The Conspiracy

Animorphs #31
by K.A. Applegate

Note that there might be SPOILERS if you haven't read so far in the series. This one kind of has the same premise as the previous book- one of the Animorphs has to face a terrible dilemma: protect his family or keep the Animorphs from being exposed. It's Jake. His great-grandfather has died so they're all leaving town for funeral arrangements- which will take four or more days. His brother Tom's Yeerk is panicked at being away from its source of nutrients too long- it will die. Their father refuses to let Tom stay behind, so after several different attempts to thwart events, the Yeerk in Tom is plotting to do away with his father. Jake has to stop him without letting Tom realize that he's an Animorph. A lot of this one is focused on Jake's family interactions, his fear for Tom and hatred of the Yeerk controlling him, his inability to be ruthless like Marco was about the similar situation with his mother/Visser One. There's also conflict within the Animorphs team, who makes the decisions, can they override their leader. Jake's futile plan to simply keep twenty-four-seven surveillence on his father until the weekend is over fails; luckily his friends step in and save the day with their own crazy plan. It's a bit of a stretch to think that Marco as a gorilla bashing cars around in a parking lot would have no reactions from the public (although the illustration inside the cover showed it being cars parking on a curb with passerby right there, I pictured it being a mostly-empty parking lot, all the shoppers being indoors until after the incident) and that Rachel as a grizzly, Jake as a rhino and Marco as gorilla again wouldn't get noticed by any neighbors when they smash through Chapman's house to take him hostage as a distraction to the enemy! Ridiculous and reckless. In spite of that, I was able to enjoy the story this time. I didn't notice any new morphs, they all used familiar ones- including birds of prey, cockroach and tiger- and that's part of the series I always really liked- seeing how they felt inside new animal skins and dealing with the instincts and sharp senses- but now it's getting more intense with the stakes even higher in the alien conflict so I still like reading them.

Rating: 3/5             139 pages, 1999

more opinions:
Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales
The Library Ladies
Arkham Reviews