We start off book two with what will be the standard opening from here on out.  Basically the kids open up with the most horrible thing they can think of to hook in the readers, talk about the Yeerks and how hellish the whole situation is, and then they “smoothly” segue into something normal and cheerful.  And by smoothly I mean there’s no segue at all.  “There just us five kids between you and unimaginable pain and terror.  We were out flying and the weather was really nice.” 

All the kids are out flying around in new bird morphs, and Tobais gives them hints.  Rachel goes on for a while about one of the books’ favorite subjects: how cool flying is.

Jake is like me. He loves excitement and adventure and being a little crazy. Maybe we’re so alike because we’re cousins.

Also, we’re both a little competitive, I guess.

I remember this staying consistent for Rachel, but not so much for Jake.  When was he ever really all that competitive?  (Outside of this page right here.)

Suddenly, rednecks!  A couple of drunks are out shooting at birds for no reason.

She and Marco had joined up with us. They had both morphed the same osprey. It was hard to tell them apart because you can’t really tell where thoughtspeech comes from.

But…you don’t normally have an issue telling who’s talking.  Everyone was morphed in that battle at the end of book 1, and there was no “wait, which kid said that?”  So…does Jake sound like a tiger when he morphs?  I wonder what tiger telepathy sounds like.

Jake yelled.

Instantly I turned a sharp right. The bullet went whizzing by harmlessly.

Saying “they fired” takes more time than a bullet travels.  I just don’t really believe that Jake had the reaction time to say it, the words got out, and Rachel reacted to his words, all before the bullet reached her.  Even at a few thousand feet up, all that would have to go down in a few fractions of a second.

So the kids decide to take revenge, because calling the cops and saying “rednecks are shooting at bald eagles” isn’t good enough?  They’re in a pickup truck, even, the kids could report the license number.  Instead they’re going to fly through the trees and terrorize them.  Tobias even harms one of them. 

On the one hand, yeah, they’re drunk teens shooting at birds, of course they should be stopped.  On the other, I’m never a fan of this type of “justice.”  “I’m going to hurt you because I don’t like what you’re doing” really isn’t the kind of message we need to send to kids.  There’s a pretty big difference between that and actual justice and order.  Also?  I don’t think Chester and his new set of scalp scars is going to be inclined to like birds from now on.  He’ll probably get a new gun and go on a vendetta. 

Great job, heroes.

After that (let’s face it) completely pointless aside, the kids demorph and tease each other about looking funny while they do it.

Usually nothing more than skintight workout clothes or leotards.

Usually?  Are there some unusual instances we never get to hear about?

Naturally, now we have to spend several pages going through what all the kids look like and what they do.  I was always curious: was there ever anyone who picked up these books in the middle of the series and actually needed that run-down?

“Look, Jake, how many times have you been walking around the mall or whatever, and you’ll see a girl who seems good-looking from far off, but when you get closer it turns out she’s a skank? I mean, if you could see this well all the time – ”

“Excuse me?” I interrupted. “I’m sure I didn’t hear you say what I thought you just said.”

“I wasn’t being sexist,” Marco protested. “It goes both ways. See, from far off, I look taller than I am.”

No, Marco, you were being sexist.  There’s a damn large difference between “short” and “skanky.”

And isn’t that the way it always goes?  Girls get judged for all sorts of things, for their looks and their sexuality and their opinions.  Nothing they do can be right, because no matter what, someone will be on hand to call them names for it.  Too pretty?  She’s vain and shallow.  Not pretty enough?  Cow.  Too much sex?  Slut.  Not enough sex?  Prude.  There are so many judgments made towards women, and they are just so nasty and imply the worst things imaginable.  But when someone wants to insult a man?  Um….short?

Bad Marco.  No cookie.

The kids walk home talking about how cool it would be if they could use their powers to be movie stars.  I forgot how dull this book starts out.  These are very short books, but they still manage to find room for padding.  Here we are at about 15% done, and nothing plot-related has happened.  Really, 15%.  Normally a plot would have at least thrown out some vague hints by now.

In fact…we’re still recapping.

Am I going to get any good material today?  Come on, book! We finally get some action in the present, and it’s just the kids repeating the argument from last time.  Everyone but Marco wants to kick ass, and Marco is just convinced that doing so will lead to death. Rachel makes the argument that they made some noise and scared the Yeerks, so that was good, while Marco argues that they didn’t actually cause a lot of damage.

I’m sort of on Rachel’s side.  On the other hand, I’m not on her side for the same reasons she is.  She seems to think if they keep on, eventually they’ll do some real hurt.  I’m more of the opinion that just scaring them is plenty good.  If they can scare the Yeerks into being more concerned with security than expansion, that’s still a mighty big success. 

Eh, I guess it also a bit advanced for 13 year-olds.

The last door they used to get into the pool closed, so they decide they need to follow Chapman around to locate a new one.  Fortunately, his daughter is one of Rachel’s friends!  Rachel doesn’t like the thought of using her friends like that, though.

“Rachel, Melissa’s father is one of the main Controllers,” Jake said gently, ignoring Marco.

How do you know that?  What have we seen from Chapman that indicates he has any particular place in the hierarchy?  Sure, he gave someone orders at one point, but the kids don’t know if that means he’s in charge of anything more than a handful of people.  It’s a big leap from “gave one guy orders that one time” to “one of the main Controllers.”

Then again, Jake is psychic.

The next day, Rachel goes to gymnastics practice.  She sees Melissa there and explains that her friend has been really distant lately.  Melissa turns down a chance to go hang out, because that’s the way she’s been lately.  Really distracted and secretive.

I can’t help feeling like I would care more if we’d opened on this.  But after all those pages of mindless flying around and talking, it feels like more filler.  I know it’s the plot finally showing, but if I were reading this for the first time, I wouldn’t be interested.  My leeway credit would have been all used up already, whereas if the book had opened on this, I’d think “hm, a mystery!  Let’s go solve it.”  Instead I’m just thinking “uhg, teenage drama.”

Pacing, book.  You are bad at it.

Rachel gets all bummed out, mostly because she is a bad friend to Melissa, not because Melissa is pulling away.  Aw, look at Rachel, being all non-sociopathic and caring about people!  Now that’s an actual complex issue, the weird way guilt behaves.  Rachel feels bad because she doesn’t have the time to give to a friend in need, and even now she’s only pretending concern because she needs to for the sake of her Yeerk-fighting.  There’s nothing really she can do about and it’s not her fault, but she feels bad anyway, because guilt is a fickle beast.    

Of course, instead of exploring that theme more, we move on to extra filler.  On the way home from class, Rachel gets hit on by some pedophiles and half turns into an elephant to scare them off.

And then afterward her biggest concern is that her shoes ripped when she morphed.  Oh, great, so we’ve got child molestation in a story, and the fallout from it is just “ripped shoes?”  And then it rains and she’s got to walk up and be bummed out.

Attempted child molestation.  And it’s thrown in to make Rachel more pitiful as she walks home.  No fallout.  No fear.  Not even a comment about how the streets are so unsafe that guys can hassle 13 year-olds walking home in the middle of the afternoon.  Nothing.  In fact, the whole situation is treated like it’s just a matter of course.

What the hell, author?  So much good, and then that?  Man, I thought of all books, this would be one where I don’t have to worry about bad sex messages.

Melissa and Chapman drive up and give her a ride home so she doesn’t get caught in the rain.  Rachel does a pretty good job of displaying how distracting and paranoia-inducing it is to try and hold a conversation with a Controller, but I can’t help still thinking about that attempted attacker who just got away scot free.  He’ll probably convince himself it was all a dream and find some other, non-morph-capable girl to chase down the street.

Police: good for more than just stopping aliens.  Heck, I bet you could even tell a Controller policeman about that.  He still has to do his host’s job, after all.

Chapman notices her tattered shoes, and Rachel freaks out thinking he knows who/what she is.

Rachel calls everyone over after dinner and tells them what happened.  Marco continues to be awesome and point out all the various ways in which morphing to scare someone was a huge security breach.

After they get done yelling at her (because, really, what can be done about it?) they move on to talking about spying on Chapman.  Melissa is a non-option if she won’t be buddy-buddy with Rachel.  They figure that morphing something small and hiding in his office is a good bet, and Rachel remembers that Melissa has a pet cat, which would be perfect for their needs.