is interesting to note a pattern with Marco’s views of Rachel. In book 7, we see him change his vote about going with the Ellimist after seeing Rachel break down and admit that she’s struggling with this war. And here, Marco doesn’t fully understand the gravity of the situation with Erek’s pain after killing until he sees Rachel crying. In both of these examples, it is clear that Marco uses Rachel as a gauge upon which to judge his reaction to an event. Rachel clearly has a thing for Tobias, but Marco…even if it’s not romantic, he clearly respects Rachel very much and perhaps even identifies with her the most when it comes to these situations.

A Hawk’s Life: Ugh, poor Tobias! Again he is completely side-lined from the action in this book, especially the last half. He does some good work in the initial scouting of Erek, but can’t, obviously, do anything in their infiltration plan in the end.

Peace, Love, and Animals: Cassie seems to have come to her senses a bit with regards to the fact that Tobias is a hawk that *gasp* eats baby animals sometimes. In one scene she’s scoping out a baby possum nest and notes how cute they are, but admits that Tobias as a hawk has a right to eat them if he needed to…but they’re so cute! Effectively guilting him out of it. Still, a vast improvement over her ridiculous anger in the last book. She is also, of course, completely against the idea of re-writing the Chee’s programming so that they can fight. But it must be noted that when Marco essentially gives her an out on the mission to steal the crystal by saying that he understands if anyone wanted to not involve themselves, Cassie steps up to the plate and accepts the group’s choice (and more importantly, in my opinion, Erek’s and the Chee’s choice!).

E.T./Ax Phone Home: Turns out that not only can Ax keep track of time in his head, he also has an innate ability to tell direction, which I’m sure will come in useful in the future. As always, Ax’s deadpan humor and inability to discern sarcasm plays as a great foil to Marco. These two are really the most entertaining pair in the group, and it’s always great when they end up on missions together, like they did here as spiders.

Best (?) Body Horror Moment: We learn an important fact about morphing in this book that will come up again in a future book in a big way, if I remember correctly. But, with his usual perfect timing, as they are morphing spider, Ax informs Margo that when one morphs a smaller animal then themselves, their “extra mass” gets ballooned out into Z space. So….blobs of extra guts, and skin, and hair just bobbing around in space. Disgusting and also incredibly nerve-wracking as Marco notes the freakiness of the fact that these blogs could be hit by a passing space ship at any time. Ax is very reassuring about this concern, of course, noting that a ship would never “hit” a mass of excess morph material; it would be disintegrated by the ship’s shields immediately. Thanks Ax.

Couples Watch!: Not a lot in this book, other than my own developing Marco/Rachel/Tobias love triangle that exists nowhere but my own head. When describing the team members, Marco mentions Jake and Cassie’s quasi relationship saying:

“The only time they’ll act that way is when we’re about twelve seconds away from doing something insanely dangerous. Then they’ll kind of give each other these pathetic sad looks. It’s so lame.”

Also, at one point, when Marco and Cassie barely escape being killed by the furnace which suddenly turns on as they are crossing it, Jake becomes very concerned about Cassie, forgetting to ask about Marco’s well-being, much to Marco’s annoyance.

If Only Visser Three had Mustache to Twirl: Visser Three isn’t in this book! This is a first I think! Instead, we get some high-ranking “grandmotherly” human Controller leading the troops in the final battle. But, guess it makes sense. Though we never see him in action, it sounds like Erek was pretty much an unstoppable killing force when he saved the group and we can’t have him taking out Visser Three right here and ending the whole series!

Adult Ugly Crying at a Middle Grade Book: So, the scene between Marco and his Dad. It turns out that Marco’s Dad’s company is thinking about getting involved in developing some type of military technology. But Marco’s Dad tells him this story about how in the year before her death, his relationship with Marco’s Mom turned some type of corner and they had a blissful relationship. Never fighting, completely in love. And one night during this time he woke up to see Marco’s Mom sitting up in bed, clearly struggling with something. But all she says is “They won’t take you if you don’t become involved with the military.” And he never fully understood it, but it’s been enough for him to avoid military projects ever since.

Marco sees this story for what it really means. This “blissful” period of time is when his mother became infested. The Yeerk has no reason to involve itself in petting marital spats, preferring a simple home life to focus on its own work. And that night in bed between his Mom and Dad was his Mom’s massive fight against the Yeerk to gain enough control to give her husband that one warning to avoid the military to save him from becoming a Controller himself.

The whole thing is so tragic. His Dad’s false memories of this happy portion of their marriage. The real struggle, and likely high price that was paid, by his Mom to deliver the warning.

One last note on this, the book never really addresses this point again, that Marco’s Dad was considering getting involved with a military contract that would make him bait for the Yeerks. I guess we are left to assume that he decides to continue abiding my his wife’s warning, even if he doesn’t understand it.

What a Terrible Plan, Guys!: Marco notes how the original plan to infiltrate the Yeerk base to get the crystal was supposed to be a week away, giving them time to practice their bat morph and better prepare. But Erek discovers that the Yeerks are working to make the base even more well-protected, forcing the team to need to jump into action immediately. So, there’s some excuse (and self-awareness!) here about the lack of planning. However, turns out the bat morph is super easy to control, so practicing it wasn’t really necessary anyways. But the fact that they couldn’t carry the crystal out…that problem was always there, right in front of them, being ignored!

Favorite Quote:

Marco/Rachel banter is the best. And a big deal is made over the fact that Marco has cut his hair short in the beginning of this book (let’s be real, the model for Marco for the book covers cut his hair and the book needed to address it, for some reason).

“That’s what that hair of yours reminds me of: a wolverine. I knew it was something.” [Rachel said]

“Oh, yeah?” I shot back. “Well, how about your . . . your …”
“My what?” Rachel asked coolly, with the absolute confidence of a girl who never looked less than perfect.
“Your tallness,” I said lamely. “You’re . . . tall. Way tall.”

Somehow this brilliant comeback did not cause Rachel to break down in tears.

Scorecard: Yeerks 2, Animorphs 5

Even though the Chee don’t end up joining the war, escaping with the Pemalite crystal and preventing the Yeerks from creating some type of super computer that would control all computers is still a pretty big win, so a point to the Animorphs!

Rating: A solid Marco book! He’s my favorite narrator in the series, and even though he doesn’t have much of a personal arc in this story, we’re still introduced to the Chee who will play a role in future books, so this is an important installment in the series.

The Animorphs reread continues! This one introduces the Chee. They're cool, I guess? I liked the bit about the dogs, but I felt like thre Chee were a little dumb about things. I mean, just because you CAN fight, doesn't mean you HAVE to. And there are more ways to help than fighting. Plot hole, I guess.

The Animorphs encounter potential allies, the Chee, a race of nonviolent androids whose creators' spirits live on in dogs.

If the Animorphs can steal the technology, the Chee can rewrite their nonviolent programming and help fight the Yeerks. But at what cost?

Loss of innocence had me in tears.

Also, what I'd give to morph a dog and feel that ease and happiness. Must be nice.

This one gets brownie points for introducing the Chee and simultaneously managing to retcon the entire history of dogs and canines on Earth to make them even more tragic and loveable. Great read.

I think this is my favorite one so far