GUYS!  GUESS WHAT?  WE GET TO MEET AX IN THIS BOOK!  YAAAAAAAAAAY!

Of course, the trade-off is that Cassie narrates.  Today’s pointless book opener is Cassie out in the barn and morphing a squirrel just for the lolz.  Because a few books ago we had concerns about a morphing limit, and no one has resolved those concerns yet, but squirrels are just so useful. 

At the other end (far from the wolves) we keep our own horses.

When I was a horse-obsessed pre-teen little girl reading these for the first time, I wanted to know more about her horses.

For that matter, horses take a lot of work and upkeep.  A lot of work.  And yet Cassie’s horses quickly fade out of the picture.  Every time we see her doing any work, it’s on injured animals.  She never rides a horse or does anything horse-related.  We don’t even know why they have horses.  For shits and giggles?  Because in addition to being a lot of work, they’re also extremely expensive to maintain.

…Wow, this is a really long info-dumping opener.  Not only do we get the basics of “yeerks are here,” but we also get her talking about her awesome not-farm and how instincts work when morphing, all squished together.  Space it out a little, Cass.  Give us some action.  At least we do get our first hint of the plot on page three – Cassie has been having strange not-quite-dreams – but then she goes right back into morphing into a squirrel, because that’s just so fascinating.

She runs around being all squirrel-y and discovers that there’s a fox in the barn and then Tobias shows up and tries to eat her because she’s too squirrel-y to tell him not to.  Then she does and they scare away the fox and none of this ever becomes important.

Recently he had begun to hunt and eat like a hawk. He was still a little sensitive about it, but I thought if I just made a joke out of it, he would realize I wasn’t grossed out or anything.

But when Marco does the same thing, he’s an insensitive jerk?

I think part of the reason I dislike Cassie so much (and possibly it’s the same for other fans) is that she’s clearly an author darling.  Cassie is the great moralizer, and as such, she’s basically an author mouthpiece.  So she’s never allowed to be wrong.  She’s not used to question the morality of certain actions, she’s used to deliver what the author thinks is the correct morality.  There’s a certain sense that she’s not allowed to be wrong about anything, ever, because if she was, that would tarnish her usefulness in delivering messages from on high.  And on the few times when she is wrong, there’s always this uncomfortable aftertaste of “yes, but was she really wrong?  Really?”

It’s fine to have a character that thinks critically about morals and always asks questions about them, but they should still be normal characters, not saints.

Jake once took a picture of me doing exactly that. He has it next to his computer in his room. Don’t ask me why. I would be glad to give him a picture of me in a dress or something. Rachel could loan me the dress. But Jake says he likes the picture he has.

But for all I don’t like Cassie the Darling, Cassie/Jake is just ungodly adorable. 

Cassie and Tobias talk and realize they’re both having the same strange dreams about someone calling to them from the sea.  They meet up with the other kids the next day, but no one else is having dreams. 

It made me a little sad. In the good old days, Rachel would have had a bunch of quotes about

being a good person or whatever [instead of war/fighting/enemies]. It just showed how much our lives had changed.

When the author isn’t trying to make grand sweeping statements, she does stuff like this, and I think it makes more of a statement than any stirring speech.  Rachel doesn’t have to go on about how she’s got a whole new reason to fight or whatever.  This is a statement.  This is Rachel changing because fighting has creeped into her life, so much so that it’s actually leaking out into what she does and becoming a part of who she is.  This is awesome.  In a sad way.

But let’s detract from that and talk about what everyone looks like. They look the same as they did last book.  Next!

Sometimes I think Rachel likes the way everything has worked out. It’s like all along there was this Amazon warrior locked up inside of her, and now she has an excuse to bring it out.

So, I know that this is what happens eventually, but that hasn’t had a chance to come out yet.  In three books, they’ve been in the following fights: big attack on the Pool, mostly running away in the construction site, getting trapped in a tank of water while Tobias shoots shit.  Rachel hasn’t exactly had a chance to charge into any fights or get overly excited about anything, and she hasn’t shown herself as more eager than anyone else in the group yet.

Stop getting ahead of yourself, book.  You did the same thing with Jake in The Invasion.  Take a chill pill and let this come about naturally.

Jake finds this dream talk all very interesting and has brought along a video cassette (ahaha, oh 90s, I almost miss) on which he recorded the news last night.  Because…Jake is psychic and knew that the news would be showing something he wanted to share?  Or does he just record the news every night?  Maybe he’s got a crush on the newscaster or something.

Anyway, the thing on the news is a little short about a guy that found a chunk of metal with Andalite writing on it.

Then Cassie swoons and Jake catches her.

Oh, okay, she doesn’t swoon, she faints.  But Jake did catch her and LET ME HAVE MY CUTE, OKAY?  While unconscious she hears Ax calling for her from under the sea, and then she wakes up a second later. Tobias had fainted, too, and the rest got a little echo of the same reaction.

They finally put together that the person who keeps saying “help me” is sending out an SOS.  Also they realize that the ‘voice’ is talking just like the Andalite, because apparently he’s communicating his intent pretty clearly but the words are a bit iffy?  Even though we got to read his words just fine?  Eh, maybe that was just Cassie’s brain translating for us.  Point is, Andalite under the water.  They all unanimously vote to go help him.

“So let me get this straight – we are now making decisions based on Tobias and Cassie’s dreams, right?” Marco said. “And yet my dreams are totally ignored. The fact that I once dreamed about staying home and watching TV in total safety, that means nothing, right?”

“Right,” Jake said flatly.

Maybe the reason I like Jake so much is that he plays off people pretty well.  He’s a bit of a stick on his own, but Jake/Cassie is CUTE IN ALL CAPS and Jake/Marco is twice as funny as Marco alone.

So they go down to the beach to see if Cassie and Tobias can ‘hear’ any better there.

And Tobias is never happy, period. He thinks if he’s ever happy, someone will just come along and take his happiness away.

STOP KNOWING THINGS!

Tobias spots some other people searching along the beach, and it’s Controllers, so the kids hide. Tobias overhears them, and apparently V3 is having the dreams, too.

Then the Controllers find the kids’ footprints and chase them.  The kids can’t morph, because then their footprints would change from human to animal, and who the fuck cares, you’re being chased down a beach by someone who can see you!  They can see that you’re human!

That’s now happened in every single book so far.

The Yeerks start shooting, because the Yeerks are total idiots.  In the first book they didn’t want to raise suspicions by killing random people, but now they’re perfectly happy to open fire on a random group of kids on a public beach?

I lived in a beach town for a few years.  (And then in a different beach town for another few years.)  Do you know what beaches are full of?  PEOPLE.  They don’t go home when the sun goes down; they build bonfires.  They live in California.  Beaches in California (and Hawaii) are public property and are required to have public access.  You can own land right up next to the beach, but you can’t own the actual beach, and you can’t block access to a beach with your private property.  (Docks, shipping harbors, piers, military bases, etc being special exceptions.)

That means that no matter what beach they are on in this California town, the public has a right to be there, and the public will be there, because people love beaches.  So there’s no reason for the Yeerks to assume that people they see on the beach are somehow sneaking in to look for alien ship parts.  They’re far more likely to run across a group of highschoolers with some stolen beer.  And, by the by, highschoolers with beer would be running right now, too.

For all we know, the Yeerks have left a long trail of ‘mysterious murders’ all up and down the beach tonight.

Since they’re being shot at, they run for the water and morph into trout.  Because watching four humans run into water and then never be seen again isn’t suspicious or anything.  Apparently the Yeerks have not read the Evil Overlord List.  Come on, guys, this is covered by number 13.

The kids run into the water and hide/start to morph and overhear Chapman and Tom talking about how they’re all probably just normal non-threatening kids and WHY THE FUCK WERE YOU SHOOTING AT THEM, THEN?

Tom even highlights the fact that they might be human bandits instead of Andalite bandits, and Chapman says he’s not going to be the one to tell V3 that he’s wrong.  This is why you shouldn’t rule that much by fear.  And while I can see someone being stupid/arrogant enough to do it anyway, I really can’t see them being successful.  V3 should have been kicked out of his position long before the three-year mark at the end of the books, because incompetent leaders tend to shoot themselves as soon as they’re top-dog in an area.  They’re usually only useful if there’s some higher brass nearby to keep them in check.

But, enough of that, the kids morph into trout, complain about the salt water, but are still perfectly able to swim away and escape.  Leaving the Yeerks to realize that their bodies are not washing up on shore and they are, indeed, the very bandits they are looking for.

Really, not even one underling just mistakenly believes that V3 will be happy to catch the bandits, even if the was wrong about them being Andalites?  No one brings this up, ever?  Honestly, I think the kids could have all stayed home and the Yeerk invasion would have imploded on its own.