The Andalite Chronicles

The Andalite Chronicles 

Narrator: Elfangor  

Cover tagline: Before the Animorphs . . . there was Elfangor.  

Interior tagline: Now you’ll know the rest of the story. . . .  

“My name is…”: My name is Elfangor.  

Page count: 326  

Publication date: December 1997  

 

Publisher’s description: 

His name is Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul. An Andalite war-prince. The one who gave five young humans the ability to morph into any animal they touch. They are still out there, fighting an evil so powerful there isn’t a moment that goes by when they can actually feel safe. Their story continues. 

 

But this is how it all began. 

 

The story that came before Animorphs . . . 

 

* This is the only Animorphs book where the ANIMORPHS logo isn’t emblazoned in huge letters across the top of the cover. Useful trivia! 

 

* A cool (lol) thing about this series was the flipbook aspect, where there’d be a picture of an Animorph in the bottom right-hand corner of each page and by flipping through the pages you’d watch that Animorph turn into an animal. The flipbook images here are actually pretty cool, if kind of impossible to see completely because they start on the left-hand side of the page and move toward the right. There’s like a flying saucer and then some other alien ship and then the solar system and a ship being pulled into a black hole.  

 

Part 1 – Elfangor’s Journey 

 

* The prologue starts off: “My name is Elfangor. I am an Andalite prince. And I am about to die.” 

 

 * The prologue is a mishmash of strange terms and characters we will become intimately familiar with as the series progresses: Pool ship, Blade ship, Bug fighter, Yeerk, Aximili, Visser Three. 

 

* Elfangor has been badly injured, and he has landed his ship in a construction site on Earth looking for something called the Time Matrix (which a few sentences later he will call the Time ship, a term which will never be used again), but he is too weak now to find it, or to fight off the enemies who are coming to kill him. What he can do, however, is create his hirac delest, or final statement, which I guess basically involves him dumping all his memories into his ship’s computer so it can be broadcast to his people. The conceit here is that the book we’re about to read is in fact this hirac delest, but Elfangor’s going to be murdered in about two minutes so I don’t know how he managed to compose a three hundred-page novel in his head during that time. 

 

* The morphing power is first mentioned here, along with something about breaking his people’s laws, human kids, defending Earth from the Yeerks, someone named Loren, a boy, Elfangor having been to Earth before and spending years there yet never being there at all. 

 

* Basically just getting all your plot points on the board straightaway. All right. 

 

* Flashback to twenty-one years earlier. That puts us in 1975, Earth time, I think, supposing the series begins the same year in Animorphs time as it does in real time. 

 

* The Yeerks are loose. They’ve been spreading throughout the galaxy for five years, enslaving and destroying planets. Only the Andalites oppose them, but the Andalite fleet is spread too thin, and the Yeerks’ numbers are too great. The Andalites are losing the war, but young Elfangor, an aristh (which means cadet, according to two separate but identical explanations on the same page) on the Dome ship StarSword, believes that once he graduates his training program and becomes a full warrior, he’ll be able to turn the tide single-handedly. 

 

* Already I have a contention. Andalites communicate telepathically, but they don’t use actual words; they use thought-speak, which pretty much every species can understand, so it’s not like they have their own language. So when their thought-speech is transcribed into English on the page, where is the word aristh coming from? 

 

 * Thought-speak, by the way, is written <like this.>

 

* Elfangor loses a sparring match with his stereotypical combat instructor, a grizzled and wily war veteran named Sofor. This is what it sounds like: SWOOP! FWAPP! FWAPP! FWAPP! 

 

 * I wouldn’t bother mentioning this part, except that Sofor will be showing up in a later book. Sofor also boasts a scar under one eye that he received for mouthing off (figuratively speaking; Andalites don’t have mouths) to his own instructor. 

 

* Another aristh, Arbron, who Elfangor technically outranks via four days seniority, comes up and makes fun of Elfangor for having his ass handed to him: <Teach me to be as respectful as you, pleeeease.>

 

* Oh boy, another Animorphs comedian. 

 

* Then Elfangor and Arbron are called to the Dome ship’s battle bridge via a “direct-beamed thought-speak summons.” How does that work? 

 

* An amusing bit where Elfangor and Arbron start freaking out because they’re just a couple of kids and a Dome ship’s captain is like God. 

 

 * Elfangor describes the layout of an Andalite Dome ship: “A Dome ship is built with the dome at one end and then, far away, far back, there are the three huge engines. Zero-space engines, and you probably know how powerful those are.” Do I! Thanks, Elfangor! 

 

 * Here is a picture of a Dome ship. I have no idea where it comes from, other than the Internet. 

 

* We learn here that the Andalites are governed by a body called the Electorate, which regulates such things as how many children each family is allowed to have. The current limit is two (Elfangor will be getting a little brother in a few years), but if the war stretches on, that number may be raised to three or four. 

 

* On the bridge, the arisths meet Captain Feyorn, as well as his tactical officer and the commander of the ship’s fighter squadrons. The StarSword is in a solar system with a yellow sun orbited by nine planets. Oh, so it can’t be our solar system, then. A Skrit Na ship has just fled from the system’s third planet. The Skrit Na ship is pictured in the flip images at the bottom of the book. I don’t have a scan of it, but it’s basically just a classic flying saucer. 

 

* The Skrit Na are a race of smugglers who sometimes work for the Yeerks, and although there doesn’t really seem to be any reason to believe they’re doing so in this case, the Andalites have decided to fuck them up anyway. Captain Feyorn is a pretty likable dude, and there’s a legitimately funny bit where he light-heartedly mocks Elfangor and Arbron. 

 

* Elfangor describes the tactical officer as looking at the arisths like they were a piece of dung stuck to his hoof. This image will become even more disgusting in retrospect when we learn that Andalites actually eat through their hooves. 

 

 * While Feyorn pretends like he’s asking for their advice, really the only reason he called them to the battle bridge is because Skrit Na ships have notoriously low ceilings apparently, so he’s going to send over a couple of children to investigate. Why not. 

 

* Elfangor and Arbron join a group of fighters dispatched to intercept and board the Skrit Na ship. Here is a picture of an Andalite fighter to help your imagination. 

 

* Suddenly, a second Skrit Na ship appears! It was hidden in Saturn’s rings. While Elfangor pilots the fighter, Arbron mans the ship’s laserbeam-like weapon, called a shredder. He disables the Skrit Na ship, although I’m not sure which one. 

 

* Elfangor gives a brief explanation of the Skrit Na. The Skrit are basically just giant stupid cockroaches, but eventually they spin a cocoon and transform into a Na. The description the book gives makes it clear that the Na are supposed to be Greys. They fly around and randomly abduct people and perform experiments on them or put them in zoos. 

 

This is what the Skrit look like: 

 

* Elfangor and Arbron board the captured Skrit Na ship and find the Na captain held at gunpoint (or Dracon beam-point) by a human girl with blonde hair. She speaks English, but all members of the Andalite military have a translator chip implanted in their heads, so after a few sentences the arisths are able to understand her. How wonderfully convenient. 

 

* From Seerowpedia (the Animorphs wiki): “The Dracon beam of the low-budget TV show. The beams in the books are a lot less similar to flashlights.”

* Amazing dialogue alert:

 

<It fires an energy beam which causes an exceedingly painful death. Which is why we’d really prefer it if you didn’t fire it.>

 

“Oh. A phaser. Like on that old Star Trek show. I can’t believe they took that off the air. Now it’s just on reruns.”

 

What.

* Urged by Arbron to use his “charm,” Elfangor wins the girl’s trust by telling her that what the Skrit Na did to her was wrong, and if she’ll put the Dracon beam away he will return her to her home planet. She hands the weapon over to him, and as he takes it, their fingers brush. Oh yeahhhh, The Andalite Chronicles is getting good.

 

* Her name is Loren. She says she’s a kid, but who knows how the hell old that means she is. There’s also a second human on the ship, Hedrick Chapman. As his name would lead you to believe, he is a huge dick.

 

* Elfangor and Arbron take the humans back to the Dome ship and show them around the eponymous dome, which is basically a giant park a third of a mile long, filled with red and blue and pink trees and grass. This is where the Andalites come to graze; they have seventeen different species of grass in thirty different flavors, Elfangor says helpfully. Uh, Andalites don’t have a sense of taste. Why would Elfangor know or care how many flavors the grass comes in?

 

* Loren is likable enough, but some of her dialogue doesn’t really seem like anything any real kid would say, unless by “kid” you mean five-year-old.

* There’s a cute bit where Loren starts taking off her shoes to walk on the grass, and Elfangor and Arbron freak out because they think she’s ripping off her hooves. After she explains the concept of shoes, Elfangor is overwhelmed with pity and wonders what could have gone wrong in human evolution. He has a hilarious image of humans on Earth falling over all the time because they have only two legs and hobbling around on their crippled feet.

 

* Chapman explains that humans wear clothing to keep them warm in cold places, which isn’t really why humans wear clothing at all. He also says that his motto is “Grab what you can.” That’s my motto, too, but not in the way he means it.

* Having proven themselves competent their first time under fire, Elfangor and Arbron are assigned to Alloran-Semitur-Corrass for a secret mission! Except it turns out they’re just escorting the humans back to Earth and erasing their memories. Loren isn’t too happy about this, but Elfangor gently tells her that her species isn’t yet ready to know about all the things she’s seen. Except the Skrit Na apparently abduct people, fly around with them, and then let them go all the time. Are the Andalites like the Men in Black, running around the galaxy erasing the memories of anyone who’s seen an alien? Oh, wait, no, this is just a plot contrivance.

* Alloran is a notorious Andalite war-prince (is there a difference between a prince and a war-prince? The book never really makes this clear) who was disgraced for committing some long-ago crime. He doesn’t seem any happier to be here than the arisths are.

* Alien anatomy alert: Andalites have two hearts.

 

* The three Andalites are going to take Loren and Chapman back to Earth in Alloran’s ship, the Jahar (named after Alloran’s wife, which is actually kind of sweet. See? It’s little touches like that that make these characters), and rejoin the StarSword whenever they’re done. Elfangor explains to the humans (and the reader) how faster-than-light travel works in the Animorphs universe. Since traveling FTL is, of course, impossible, spaceships don’t actually do it. Instead, they tunnel into anti-space, or Zero-space, or Z-space, then cross back into the normal universe at a different point. This is very imprecise, however, so once the Jahar exits Z-space the Andalites will still have a journey of several days of slower-than-light travel before they reach Earth.

* Also Elfangor says he wants to fuck Alloran’s ship.

* Chapman asks if the Andalites ever share their technology with other races, to which Alloran responds that they did only once, and the result was the Yeerk Empire. Interesting.

* Arbron is an exo-datologist, which I guess means he’s a computer nerd, and he asks if he can use the ship’s computer during their journey to examine the data he downloaded from the Skrit Na ship. Alloran mocks him mercilessly for this, which is awesome.

* Loren asks Elfangor about his parents, which sort of embarrasses him because he doesn’t want to get homesick in the middle of a mission. Realistic dialogue alert: <I guess maybe they do worry I’ll get hurt or whatever.> See, he’s just a kid.

* Loren then tells Elfangor that there was recently a war on Earth that her father fought in. He survived, but after returning home he just couldn’t cope, so he abandoned his family. Because he is a stereotypical douchebag, Chapman immediately makes fun of her father’s post-traumatic stress and her broken home: “So, Loren, Daddy went nutso, huh? Another whacked-out ’Nam vet? I guess some guys can’t take it.”

* In a display of actual character depth, Alloran shuts him down for this, then tells Loren that <Even those who return from war may never really come home.>

* Elfangor and Loren have a brief conversation about humor and Elfangor’s lack of it, which concludes with Loren telling him, “I like serious guys.” Oh man.

* Elfangor really has a hard-on for Loren’s blonde hair. He’s talked about it like five times already. Could the author be trying to build some romantic tension between these two?

* Chapman asks Elfangor if he’s considered how much money he could make by selling Andalite technology to humans. Together, they could rule the world! Elfangor points out that Andalites have no need of Earth money and no interest in ruling other species. I point out that Chapman is a terrible character.

* Suddenly, Arbron starts flipping out. Elfangor and Alloran rush over to him at the computer and see what he’s discovered in the Skrit Na data: “a power field, lines of intensity in three dimensions. But it also showed lines extending strongly into Zero-space.” The object giving off these readings is a white sphere.

* The Skrit Na ship that escaped the StarSword’s fighters was carrying this object, an indestructible weapon called the Time Matrix that disappeared fifty thousand years ago. Apparently it had been buried beneath a pyramid on Earth, where the Skrit Na dug it up.

* The whole end of this chapter is very exciting. <The Time Matrix!> Alloran exclaims, coming to life for the first time since the arisths met him. <Hidden for fifty thousand years, and now dug up by the Skrit Na. The deadliest weapon in all of galactic history . . . and no one but us to go and get it back.> It’s like the plot of a Nicolas Cage movie!

* <I guess we may still get a chance at being heroes,> Arbron tells Elfangor.

* Further examination of the data tells them the Skrit Na ship was headed for the Taxxon home world. Although this planet is controlled by the Yeerks, the Andalites reason that the Skrit Na wouldn’t be taking the Time Matrix there if they knew what it was, so there is still time to find the ship before someone realizes what it contains.

* The Andalites explain to the humans that the Time Matrix can move you forward or backward in time, which makes it the most dangerous weapon ever created because you can use it to change the past. Oh great. Time travel.

* Foreshadowing alert: “Maybe I’m with the wrong aliens,” Chapman sneered. “Maybe it’s too bad I wasn’t grabbed by the Yeerks. They sound like the winners.”

* Oh no I wonder what is going to Chapman is evil.

* Although he is terrified of going to the Taxxon world, because it is apparently pretty much just hell, Elfangor tells Alloran that he and Arbron are ready to grow up and act as his warriors, and they are not afraid. There’s a nice little character moment where Arbron and Elfangor look at each other and Elfangor can tell that Arbron knows he’s lying.

* Although the Jahar is cloaked, it won’t be able to land on the Taxxon homeworld undetected, so the Andalites waylay a Yeerk transport ship as it enters the system. Arbron damages the ship’s engines with another impeccably aimed shot and the Andalites board and shoot their way through the Taxxon crew, phasers on stun. Elfangor’s internal monologue tells us that the Andalites are using handheld beam weapons, which are also called shredders and have six power levels, ranging from a mild shock to a blast powerful enough to knock a hole through “ten feet of solid alloy.”

* The Taxxons are a cannibalistic species of giant carnivorous worms. Even the Yeerks in their heads can’t fight the Taxxons’ overpowering hunger, so as the three Andalites corner the last of the Taxxon-Controllers, the Taxxons can’t help but bend down and start eating their dead brothers. (In case you missed the subtext, Yeerks are parasitic slugs that wrap around the brain of a host and then control that creature’s body. I’m not sure if this is ever explicitly stated in this book, which is weird, because it sure as hell is in every other book.)

* I’m trying to be brief but I’m not really doing the concept of the Taxxons justice here. They really are a brilliantly horrifying invention; an entire sentient species traded its freedom for a constant supply of fresh meat, because they are just so constantly, ravenously hungry.

* Btw, when were any Taxxons killed? Elfangor cut one’s arm off, but he was fine. Other than that they were just stunning them all.

* Oh well, it doesn’t matter because then four Hork-Bajir-Controllers show up! Since their shredders are blowing up the inside of the ship, the Andalites have to fight them tail-to-blade.

* <Well, well,> Alloran says, <it’s been a while since I fought a Hork-Bajir.> Alloran is awesome.

* Elfangor lets Sofor’s training take over. He moves without conscious thought, striking and striking with his tail blade until the decks run with Hork-Bajir blood, saving Arbron and Alloran when they’re outmatched, until “[w]ounded Hork-Bajir, and worse than wounded, were lying in Taxxon gore on the deck.” “Arbron was staring at me like he’d seen a ghost. Alloran was nodding grimly, as if he recognized something about me.” Jesus Christ.

* Horrified by what he’s done, Elfangor runs back to the Jahar, where he falls to his knees and into Loren’s arms.

* Alloran, again showing that he is the most nuanced character in this book, is all business at first, then softens a bit as he sees how shaken up the two arisths are; they are, after all, children who have just killed for the first time. He tells them that they fought well, that the first time is always hard, and it never gets easy, but they still have a job to do and he needs them, and the arisths, of course, respond.

* Loren tells Elfangor she’s afraid of being left alone on the Jahar with Chapman because he’ll assault her or something, so Elfangor gives her a shredder and tells the ship’s computer not to let him access the controls.

* The three Andalites take the Yeerk ship and head down to the Taxxon world. On the way, they acquire the surviving Taxxons, meaning they absorb their DNA, which allows them to shapeshift into Taxxons. They also find dozens of tanks in the ship’s hold containing over nine thousand Yeerks in their natural slug state. They were being transported to the Taxxon world to receive Taxxon host bodies, and Alloran intends to see that they never get them.

* He orders the arisths to flush the Yeerks into space, but Elfangor protests because they are helpless prisoners. Alloran scoffs at his squeamishness, telling him that he has no understanding of what war is really about. It’s not about being noble and playing hero, it’s about killing your enemy so you can stay alive. Elfangor refuses to comply, and Alloran threatens to execute him on the spot for disobeying orders. Arbron comes to the rescue by suggesting that dumping so many living creatures into space so close to the planet could alert the Yeerks’ scanners, so Alloran agrees to postpone his war crime for the moment.

* They morph into Taxxons, which is a pretty horrifying experience; the Taxxon’s hunger is so powerful that Elfangor wants to eat his own fellow Andalites.

* They land the captured ship in a spaceport on the planet and disembark, walking unnoticed among their enemies. Suddenly, a Taxxon falls off an overhead train track and explodes on the ground, spurring a feeding frenzy. Elfangor loses his comrades in the rush, and he almost takes a bite of the still-living Taxxon himself, resisting his morph’s insatiable appetite only by exerting all his willpower. Unfortunately, in doing so he attracts the attention of the primary antagonist of the Animorphs series, dressed at this point in the timeline in the face of a Hork-Bajir and the rank of sub-visser.

* “Welcome to the Taxxon home world. I am Sub-Visser Seven. You interest me. Yes, indeed. I am very interested in any Taxxon who will not eat fresh meat.”

* Ruh-roh.

* We get a brief description here of the hierarchy of the Yeerk Empire. At the top is the Council of Thirteen, one of whom is the Yeerk emperor although, to prevent assassination, nobody knows which one. Presumably this does not include the Yeerk emperor himself, although it would be awesome if it did. Below the council are the vissers. There are about forty of them, and Elfangor describes them as being basically generals. Under them are sub-vissers, who are like colonels.

* Elfangor is ushered into a mag-lev train car by the sub-visser’s guards and taken to the spaceport’s Taxxon hive. Sub-Visser Seven, who is head of security for the sector, fucks with him the whole time, suggesting alternately that he’s an Andalite in morph or a renegade mountain Taxxon. He knows what Elfangor really is, however, and explains that he’ll spare the Andalite’s life if Elfangor will become his host. Sub-Visser Seven dreams of becoming the very first Andalite-Controller.

* A strange feeling comes over Elfangor, and he somehow intuitively knows that he’s not going to die here, and that in Sub-Visser Seven he has met his one great personal enemy.

* <My name is Elfangor, Yeerk,> he tells the sub-visser, pretending he’s a badass. <Remember the name. You’ll be hearing it again. But you will never take me alive.>

* Sub-Visser Seven responds by throwing him out of the train into a pit of wild Taxxons.

* Um, couldn’t Sub-Visser Seven have just forcibly taken over Elfangor’s body? Just take him to a secure location so he can’t fight back and the sub-visser’s Hork-Bajir host can’t make trouble once it’s free. I don’t see any reason why this wouldn’t have worked.

* Elfangor hits the ground and his guts explode and dozens of Taxxons swarm over and start eating him alive. Yeah.

* Fortunately, he manages to demorph and starts hacking up Taxxons with his tail. The Hork-Bajir guards start shooting at him from the train, so Elfangor hides by diving into the pile of Taxxons eating wounded Taxxons. The Hork-Bajir wade into the feeding frenzy after him, but Elfangor morphs into a small, twelve-winged kafit bird, although I don’t know how small this bird can be with twelve goddamn wings. Many young Andalites acquire this animal when they are being trained to use the morphing power, Elfangor explains: “I have heard that some planets have many types of bird. But since we only have three, and since the kafit is the best species of the three, it’s popular with young cadets looking for fun.”

* The kafit is the best species of the three. What does that even anyway Elfangor flies away. Sub-Visser Seven screams at his soldiers to shoot him, which prompts this brilliant exchange:

 

“But the Taxxons may be hit!” one of the Hork-Bajir protested.

 

“I really don’t care, shoot! Shoot! Kill it! SHOOOOOT!” 

 

* First of all, these Hork-Bajir must be worse shots than stormtroopers if they’re afraid of hitting Taxxons on the ground while aiming at a bird in the sky. I’m not being sarcastic, though, I think this exchange is really hilarious. To its detriment, the prose in Animorphs tends to be pretty uncomplicated, and I’m not saying this is some masterwork of literature or anything, but it shows how even something as simple as a strategically placed comma splice can elevate this otherwise banal prose to a more enjoyable level.

* Elfangor escapes and is flying around the spaceport when he sees the Jahar coming in for a landing. <Oh, shit,> says Elfangor.

* Nah, just kidding.

* Sub-Visser Seven’s train shows up at the landing zone, running over two monkey-like Gedd-Controllers in the process. The door of the ship opens, and out steps… Chapman! Which is surprising.

* To no one.

* Chapman, using rudimentary sign language, communicates that he wants to trade with the Yeerks. It’s more parallelism than foreshadowing, but I find this scene eerily cool because in exactly two books we will see another confrontation between the Yeerk now called Sub-Visser Seven and the man Chapman will become, only it will be ironically, tragically different from this one.

* Chapman pulls a tied-up Loren out of the ship and throws her before the sub-visser. “That’s what I have to trade,” he says. “A whole planet full of . . . that.”

* A planet full of tied-up teenage girls? Nobody tell Roman Polanski.

* If you’re wondering how Chapman, a human teenager who probably doesn’t even know how to drive a car, figured out how to pilot and land an alien spacecraft whose computer had been instructed not to respond to his commands, stop, because it will never be explained.

Part 2 – Alloran’s Choice

* Apparently The Andalite Chronicles was originally published as three separate books, each bearing the title of one of this book’s three sections. Fuck you, Scholastic marketing department.

* I also have no idea what the title of this section is referring to, because Alloran makes no significant choices in it.

* So because “Alloran’s Choice” used to be a separate book from “Elfangor’s Journey,” it opens with a needless recap of what’s happening in the plot. The only new information immediately presented is that more than two hours have passed since the three Andalites originally morphed their Taxxon forms (we’re told that two hours is the time limit for staying in a morph, but given no indication of what that means). I really didn’t have the sense that they’d been on the planet that long; they morphed, landed, got caught in the feeding frenzy almost immediately, then Elfangor got captured and taken to the Taxxon hive, where he demorphed, flew away, and saw the Jahar landing. That must have been a pretty long train ride.

* Elfangor also describes the appearance, habits, and life cycle of the Skrit Na again, using almost the exact same words and phrasing he did the first time. This is, of course, completely pointless, because the Skrit Na play no significant role in the rest of the book.

* Three and a half pages into this section, the story finally starts up again. Elfangor decides that everything comes down to the Time Matrix. He sends a private thought-speak message to Loren, telling her to stay alive, no matter what occurs. No matter how long it takes, no matter how far, he will find her.

* Elfangor flies to the parked Skrit Na ship and demorphs beneath the ship’s cradle, which is filled with shit, literally. He starts to reassume his Taxxon morph when another Taxxon appears nearby. It’s Arbron! Although they’re not exactly friends, Elfangor is relieved to have at least found one of his companions. Arbron’s acting a little strangely, but Elfangor just chalks it up to nerves. They have more important things to worry about, because now, it’s <hero time.>

* Arbron and Elfangor bluff their way past the Gedd-Controllers guarding (?) the ship, telling them that they’re there to do computer repair. Once inside the ship, they lock the door and power up the engines, sending the Gedd-Controllers scattering so they’re not killed by the radiation collecting in the ship’s cradle. As Elfangor does this, he notices that Arbron is still in his Taxxon morph.

* Elfangor realizes what happened, but he still begs Arbron to demorph. <I really wish I could, Elfangor,> Arbron says. <I really wish I could.>

* With Arbron trapped in Taxxon morph, the two arisths hightail it out of the Yeerk spaceport. Unfortunately, their stolen Skrit Na ship is tragically slow, and they are soon pursued by four Yeerk Bug fighters, so called because they look like bugs, I guess.

* They’re armed with twin Penetrator-Class Dracon beams, in case you were wondering. Animorphs isn’t even close to hard sci-fi, but I love when it pretends to be.

* The Andalites lead the Bug fighters in a chase across the planet at three thousand miles an hour, leaving a trail of sonic booms and burning foliage in their wake. Bug fighters are designed to function best in the vacuum of space, so the Andalites’ atmospheric craft has something of an advantage in this chase, and eventually one of the Bug fighters simply burns up from the friction.

* <Three thousand two hundred miles per hour,> Arbron reported. <Three point three K. Three point four K. Hull temperature is . . . you don’t even want to know.>

* This chase scene is actually really good and exciting. Elfangor and Arbron make a pretty entertaining team; I wish there was more time in the book spent with just the two of them. Anyone want to direct me to some Elfangor/Arbron slash?

* The Skrit Na ship finally can’t handle the stress and heat any longer and Arbron proposes they open fire. There’s a typical <No one can make that shot!>/<I can.> scene, but it’s not bad or anything. The Andalites halve their speed and Arbron fires three times as the Bug fighters shoot past them, his Taxxon legs absorbing the deceleration tremors while Elfangor goes flying. All three fighters explode; Arbron finally has his hero moment.

* Elfangor wants to go back to the spaceport to find Alloran and rescue the humans but Arbron wants to use the Time Matrix to reverse time and escape from his Taxxon morph. Elfangor argues that using the Time Matrix would light up every Yeerk sensor on the planet and they have no idea how to use it or how long it will take to work. Arbron has reached the limit of his endurance, however, and he attacks Elfangor, screaming at him to make the hunger stop and <You fool, don’t you know I could eat you right now?>, so Elfangor cuts off his legs. Um, ouch.

* That line looks fairly silly out of context but it’s actually pretty horrifying. Again, the whole Taxxon hunger thing is just a chilling concept. I remember reading somewhere that K.A. Applegate had at one point planned to write The Taxxon Chronicles but ultimately ended up scrapping it, and I’ve always been pissed about that.

* The arisths do a whole lot of terrified screaming at one another, during which Arbron confesses that he ate from the wounded Taxxon at the spaceport. Elfangor finds a handheld Dracon beam and prepares to stun his friend, but Arbron reminds him that the power settings on Yeerk weapons are inverted, so Elfangor has in fact set the weapon to maximum power. Arbron then scuttles toward Elfangor on his remaining legs. Elfangor, idiot that he is, quickly reverses the Dracon beam’s setting and fires, realizing too late that Arbron has tricked him into setting the weapon to maximum. Elfangor misses Arbron, though, and instead blows a hole in the side of the ship, which then crashes.

* Elfangor regains consciousness beside the wreckage of the Skrit Na ship. One of his eyes was blinded in the crash, but he touches it and finds that it’s only covered in mud. What a relief.

* Arbron is nowhere in sight. Elfangor searches for him in the hold of the ship, but finds only stolen artifacts from Earth, such as magazines with beautiful pictures of humans enjoying nature while putting white cylinders in their mouths, and a yellow Mustang convertible.

* Spying multiple sets of Taxxon tracks on the ground, Elfangor realizes that Arbron has been taken by Taxxons, but the fact that he and the Time Matrix were left behind indicates that they were the Mountain Taxxons Sub-Visser Seven mentioned, not Taxxon-Controllers.

* Elfangor decides that he has to find Alloran and tell him about Arbron and the Time Matrix. He is hundreds of miles from the spaceport, however, so he does the only thing he can, and the result is the coolest scene in Animorphs history.

* Elfangor drives the Mustang back toward the spaceport while drinking Dr. Pepper out of a pan and listening to the Rolling Stones.

* Okay, that’s amazing. I wish I could just stop reading here and give Animorphs an A for the semester, but I still have sixty-one and a half books to go.

* Suddenly, with no warning other than a FFFFWWWUUUMMPPP! BOOM! BOOM! RUMBLERUMBLERUMBLE! the ground opens up beneath the Mustang and Elfangor is funneled into an underground cavern. I imagine this scene playing out like the intro to the ’90s version of Land of the Lost.

 

* In the center of the cavern is a small mountain giving off a faint red glow. Several tendrils extend from the mountain into the rock, each of which is about the size of a Taxxon.  

* Arbron comes scuttling up to Elfangor, his severed legs already regrowing, because Taxxons, fortunately, can regenerate legs. The mountain, he explains, is the Living Hive, a sentient organism that is “Mother and Father of the Taxxons.” Of course, what this means is never really explained. Again, Taxxon Chronicles. Come on, K.A. Applegate. You wrote two Megamorphs books whose entire plots were entirely undone by the end of them, but canceled something with the potential to be both entertaining and relevant.

* The Living Hive is angry that so many of its children have betrayed it and allied with the Yeerks. Upon learning what Arbron was, it brought him to it to serve as his adviser. And although he can’t have been advising it for more than a few hours, the Living Hive is already preparing an assault on the spaceport. Its tendrils, which are actually pressurized tunnels, extend for thousands of miles around the planet. Thousands of Taxxons will pop up from the ground, led by Arbron, and catch the Yeerks off guard. Arbron knows that they will lose, but <even a Taxxon has the right to control its own planet. Even a Taxxon has the right to resist an invader.>

* I think there’s something fairly profound there, but it’s wrapped up in so much goofiness I’m not going to bother looking for it.

* <Don’t pity me, Elfangor. I am glad I didn’t die. Any life is better than none. And no matter how awful things seem, there is always meaning and purpose to be found.>

* Okay, so that actually is kind of legitimately sad.

* The Taxxons spend the rest of the afternoon preparing for the assault. Arbron cautions Elfangor that the spaceport will be “hell,” an expression I wasn’t expecting to find in a kids’ book. He won’t be able to tell the difference between Mountain Taxxons and Taxxon-Controllers, but he can’t let anything get in his way. Elfangor’s role in the Living Hive’s plan is to recapture the Jahar and use it to secure the Time Matrix; the Living Hive, of course, is just as vulnerable to that weapon as any other living creature is.

* Arbron tells Elfangor not to tell his parents what happened to him, to tell them instead that he was killed in battle. The attack begins shortly afterward.

* Elfangor rides his Mustang down one of the Living Hive’s tendrils at two hundred miles an hour, emerging in the midst of the battle. He drives over Taxxons and Hork-Bajir, making his way toward the Jahar’s cradle. Loren and Chapman are standing at the top near the ship; Arbron is the only thing standing between them and an advancing mob of Taxxons, free and Controller alike, driven insane by the massive blood orgy. Arbron screams at Elfangor to stop him, “[a]nd with that, Arbron, aristh of the Dome ship StarSword, lost his last shred of control. He turned from facing down the Taxxon mob. He turned and ran for the humans, mouth gaping open.”

* That’s a chapter break, and with a sendoff like that, I fully expected the next chapter to begin with Elfangor tragically having to kill Arbron to save Loren, but no, instead Elfangor just shouts at him that Arbron’s an aristh and he’ll do his duty, and that makes him stop for some reason.

* Then Sub-Visser Seven shows up. He offers Elfangor his life in exchange for surrender and enslavement, and Arbron and Elfangor tell the Yeerk to go to hell.

* LOL prose alert: 

 

<You heard my friend, Sub-Visser Seven,> I said. <You want me? Come and get me.>  

 

In the great stories and legends, that kind of speech always scares the bad guys. In real life it doesn’t work that way.  

 

“Okay,” Sub-Visser Seven said. “I will come get you. Cut him down! Cut him down!”

* Elfangor and Arbron face off against the sub-visser’s Hork-Bajir guards but Elfangor is overmatched and Arbron is ineffectual. Suddenly, a new Hork-Bajir appears and puts a wrist blade to the sub-visser’s throat. <So, how are you enjoying the war, Aristh Elfangor?> says War-prince Alloran.

* :)

 

* Elfangor, Loren, Chapman, and Alloran, holding the Hork-Bajir-Controller hostage, back slowly into the Jahar. The Yeerk says something about Andalite kindness and gentleness, and Alloran tells him who he is, which promptly shuts him up. Elfangor begs Arbron to come with them, but Arbron declines, telling Elfangor to go save the galaxy. <Leave him,> Alloran says. < Aristh . . . I mean, Warrior Arbron is a casualty of war.> Aww, that’s nice.

* All I know about Andalite ranking hierarchy is that it goes, in ascending order, aristh → warrior → prince. I’m not sure where the other ranks we’ve seen, like captain, war-prince, and tactical officer, fit in, if they even do.

* Aboard the Jahar, Elfangor asks Alloran for his orders, for which Alloran mocks him. Elfangor starts to remind him of the Time Matrix, and Alloran tells him to shut up, because first they’re going to destroy that transport full of Yeerks that Elfangor refused orders to flush earlier. For the last day and a half, Alloran has been watching that ship, which seems kind of insane when the most powerful weapon in the galaxy is lost on one of the most evil planets in the galaxy. Elfangor starts to say just that, to which Alloran responds that the most important thing in war is destroying your enemies. To illustrate, he throws Sub-Visser Seven out of the ship, which is now fifteen thousand feet above the ground.

* At first Elfangor thinks the Yeerk is going to put up a fight, but out of the corner of his eye he thinks he sees Chapman give an almost imperceptible shake of his head, and then the Hork-Bajir-Controller is falling to his death.

* They return to the spaceport and Alloran locks the Jahar’s weapons on the Yeerk transport ship, then orders Elfangor to fire. Again he refuses to kill a defenseless enemy, and Alloran goes into a huge rant about Andalite hypocrisy and cowardice and how he was disgraced for using a quantum virus on the Hork-Bajir world. A quantum virus is a disease that breaks down an organism’s molecules over a period of agonizing weeks. Ouch.

* Elfangor’s inner monologue tells us that the Yeerks had accused the Andalites of using such a weapon against them, but the Andalites of course had denied it. I’m trying to picture where the Yeerks would have made this accusation. Is there like a galactic war crimes tribunal?

* All of a sudden Chapman punches Alloran in the side of the head. Using this distraction, Elfangor hits his prince in the temple with the flat of his tail blade, knocking him cold.

* Elfangor, still freaking out over having just committed mutiny, lands the Jahar near the wreckage of the Skrit Na ship and steps out to secure the Time Matrix. As he does this, he contemplates how lucky their escape from the spaceport was and how lucky it was that the humans just happened to be waiting there for him. This section is actually kind of ingeniously written, as at no point are we told what it is that Elfangor has realized. Despite the first-person narration, we are temporarily removed from Elfangor’s thought process; all we know is that he has realized something, and that when he steps back out from behind the Time Matrix, he will have to duplicate Arbron’s earlier feat of three quick, precise shots. He sets his shredder to stun and leaps

* Loren and Chapman are waiting for him, Dracon beams leveled. He stuns Loren first. Chapman gets off a shot and misses, then Elfangor stuns him too. His third shot hits the Dracon beam-wielding arm of Alloran-Semitur-Corrass, “[b]ut not really Alloran anymore.” <Very good, Aristh Elfangor,> says Sub-Visser Seven—the real Sub-Visser Seven, who had been inside Chapman’s head while his decoy was falling to his death. <It took you a while, but you figured it out in the end.>

* There’s a moment here where Sub-Visser Seven thanks Elfangor for knocking out Alloran for him, because this not only allowed him to make the Andalite his host but also saved him from revealing himself as Chapman too early. If Elfangor had attempted to destroy the thousands of Yeerks on the transport ship, the sub-visser would have had to try to stop him, even though he knew Elfangor and Alloran would have killed him. I only mention this because Sub-Visser Seven’s choice in this instance will contrast interestingly with the decision he will make in a very similar situation several books hence.

* Elfangor threatens to kill the first and only Andalite-Controller, the “abomination,” but Sub-Visser Seven just laughs at him, having just seen that Elfangor would never kill an unarmed foe. He then spreads his hands in a mocking gesture of helplessness, even though Elfangor just paralyzed his right arm. Elfangor stuns him, then drags the two humans aboard the Jahar and is just starting to drag the Andalite-Controller aboard as well when the Bug fighters show up. Realizing that their only hope of escape is to leave Sub-Visser Seven/Alloran behind, alive, Elfangor does so, then lifts off in the Jahar. He bluffs his way past the Bug fighters, claiming that he is Sub-Visser Seven and directing the fighters to chase after the Andalite on the ground. As he does this, he uses a tractor beam to pull the Time Matrix to the Jahar, then lashes it to the ship with energy ropes, which is a term I hoped never to see in any science fiction franchise. Also, how did he do that from inside the ship?

* When the Jahar heads for space, the Yeerks realize they’ve been tricked, but by then it’s too late and Elfangor escapes to Zero-space.

* We catch up with Elfangor and Loren a day or so later. The Yeerk controlling her had been at the end of its feeding cycle—every three days a Yeerk must leave its host body to soak up Kandrona rays or it will starve to death, a fact mentioned off-handedly here that will be crucial later on—so it agreed to free Loren in exchange for being frozen by Elfangor, which presumably means put into some kind of hibernation trance, not like frozen in an ice cube. Elfangor follows through on his end of the bargain, then ejects the frozen Yeerk into space near a star, where it will probably be incinerated. And despite my previous sentence, every time I picture this scene I see that doomed Yeerk floating through space in a block of ice.

* Elfangor is down on himself because Alloran’s capture will prove to be the greatest Yeerk intelligence victory in the war. They now know everything Alloran does about Andalite defenses, weapons, and fleet deployments. Chapman encourages Elfangor to use the Time Matrix to fix this mess, but Elfangor knows Chapman only wants him to return to real space so the transponder Sub-Visser Seven must have placed aboard the ship will tell the Yeerks where they are. Two things: 1) Why do they have to return to real space to use the Time Matrix? There’s no explanation, it’s just accepted as a given. 2) Why is Chapman evil? He just is, I guess.

* Elfangor decides to use the transponder to lure the Yeerk forces into a trap. The StarSword was supposed to rendezvous with a second Dome ship at the Graysha nebula to search for a Yeerk task force. Elfangor figures that two Dome ships plus the Jahar will be powerful enough to deal with anything the Yeerks send after them. He’s right, but I don’t know why. This is the fucking Time Matrix we’re talking about here, after all. You’d think the Yeerks could spare more than two ships.

* Loren and Elfangor tie up Chapman to keep him out of the way. Loren tells Elfangor that although she’d be tempted to use the Time Matrix to go back and change the past, she wouldn’t want to undo meeting him. Elfangor tells her about the pictures he saw in the magazine of grass and tall trees and bubbling streams and Loren says that she and her father once went to a place called Yosemite that was like that. Elfangor asks if they stuck small white cylinders in their mouths while marveling at the beauty of it all, and Loren laughs and tells him that cigarettes are actually really bad for you and make you sick. Elfangor wonders why people use them, then. Hmmm…

* <FUTURE PLOT POINT ALERT> Elfangor tells Loren that he doesn’t want to use the Time Matrix because he is afraid of pissing off the Ellimists, a mythical race of all-powerful beings who occasionally interfere with the affairs of lesser species.  

 

* Supposedly the Ellimists built the Time Matrix thousands of years ago, then vanished, possibly because they used the Time Matrix. Now they only appear in fairytales Andalites tell to their children. If the Ellimists are real, they exist in spatial dimensions beyond the three accessible to humans and Andalites, and Elfangor goes into the whole spiel about space-time dimensions and imagine you were a drawing on a piece of paper.

 

* As they revert to normal space, Elfangor asks Loren if, supposing they survive their adventure and get back to Earth somehow, the two of them can go to Yosemite and drive a Mustang. Loren puts her arms around him and agrees, on the condition that there are no white cylinders. Awwwww...

* Why didn’t I see any Andalite costumes at Anthrocon?

 

* Good news and bad news. The good news: the Jahar finds the StarSword in the nebula with little difficulty. The bad news: it and its fighter complement are under attack by living asteroids. Wait what.

* There’s a grisly image as one of the asteroids extends arms of rock and crushes the atmosphere from a fighter, hurling the Andalite inside into space, where he kicks his hooves for a few seconds then goes still. The Andalites’ shredders seem incapable of harming the asteroids; in fact, as Loren points out, the asteroids seem drawn by the weaponsfire.

* Suddenly, two Yeerk ships emerge from Zero-space: a Pool ship and a Blade ship. Blade ships are the personal craft of Yeerk vissers.

* Somehow, Elfangor knows that Sub-Visser Seven is on the Blade ship (“Don’t ask me how I knew. I don’t believe in psychic things, although some Andalites do,” he assures the reader.)

* The Yeerks hail Jahar and Elfangor quickly formulates a plan with Loren, then accepts the message. Alloran’s face appears on the screen, but it shines “an evil I cannot describe.” This aura of evil will be brought up again in later books, but I’m wondering why Elfangor didn’t notice it when this Yeerk was in his Hork-Bajir body. Does controlling an Andalite somehow make him more evil than controlling any other sentient alien?

* Sub-Visser Seven informs his nemesis that he has been promoted to Visser Thirty-Two, and that he’s here to take the Time Matrix. Loren, acting as if she’s still be under Yeerk control, pretends to stun Elfangor with a shredder, and Elfangor collapses onto the instrument panel as if stunned, turning off the communication the process.

* The Blade ship approaches rapidly, believing that all resistance aboard the Jahar has been quelled. <Come to me, Visser whatever-your-number-is-now. Come to me,> Elfangor mutters to himself.

* Elfangor aims the Jahar’s shredders at the underside of the Blade ship. I guess the Yeerks just don’t notice this for some reason. Suddenly, Chapman, who has freed himself somehow, attacks, knocking Loren down and taking her shredder. He fires, paralyzing Elfangor’s left arm and foreleg. “Oh, I have so had it with you!” Loren shouts, still lying on the floor, and kicks Chapman in the balls.

* No, seriously.

* “I believe the kick was painful to him,” Elfangor observes.

* Loren follows this up by jump-kicking Chapman in the face.

* What is even happening anymore.

* “Who’s side are you on?” Chapman wonders, failing to realize two things: 1) that he has used the contraction of “who is” instead of the possessive form of “who,” and 2) that he has absolutely no reason to think Loren would be on his side, especially since every single one of her previous actions in this book have indicated that she’s not.

* Then Loren stuns Chapman or something, and the Yeerks start coming through the hatch. Loren shoots a Hork-Bajir, then Visser Thirty-Two sticks his arm into the ship, apparently aiming blind from around the falling Hork-Bajir, and stuns Loren. She falls into the partially paralyzed Elfangor, and they both drop to the deck. Elfangor swings his tail at the console and hits a button, firing the Jahar’s shredders into the belly of the Blade ship at point-blank range. <Noooooo!> comments Visser Thirty-Two.

* The Blade ship tears away from the Jahar, one of its axe-shaped engines blown off. The Jahar is now open to vacuum, and the stunned Hork-Bajir-Controller is immediately blown out into space. Because he is a named character, Chapman is not blown into space, but instead slides slowly toward the hatch. Because he is the primary antagonist of the series, Visser Thirty-Two is knocked to the floor and somehow just lies there. I like to picture him holding onto a rung or something with one hand and pointing his Dracon beam over his head as he utters the following brilliant villainous one-liner, even though the book doesn’t describe him as doing so: <You’re a real source of agitation, Elfangor. Now, die!>

* Suddenly, one of the asteroids hits the Jahar, causing the visser’s shot to go wide. Living rock begins to crawl over the windows as the asteroid envelops the ship, eating it, and Elfangor’s lungs scream for air as his brain begins to suffocate and he thinks of all the terrible things he’s seen and how he lost Arbron and Alloran and maybe he should just sink into the blackness and let it all end…

Part 3 – An Alien Dies

* When last we saw our intrepid heroes, they were trapped in an airless ship spinning out of control through a nebula, half-eaten by a living asteroid. We rejoin them now as they are drawn inexorably into the black hole.

* Wait. What?

* So, yeah, with no explanation, the asteroid that had half eaten the Jahar is gone, and instead the ship is falling into a black hole that is busy sucking fire from a star. There’s no mention of the Graysha nebula either, so I’m not sure if they’re still supposed to be in it or what. Do black holes ever form in nebulae? Thinking back to freshman astronomy, I’m going to say no, because black holes form from collapsed red supergiants, right? And those are really old stars, whereas nebulae are like incubators for brand new stars. But maybe it could happen.

* Doesn’t explain what happened to the asteroids, though. And it’s not like we’re just supposed to forget about them. They’re mentioned multiple times in the next two or three chapters. They’re just… gone, somehow. No mention of the StarSword or the Pool ship, either. Oh well.

* Elfangor’s about to just give up and succumb to unconsciousness when he sees Loren floating past, and this gives him the strength to try to save them. He pushes himself toward the emergency oxygen button, but he misses it and they all suffocate in space.

* Wait, not that. Instead, Loren regains consciousness somehow and pushes Elfangor back toward the panel. He turns a knob and the ship fills with air again. Elfangor’s all like “Let’s go tail-to-tail!” to Visser Thirty-Two but Visser Thirty-Two is like “No, you’re an idiot, we have to work together to get out of this.” So they go to get the Time Matrix from the outside of the ship.

* They dig out four emergency air hoods, one for each of the three real characters and one for Chapman, who is still lying unconscious in a corner, then Visser Thirty-Two lowers Elfangor out of the ship on a cable that I guess they just made out of wires pulled from a computer console.

* The air hoods have a five-minute oxygen supply, after which time Elfangor says his eyes and every blood vessel in his body will burst. I’m not sure if that’s really how space works.

* Elfangor ties the cable around the Time Matrix and Visser Thirty-Two pulls it back into the ship. Loren’s about to pass out because she’s a little bitch the mixture of gasses in the air hoods is designed for Andalite bodies. So why didn’t the air on their ships

* Elfangor knows Visser Thirty-Two is planning to finish him off and take the Time Matrix for himself, so he calls him out and the visser hesitates, because he has access to Alloran’s memories of Elfangor’s tail-fighting abilities. So the visser moves instead for the Time Matrix. A solid white sphere with no buttons or levers, it responds to touch/a direct psychic link. Elfangor tries to counter the visser before he can gain control of the Time Matrix. When he touches it, his perception of reality changes in a pretty weird yet cool way. He can see everything from all angles at once: front, back, inside, outside. He can see the history of the ship around them and all the places it has visited. He can see the Yeerk wrapped around Alloran’s brain and trace the timelines of each of them, and of the black hole that is devouring them, and all this other shit Visser Thirty-Two is winning control of the Time Matrix and trying to have it take him to the Yeerk home world but then Loren touches it as well and together she and Elfangor are able to stop the visser from taking control and then they’re moving through space and then Elfangor sees this incomprehensibly vast being and it laughs at him—

* Elfangor wakes up on what appears to be the Andalite home world, for there is Hala Fala, his Guide Tree. Elfangor makes a psychic connection with the tree and tells it everything that’s happened and how much he’s fucked up. The tree doesn’t reply, of course, because “[o]nly a handful of trees have ever used words, and even then, it could take them hours to say a single word.” What the.

* Elfangor soon realizes that this is not really his home, but rather a composite universe created by the Time Matrix as a result of its three users’ contradictory instructions. This world is composed of distinct areas of Andalite, Yeerk, and Earth terrain and flora and fauna, and the sky is a patchwork of Earth blue, Yeerk green, and Andalite red and gold. Apparently Yeerk trees are one foot tall and forty feet wide. Imagine how many Christmas presents they can fit under there!

* Elfangor meets up with Loren, and then Visser Thirty-two is there suddenly, and he’s flanked by these weird creatures three feet tall and four and a half feet long. Instead of legs, they have wheels, like, organic, biological wheels growing out of their bodies. I have no idea how that works.

* These are Jarex and Larex, Visser Thirty-two’s pet Mortrons. He rescued them from a world that was destroyed by its sun going nova when he was a young lieutenant. Is lieutenant a Yeerk rank, then? Does it go lieutenant → sub-visser → visser? Or am I just being pedantic? Also, the Yeerks have had spaceflight for only five years, so why does Visser Thirty-two sound like he’s reminiscing about his bygone halcyon days?

* Anyway, Loren hits Visser Thirty-two in the face with a rock (the sound of a rock hitting an Andalite in the face is, of course, BONK!, because Animorphs takes place in the same world as the old Adam West Batman), prompting this response: <So. You propel rocks at me! You’ll be very sorry you ever propelled a rock at me, human.>

* WHAT IS THIS BOOK. I love it.

* Jarex and Larex attack. As if their biology wasn’t already implausible enough, they do so by each splitting into two parts, leaving their wheeled lower bodies behind while their fanged upper bodies sprout leathery wings. One of the Mortrons goes for the kill, and Elfangor tells the reader he isn’t sure if it’s Jarex or Larex. Why is this book suddenly so bizarrely, inappropriately hilarious?

* Elfangor cuts both Mortrons in half, but they just regenerate into a third and fourth Mortron. While Visser Thirty-two rattles off his multiplication tables, Loren climbs onto Elfangor’s back and they run away. They wind up in Loren’s neighborhood in one of the Earth areas. Elfangor wonders about the point of front steps. Now that I think of it, yeah, what the hell?

* Loren invites Elfangor over to her house to meet her mom and see her room. Elfangor gently reminds her that this isn’t really her house, but Loren insists her mom will be there. She still holds his hand as they go inside, though. Awwwwwwww…

* Sure enough, Loren’s mother is inside, and Loren introduces Elfangor, warning her mom not to freak out only after she’s produced the blue centaur alien. Loren’s mom, of course, laughs at this, telling her daughter they had Andalites in her day too. Loren realizes this isn’t really her mother, but another construct of the Time Matrix, and she runs from the house in tears. Elfangor decides that she needs some time alone (presumably so that Visser Thirty-two and the Mortrons can track her down and kill her), so he goes upstairs and hangs around Loren’s room for a bit, prompting this brilliant observation:

 

I still didn’t understand the point of stairs. I guess humans just love anything with straight edges and a rectangular shape. The stairs were definitely rectangular. And they allowed the humans to place a second level in their houses. This made the house a larger rectangle. And I suppose this is important in some way.

 

* I love the Dadaist sense of humor this book has suddenly adopted.

* Elfangor finds Loren hitting softballs, because I guess she plays on her school’s team and that’s how she was able to hit Visser Thirty-two in the face with a rock, or something, I don’t care.

* Sensing something in the woods, they venture in a ways and discover the literal, physical end of the universe they accidentally created. The trees, ground, and sky all just stop and beyond them is the white nothingness of Zero-space. Loren reaches her hand into it, and her arm just bends back toward her face. I’m sure why, or how, or… Anyway, she freaks out and Elfangor decides they have to find the Time Matrix and escape.

* When they cross over areas of Yeerk landscape, Elfangor closes his hooves to the ground and vegetation so he doesn’t absorb any of it, something which I believe Andalites will be incapable of doing later in the series, so just marking it now.

* They find a McDonald’s, staffed solely by a construction of a boy who works at McDonald’s on Earth and has a crush on Loren. All she ever notices about him, however, is his terrible acne, so of course this friendly creature’s face is a mess of swollen red blemishes and craters with gaping black pits for eyes. Loren feels bad about this, which she absolutely should, because she is a horrible person.

* Amazing prose alert:

 

“At least I didn’t try and recreate the cheerleading squad in this universe,” she said. “They rejected me, and I’d hate to think what kind of mess I’d have made of some of them.”      

 

I didn’t understand what she was talking about . . .

* After Loren finishes her fast food, Elfangor, studying the patches of Andalite, Yeerk, and Earth sky, suddenly realizes that the seemingly random arrangement is in fact a hyper spiral, a multidimensional pattern that only makes sense in higher dimensions, not in three. The Time Matrix, he concludes, will be at the center of the spiral. Sure, whatever.

 

* If I seem like I’ve lost interest in the story and what’s going on at this point, I haven’t really, it just feels like I’ve been reading this book forever and I just want it to be over. The book would be a lot more enjoyable if I hadn’t stretched it out as much as I did. There was no reason for me to do so except laziness; despite its length, it’s actually a pretty quick read.

* They make their way toward where Elfangor thinks the Time Matrix will be. Elfangor gives a brief history of the rise of civilization on the Andalite world, but you’ll have to read the book for that! Elfangor tells Loren that even if he still had the technology to erase her memories at the end of their adventure, he wouldn’t do it. She asks why, and he explains that he couldn’t bear the thought of her forgetting him, to which she replies that she cares about him too. Elfangor wisely takes this as an IOI and suggests she climb on his back again, and Loren rides him the rest of the way oh my god.

* The closer they get to the center of the universe, the more rapidly they begin to age. Not like years at a time or anything like that but Loren’s hair and nails and Elfangor’s hooves are sprouting up all over the place. They finally arrive at a tornado made of “sky and soil and living things,” which is kind of cool to think about. They plunge into the vortex and find the Time Matrix sitting calmly in the eye of the storm. Conveniently, Visser Thirty-two and his Mortrons arrive almost immediately after they get there. Visser Thirty-two expresses surprise that they’re still alive, even though he didn’t have any reason to think they’d died.

* The Yeerk proposes they work together again, but Elfangor refuses. Loren insists that the visser is afraid to fight Elfangor one on one. Visser Thirty-two proves her wrong by sending his Mortrons to attack Elfangor and Loren while he takes cheap shots from the sidelines.

* Elfangor knocks one Mortron unconscious with his tail. Loren bludgeons another to death with her softball bat, and kills another by strangling it while her fingernails continue to grow, until they’re growing into the Mortron’s throat, which is disgusting. Remember that guy in the Guinness Book of World Records whose fingernails were like three feet long? Yeah, disgusting.

* The last Mortron is somehow defeated when Loren throws the dead one on her fingernails at it. Elfangor prepares to face off with the visser, who explains that a collapsed timeline returns everyone in it to their proper location in space-time, meaning that whoever’s left in this pocket universe when the Time Matrix leaves it will be sent back to the moment they left the Jahar, plummeting into that black hole that appeared from nowhere. Elfangor tells him he doesn’t care how the Yeerk dies, just so long as he’s dead. Way to become a badass, Elfangor. And Elfangor realizes that Visser Thirty-two is afraid to fight him after all. Instead, the visser turns and runs back out of the vortex, leaving them with the promise that one day he will destroy Elfangor, and he will make it very personal.

* Elfangor and Loren decide they can’t take the Time Matrix to the Andalite world. Elfangor can’t go back to his people after abandoning Arbron and mutinying against Alloran, and now that he knows they used a Quantum virus on the Hork-Bajir, he’s afraid of what they might do with the Time Matrix. Instead, he has Loren use it to take them to Earth, where he intends to hide it forever. In a bizarre twist whose point I don’t want to think about too much for fear of Twilight-esque ramifications, the time vortex has aged them so much that Loren thinks she must be at least eighteen by now (Astonishing prose alert: “I feel like I’m getting older. My . . . well, I’m getting older, I’ll leave it at that.”). So part of Loren’s programming instructions to the Time Matrix is that when she returns to Earth everyone she knows will remember her as already being eighteen. That’s right, this thing can not only alter space and time, it also rewrites your memories. What the f

* Three years pass. Elfangor performs a Frolis Maneuver, secretly (how?!) acquiring the DNA of multiple humans and combining it into a single human morph. Then he stays in this morph for over two hours, becoming permanently human. His human name is, of course, Alan Fangor, although most people just call him Al. He majors in physics in college, then goes on to grad school, but school is boring to him because he’s centuries ahead of his professors. No explanation of how he paid for this, or how he got into college with no record of previous schooling, or in fact any record of his identity.

* Elfangor gets a job writing computer software, and here is a passage I just have to quote because it is so astounding:

 

I met a lot of humans who were working in the computer field. My human friend Bill used to come over to my room and we would exchange ideas. It was hard for me to simplify my knowledge enough for him to follow. Everything had to be explained in simple human terms, using words like “window” to explain a childishly simple concept.  

 

And my human friend Steve thought it was a huge breakthrough to use symbolic icons and a simple pointer rather than a lot of complex language.

Do you understand what’s happening here? Please tell me you understand what’s happening here.

 

* One day Elfangor and Loren run into Chapman, who doesn’t remember them or their space adventure together. Elfangor has two possible explanations for this: either Chapman has a twin, or some “unknown physics of black holes” is responsible. Elfangor… no. Just no.

* Oh, also, Elfangor and Loren get married.

* Elfangor comes home from work one day, driving his yellow Mustang. Loren is at a doctor’s appointment, but there is a man waiting for him in his house. Elfangor demands to know what he’s doing here, and the stranger asks him the same question. “This is my home,” Elfangor says, to which the man replies that it is not. He calls Alan Fangor by his dream real name, Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul, and identifies himself as a representative of a group of people whose machine Elfangor used to rewrite time and space. Elfangor then realizes that he is talking to an Ellimist.

* (Specifically, the Ellimist says, “I don’t want anything. We don’t want anything. We do not interfere in the problems of other species.” It would be inaccurate to call this a continuity error, because this book was written before the book(s) that retconned it, but by the end of the series this business of multiple Ellimists will be one big fat PLOT HOLE.)

* The Ellimist reveals that Arbron is still alive on the Taxxon home world, that he saved Chapman and erased his memory, and that the Yeerk Formerly Known As Visser Thirty-two has risen to the rank of Visser Three in the last three years. (Hopefully he enjoyed his rapid promotions, because he won’t be seeing another one for over twenty years.) Elfangor protests that the visser should be dead. The Ellimist sidesteps this point by spewing some bullshit about changing reality to suit your own needs and a trillion trillion trillion interwoven threads, and how by saving Chapman he was undoing an error in the space-time continuum, but no, Elfangor’s right, the Jahar was falling into the black hole before they used the Time Matrix. Visser Three and Chapman should be dead, and if the Ellimist was really correcting the timeline, he’d just kill Loren and Elfangor. Of course, contrary to his assertions, repairing Elfangor’s temporal meddling isn’t really his intention at all, but he can’t even come up with a good cover for his real motivations. I wonder how he snuck this move past anyway Elfangor’s like “This is my life now, I left all that war stuff behind me” and the Ellimist is like “Dude, there are Yeerk advance scouts in orbit right now” and Elfangor’s like “Aw shiiit.”

* Elfangor says there’s nothing he can do, that he already tried to be a hero and failed. He couldn’t save Arbron, and he basically gave Alloran to the Yeerks. But the Ellimist reminds him of what he did do: he refused to kill the defenseless Yeerks, he kept the Time Matrix safe from both sides; he saved the galaxy. Elfangor still protests that the galaxy will get along fine without him, to which the Ellimist replies: “No. It won’t.” Without Elfangor, both the Andalites and the humans will fall to the Yeerks. Loren was meant to marry a human, and Elfangor was meant to be a great warrior. There is a space battle taking place right now. Visser Three is there, and Elfangor is supposed to be as well. Still Elfangor protests: he can’t leave his wife. To which the Ellimist replies: he won’t be able to save her once Visser Three comes to Earth.

* Astonishing prose alert:
 

“And if I go back . . . if I ask you to repair the time line . . . will it save Earth? Will it save the Andalites? And my Loren?”

 

“No. Not by itself. But what is impossible now will become possible again.”

 

I looked at the creature who posed as a human. The creature who had the power to make entire solar systems disappear. “What game are you playing, Ellimist?”

 

“Will you cross-examine me, Andalite? Or will you ask me to undo the mess you have made?”

 

“Loren . . . ?”

 

“Will never know you existed. But you will know. You will still have your memories.”

 

I tried to smile, but it twisted cruelly on my lips. “You said something about a battle, Ellimist . . .”

 

“Come. I will carry you there. I will undo what was done, and repair the fabric of your fate, Elfangor.”

 

* As they travel, Elfangor sees reality as the Ellimist sees it, similar to how he saw when he used the Time Matrix, only much more so. He sees the Ellimist’s true form, “an indescribable being of light and time and space,” but for all the Ellimist’s power, Elfangor also sees his limits. He sees Arbron, who has become the great hero he always wanted to be, and he sees his little brother, which makes no sense because the Ellimist told him that he was supposed to have a brother but didn’t as a result of his use of the Time Matrix, but it’s not clear if the Ellimist is rewriting history so the last three years never happened (Elfangor says in the prologue that he spent many years on Earth and yet no time at all) or if he’s just erasing everyone’s memories of Alan Fangor, because Elfangor also sees that as Loren’s timeline joins with that of another man, part of his own timeline still intersects with hers, meaning: YOU HAVE A SON, ELFANGOR, the Ellimist tells him (the Ellimist speaks in small caps when he’s in his true form).

* That’s why Loren was at the doctor; she would have come home and told Al Fangor she was pregnant. Elfangor begs the Ellimist not to take him away, he didn’t know he had a son, everything is different now, but it’s too late. The Ellimist has “repaired” the timeline; Elfangor is no longer on Earth, and no longer human. He wonders at the Ellimist’s nature, asking if all of this really is a game for him, to which the Ellimist replies, YES. BUT WE ARE NOT THE ONLY GREAT POWERS OF THE GALAXY. THERE IS ANOTHER. OLDER EVEN THAN WE. AND HE PLAYS A DARK GAME, ANDALITE. IT IS WITH HIM THAT WE PLAY. SO HOPE THAT WE WIN, ELFANGOR-SIRINIAL-SHAMTUL. HOPE THAT WE WIN.

* Holy shit that sounds awesome, I can’t wait to find out more about the Ellimists and this ancient evil they’re fighting against.

* Before we go any further, here are a couple of problems I have with this timeline. First of all, in the prologue Elfangor says that he spent many years on Earth. Three is not many. Secondly, Elfangor says he graduated college at an accelerated rate, but is it even possible to go through college and grad school in three years? Thirdly, Elfangor says that he’s designing software in the 1980s, but according to my reckoning, he would have gotten to Earth in 1975 and left in 1978. We can let this one slide, though, if we assume that Animorphs actually doesn’t begin until a couple of years after the year the first book came out in real life. Fourth, there’s the Twilight effect I mentioned earlier. If Loren and Elfangor didn’t get married until near the end of those three years, Loren would be twenty-one, which is fine. Except she’s only physically twenty-one; mentally, she’s like sixteen (she was about thirteen for most of the book, because that’s how old the Animorphs are at the beginning of the series, and we’re told that they’re no older than Loren was when Elfangor met her). And finally, if Loren gets pregnant eighteen years before the start of the series, then Elfangor’s son would be seventeen or eighteen when we first meet him, and he’s, like, not. Oh well, maybe he had a really long gestation period because of Ellimist magic. Or maybe three years isn’t nearly long enough for everything the author wanted to happen.

* Elfangor opens all four of his eyes on an Andalite fighter. His old Dome ship, the StarSword, is getting the shit kicked out of it by Visser Three’s Blade ship. Amazing fake profanity alert: <What in all the bloody tails of Crangar are you doing here?>

* Elfangor hails the Blade ship. Unlike Chapman, Visser Three still has all his memories; he remembers Elfangor, and the promise he made to him. He won’t get a chance to make good on that promise now, however, because Elfangor rams his fighter into the Blade ship, crippling it. The Yeerks are forced to withdraw. Elfangor says that he should have died, but he didn’t. No reason, he just didn’t.

* After he’s recovered, Elfangor tells Captain Feyorn everything that happened to him, except where he hid the Time Matrix. Feyorn tells him that Alloran used to be a good guy. When they were arisths together, Alloran would laugh and play jokes all the time; they were good friends. <But war does terrible things to people. Some it raises to greatness. Others it destroys. You did not mutiny against Alloran. You defended the beliefs he used to hold dear.> Yeah, let’s see that hold up in a military tribunal. I’m kidding, of course. I like Feyorn. Feyorn’s a good dude.

* Elfangor fights the Yeerks for a long time. A Zero-space rift opens up between Earth and the civilized parts of the galaxy (apparently this just happens sometimes), so it’s no short trip to get back there. But eventually the Andalites do go back. As Elfangor already knew, the Yeerks have targeted Earth for their next major conquest, and they have finally mounted a long-term invasion. The Dome ship GalaxyTree is sent to stop them, but the Andalites are vastly outnumbered. The ship’s dome falls into one of Earth’s seas with Elfangor’s little brother aboard, and the GalaxyTree is outmatched by Visser Three’s Blade ship and the invasion’s main Pool ship. The only way out is the Time Matrix.

* Elfangor lands his fighter where he’d hidden the Ellimist’s weapon, but the forest in which he buried it has been paved over with a construction site, and Elfangor is too injured from the space battle to dig it up. Elfangor lies dying, when suddenly five human children come across him. We’ll get to know these kids very well over the next sixty or so books, but here, in the first book of the story but not the first book written, only one of them is named: Elfangor and Loren’s son. 

 

“Hello,” the one called Tobias said to me.

 

* Elfangor gives the kids the Andalite morphing power, because he knows what human children can accomplish. The Yeerks are coming, and four of the five run, but Tobias lingers a moment. Elfangor asks about his family, and Tobias tells him his mom disappeared when he was very young. People say she just never got over Tobias’s father, but Tobias says she has to be dead, because she never would have just left him, but maybe that’s just what he tells himself so he can sleep at night. Truth be told, he doesn’t really have much in the way of family. Moments from death, Elfangor feels his hearts breaking anew. <Go to your friends, Tobias,> he tells his son. <They are your family now.> And Tobias goes.
* Visser Three morphs into some monster to kill Elfangor, and the Andalite dies with the knowledge that his son and his friends will live, and Visser Three will tremble at their strength. He thought-speaks one final cheesy word: <Hope . . .>

* All in all, this was a pretty enjoyable book. There wasn't a whole lot of particularly inspiring or memorable prose, but the writing had its moments, and the plot was more or less solid, with only a few noticeable holes. The saga we’re watching unfold, the battle of the Animorphs against Visser Three while the Ellimist and his dark opponent manipulate events from the sidelines, was set up pretty well, even though this book wasn’t really designed for that purpose (that is, to be an introduction to this universe and story). Most of the characters were well realized, particularly Alloran. Chapman was just godawful, but Visser Three was a fun villain, albeit one who could stand to be fleshed out a bit more. The Elfangor/Arbron dynamic was a lot of fun, and even occasionally touching, while it lasted. Elfangor himself is not a great character, but a pretty good one, especially for a mass market children’s paperback about space aliens. And so what if he’s no Jean Valjean? He doesn’t have to be; I like him anyway. He may not be the coolest or most exciting character within these pages, but he’s the most likable, and the source of almost every instance of real emotional resonance in the story. I’m trying to be critical here but I actually really like this book. It’s enjoyable in its own right, but more importantly, I have some good childhood memories concerning not only this series, but this book in particular. Call me biased, but I’m biased. Plus, there was that scene with the Mustang.

****½ out of of *****

Star Trek references: phasers

Lord of the Rings references: hobbits

’90s references: Pluto is a planet (miss u)

Animatopoeia:
FWAPPP!
SWOOP! FWAPP! FWAPP! FWAPP!
FWOOOOOOSH!
SHWWWOOOOOOOOOOOOF!
WHAM!
WHAM!
Hmmmm. TSEEEEWWW!
BOOM!
TTTTSSSAAAPPP!
TTTTSSSSAAAAPPP! TTTTSSSSAAAPPPP!
TSEEEEWWW! TSEEEEWWW! TSEEEWWW!
WHUUUMMMPPPFFF!
TSEEWWW! TSEEWW!
SHWOOMP!
THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!
THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!
TSSSSEEEEWWWW!
SHHHHHRRRRREEEEEEEKKK!
TSSSEEEEEWWW!
TSSSEEEEEWWW!
TSSSEEEEEWWW!
SLASH!
SLASH!
RRRR RRRRR RRRRRRRR PUH PUH PUH VROOOOM!
VVVRRRRROOOOM! VVVRROOOOOM! VVVROOOOOOM!
FFFFWWWUUUMMPPP!
BOOM! BOOM! RUMBLERUMBLERUMBLE!
SCRRUUMMPPFFF!
WHOOOOOSH!
FWOOOOOSH!
RrrrrrEEEEEEEEEEEE!
WHHUUUUMPPPFF!
SPLOOOMMMP!
TSEEEWW TSEEEWW!
WHUUMPF!
SWOOOOOOSH!
FWAAAPPPP!
TSSSEEEWWWW!
TSEEEEWWWWW! TSEEEEWWWWW!
TSSSSEEEEWWWW!
WHAPPP!
TSSEEEEEWW!
TSSEEEEWWW!
BUMP! BUMP!
TSSSEEEEWWW!
TSSSSEEEEWWWW!
TSSSSWWWWEEEWW!
Kuh-BOOOOOOOM!
FWWOOOOOSSSH!
WHUMPF!
TSSEEEEWWW!
FFWWWUUUMMMPPP!
SHLOOP!
SHLOOPED!
BONK!
HUF-HUF-HUF-HUF.
HUF-HUF-HUF-HUF-HUF!
HUF-HUF-HUF-HUF-SCRINK-SHWOOOP!
FWAPP!
SPLEET! FLUMP. FLUMP.
FWAPP!
SPLEET! FLUMP. FLUMP.
THWACK!
THWACK!
THWACK!
THWACK!
FWAPP! FWAPP! FWAPP! FWAPP!
SWOOP!
FWAPP!
THWACK!
FWAPP!
FWAPP!
FWAPP!
FWAPP!
FWAPP!
FWAPP!
FWAPP!
FWOOOOOSH!
BOOOOOOM!

I can’t say that I’m making reading these books a priority, so it may be a while between updates, but next time we’ll be beginning the series proper with the first Animorphs book, The Invasion. Should be chockfull of story points later ignored or overwritten, so join us for that.