What if–instead of walking through that fateful construction site…

The Ellimist and Crayak/the Drode are at it again. Giving Jake a chance at a normal life.

But all is not as it seems…

“Oh, I see it now, I see it now,” the Drode said, ignoring Marco, ignoring all of us. “Subtle as always, Ellimist. Your meddling came before, didn’t it? How could we not have seen it? Elfangor’s brother? His time-shifted son? This anomalous girl here? And the son of Visser One’s host body? A group of six supposedly random humans that contains those four! You stacked the deck!”

“Did I?” The Ellimist laughed. “That would have been very clever of me.”

You know? So far as justifications for the coincidences that make stories just work–that’s actually a sneakily good one. The Animorphs are talented and more than a little lucky. But all along, someone (something?) has been stacking the deck to help them.

I like it. More than I expected.

Onward!

Side notes:

I tried to lift up with all four legs, lift the dead thing off me. But I only had three legs. My left hind leg lay across the bright-lit floor, a curiosity, a macabre relic. Tiger’s paw.

Do they ever actually mention where morph mass comes from? And when they morph back, does anything happen to … bits left behind?

Could morphing solve world hunger?

Yes. That was my first thought.

All of them, it’s what they all were. Chapman, Bill, Tom, all the full members. Them, and thousands more. Policemen, politicians, newspeople, businessmen, teachers, writers. And kids.

Why kids? Because kids are never suspected. They can be used anywhere.

Huh. All right. That actually works.

Also, Cassie being a sub-temporal anomaly is a little weird. Why? And why–despite this not being the first time she’s time traveled–wouldn’t this have come up before?

I mean, I know it’s because it was needed for this story and wasn’t before. But it still feels a touch sloppy.