Marco books have some of the best snippets.

I jumped in, feet first, around the eight-foot marker. I bobbed back up to the surface and said, “This is insane, Marco.”

To which I answered, “So I’ll be careful.”

To which I countered, “You’re talking to yourself, do you know that?”

“Oh, shut up,” I said.

And:

“You know, sometimes there’s just a very fine line between us and the Three Stooges,” I said.

<What are stooges?> Ax asked.

“A stooge is a guy stupid enough to run around inside a Yeerk stronghold wearing a pair of bike shorts and accompanied by a Deer-man from outer space and a mouse-eating Bird-boy. That’s a stooge.”

Also, SHARKS!

They’re the Hork-Bajir of the sea! Apparently literally. It’s an odd one to pair right fater The Unknown. Back to back books talking about non-human/animal Controllers, although with rather different outcomes. And now I want to look up the differences between shark and horse brains…

Plus, we get an appearance by a new, interesting race (mind reading amphibians!), more Visser One scenes (of course, it’s a Marco points of view)/Visser Three politics, and some underwater adventures, which are neat.

Overall, a decent entry. Up from The Change and The Unknown, I think.

Onward!

Random thoughts (minor spoilers):

In this mall was a restaurant called the Amazon Cafe. It was a cool restaurant because it was like going on some ride at Disney World.

So, this is a weird one. I’d been thinking that the Gardens was a stand in for Disney Land (mostly because of the licensed characters), but now we straight up have a reference to Disney World. Across the country… but still.

<Now, this is an interesting human concept,> Ax said approvingly.

“Ax? It’s not a hologram,” Rachel said.

<Then . . . we are underwater? Protected only by badly made human plastic?>

“Yeah.”

<Why do you humans do things like this?>

It’s an interesting point of view I suppose.

<We’re still our old selves, aren’t we? I mean, we haven’t changed. Not really. No matter what, right?>

<Sure, Marco.>

<No, I mean it.> I realized I had grown very serious. I don’t know why, but I wanted Jake to agree with me. It was important to me. <We’re still just us. Nothing that happens can really change what you are. Right?>

We flapped side-by-side back to the others.

<Look, Marco,> Jake said wearily. <I’m not exactly a philosopher, okay?>

<Yeah. Well, I’m me, no matter what,> I said defiantly. <No matter how many morphs, no matter how many battles. No matter what. I’ll still be me. Everyone better accept that.>

Jake laughed a little. <Marco, if it makes you feel any better, you’ll always just be a punk to me.>

I had to laugh, too. <Thanks,> I said.

Although we’ll get far more of this in The Warning (coming soon!), it is interesting seeing these characters start to grapple with the absolute insanity of what they’re doing.

If they weren’t protagonists in a book series… they’d have been dead a dozen times over.