The Mutation

Animorphs #36
by K.A. Applegate

Terrible. Ridiculous plot, which I could go along with, except the writing was so poor I just couldn't. In a nutshell- the enemy aliens built a submarine ship called the Sea Blade in order to access a hidden underground resource they shouldn't have, and then experimented on making Hork-Bajir amphibious in order to use them to get there. The Hork-Bajir the Animorphs find are so tortured that they vow revenge, and also have to keep the enemy from their goal, of course. So they morph orcas (also whales and sharks at different points) and dive in the ocean at first to just physically try and damage the Sea Blade. Then they find an underwater civilization that has taken sunken ships captive for thousands of years, making a sort of display gallery out of all their preserved crew members. They get trapped by the undersea people and have to cleverly escape, which also means, in the end, making a deal with Visser Three so they can all get out alive together. Because he's down there trapped in the Sea Blade.

It's pretty bad when the first scene is so poorly written I didn't understand at all why the Animorphs were feeling vengeful. Even with the way they could change morphs to avoid death while battling the aliens underwater against the Sea Blade, the injuries they took were so horrific I just don't see how any of them made it. The premise of how the aquatic civilization had come to exist, and how the Animorphs figured it all out made no sense. Many scenes in the book were so badly described I had no idea what was actually happening, or how the Animorphs reached the conclusions they did. The part where they collaborate with their worst enemy to escape together was so eye-rolling I was skimming at that point and didn't care any more how nonsensical it was.

I'm deleting this one from my e-reader. It seems to have no relation to the rest of the series, so doesn't matter and I definitely don't want to waste time reading it again.

Rating: 1/5      160 pages, 1999

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