The Weakness

Animorphs #37
by K.A. Applegate

Wow, it's been a long time. I didn't really feel like reading Animorphs again, but my other current read is a tough book- so I need breaks between chapters, and this happens to be a good alternative, in an odd way. Turns out I read half of The Weakness months and months ago, then put it down and forgot about it. Don't remember why. Skimmed a bit to remind myself of the storyline, but didn't bother to re-read entire chapters again. Jake is absent so the team decides to put Rachel in charge when a report comes in of discovering the Visser's secret feeding spot. They can't pass up the opportunity to try and get the enemy. Rachel is all for just trying to chase him down (using a new cheetah morph) but of course they fail. Also meet a new alien creature, the only good thing here being that the Visser and this new enemy the Inspector appear to despise each other, which is to the Animorphs' advantage. Then they decide to rush around town storming different shops and locations one after the other making it appear that they have much larger numbers than in reality, so the Visser will look bad in front of the Inspector. Causing a lot of conspicuous damage and probably hurting innocent people (not like them at all). Then to bash in on a meeting of high-up Controllers, all of them using polar bear form instead of their usual battle morphs. It goes badly. Cassie gets captured and almost forced into the Yeerk pool. The others barely save her in time- using bird of prey morphs and one cobra. They pretty much only escape because when Marco-as-cobra takes the Inspector down, the Visser and all his underlings just stand there staring, instead of grabbing the Animorphs who are exhausted and injured. All these frenetic attacks without much planning were Rachel's push, but she has doubts the whole time and feels terrible about putting her friends in danger and afterwards when Jake returns asks him: how do you do it? how can you stand to make those decisions, putting your friends' lives on the line? He flinches for a moment then closes it off and says: I just don't think about it. Well, I could have done without all the hectic nonsense fighting scenes, but the ending had a more serious note.

Rating: 2/5                144 pages, 1999

more opinions:
The Library Ladies
Arkham Reviews
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