#still sane only because you're used to being tough in front of people

[ruidus-born-chetney]

imagine being Ashton, reuniting with the rest of the party after spending who knows how long with the 3 MOST people people in Exandria (a sopping wet disoriented hanger of a man, an enthusiastic intern with question pads about the Apocalypse and DENI$E) and you learn that your aeormaton friend now has a wife (???) and your party grandpa just had a threesome with someone who you are possibly romanticly interested in

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

If you're still doing them, The Unexpected?

Short opinion: The meat of this book (i.e. everything that happens in Australia) is so interesting that I really really wish the plot had gotten there faster.

Long opinion:

I love how #44 opens: as of the very first page, the kids are already in the middle of a pitched battle at an airport for their very lives and the future of the planet.  I’ve mentioned I’m a sucker for the Batman Cold Open (#41, MM4, #50, #5, #19) even though in the case of this series it’s less likely to be “the heroes save a random guy in an alleyway” and more likely to be “the heroes stagger home from a horrific battle, newly traumatized and unable even to tell their parents about it for fear of being made into controllers” because that’s Animorphs for you.  By this point in the series it’s a refreshing change to have the characters skip the familiar opening steps (Erek hears about a new yeerk thing, the kids interrupt a normal school day to help Erek deal with the yeerk thing, Ax and Rachel advocate blowing up the new yeerk thing, Marco and Cassie come up with directly opposing reasons not to blow up the yeerk thing, Jake calls for a vote about the yeerk thing, everyone is filled with self-doubt while debating the moral implications of the yeerk thing, Cassie pulls a wacky new morph for everyone out of her ass to exploit the weaknesses of yeerk thing, Narrator of the Week wonders if s/he is the only one who has trouble keeping him/herself sane in light of yeerk things…) and instead get right down to brass tacks.  

Don’t get me wrong; I understand why most books in the series simply cannot open mid-battle, because if they did then there’d be almost no room for characterization or setup.  This series does have the enormous advantage of having an overall coherent plot (or eight or nine overall coherent plots, depending on how you chart it), logical character development for all six protagonists and several of the supporting characters, and a consistent tone throughout—while also allowing readers to pick up the series anywhere and read the books in any order.  However, I also like the sense that the kids are becoming a lot more competent at figuring out how to respond to what yeerk threats in which ways as of this point in the series, not bothering with too much debate when instead they could focus on kicking butts and taking names.  

It’s super frustrating, then, that this book opens so powerfully mid-battle… and nevertheless wastes a ton of its slender 150-page length on getting Cassie to Australia.  While I understand that it would be strange and disappointing to have a book that simply had several of the Animorphs not appearing in the story (this isn’t AniTV, after all), the airport sequence drags on for a long time in an effort to establish the other five protagonists while also explaining how Cassie ended up separated from the group.  After Cassie ends up alone and off to SYD (I will forever be amused by her speculating that she’s going to South Y-Something Dakota, and anyone who disagrees can fight me), the book nevertheless wastes quite a while establishing Cassie’s debate about whether to steal from people’s luggage, her quest to find a few oranges, her elaborate ploy to fool the yeerks into thinking that she got sucked out of the plane, her not-so-elaborate ploy to appear demorphed in front of two hork-bajir-controllers that she ends up killing accidentally on purpose, and her moral hand-wringing about the fact that she killed some people in self-defense.  

And yeah, I get that it takes a long time to get from the U.S. to Australia, but does this story really have to take so goshdarn long to get from the U.S. to Australia?  

Anywhoo, when Cassie’s finally through the looking glass, what she finds there in Oz makes this book’s place in the series very interesting.  She once again excels under pressure when left to her own devices, making use of the environment around her and her above-average people skills to blend in, dig in, and take yeerks down.  She and Yami have undeniable chemistry together, and despite her Clueless American refusal to try any of the local grub (pun intended) she gets along quite well with his entire family.  The Australian people she meets value her not for her skills as a warrior or a moral check on everyone else’s homicidal machiavellianism, but for her ability to educate them about the local animals and act as an emergency healer under pressure.  Jake and Rachel both admit they’d have no clue what to do with themselves without the war; Cassie clearly has an entire alternate set of skills and competencies she can fall back on once the yeerks are defeated.  Cassie doesn’t need the war, she doesn’t need her team… and she doesn’t need Jake.  

Although Jake and Cassie are still technically a couple as of this point in the series, this book makes it painfully obvious that the end is in sight.  Cassie barely spares a thought for anyone she has left at home the entire time she’s away, except for a few moments of asking herself What Would Rachel Do (always a valuable question) and speculating about whether her team has the means to find her.  The only time she really thinks about Jake is when Yami is showing her how to throw a boomerang—and the only reason she thinks about Jake at that time is because even she can’t deny that this interaction is headed toward UST-land, and she wants it to head in that direction.  Jake is a good kid, more or less, and a brilliantly well-written character, but he’s also not an easy person to love.  He’s socially awkward, terrible at expressing affection, prone to self-recrimination, and (although it’s not his fault) not much fun to be around.  Although he doesn’t get canonically diagnosed until #54, Jake is already showing signs of clinical depression by #16 and MM2.  He tends to be irritable, apathetic, manipulative, hypervigilant to the point of paranoia, absolutist in his thinking, and unforgiving of mistakes.  Again and again he refuses to show the slightest shred of vulnerability to his loved ones, making his motivations opaque and his true feelings impossible to guess.

Saying it again for the folks in the back: none of that is Jake’s fault, and none of it indicates the slightest shred of moral or emotional failing on his part.  The fact that he has depression does not in any way mean he’s not still a tough, loyal, hardworking, quick-thinking, morally decent (if kinda arrogant) person.  However, there is also not a single goddamn reason why any black woman should ever be asked to perform 100% of the emotional labor for a white man, and therefore Cassie’s decision to leave Jake because she’s not getting what she wants out of the relationship is also entirely valid.  And to be clear, Cassie is already exploring her options outside of Jake in this book.  She doesn’t cheat, even to the point of kissing or mutual flirtation, and she doesn’t explicitly consider what would happen if she started going out with Yami instead.  However, she does make note of the fact that she enjoys the afternoon she spends with this clearly-interested boy more than most of the times she’s spent with Jake lately.  She expresses a clear desire to get home, but more because she knows her friends need her than because she strongly misses anyone.  She’s just about ready to move on.  

I love Jake and Cassie’s relationship, I think it’s one of the healthier such relationships in YA fiction and definitely the healthiest relationship in the Animorphs series, and I do in fact ship those two.  I also recognize that saying Cassie’s refusal to kill Tom ended their relationship is sort of like saying that Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s death caused World War I: you can’t use a spark to set off an explosion if there’s not huge ton of gunpowder already stashed there ready to blow.  We find out after the fact that Jake spends this entire book running around frantically looking for Cassie, while Cassie spent much of this book hanging out with some other guy.  Well before the events of #50 drive them apart for good, Cassie is ready to move on.