Tobias just doesn’t get a break. (I feel like I’m saying that a lot recently).

This time around, the Yeerks are working on an anti-morphing ray. And the Animorphs really don’t want them to think that works (despite the fact that… they would really want to try it more than once. Or, despite the danger… on Visser Three).

But there’s an obvious answer. Who’s morph could they shine just about anything on and never get them to ‘de’morph?

Tobias.

It’s actually kind of brilliant.

Makes up a bit for the tone of the rest of the book. Man there are evil even by Yeerk standards in this book.

A good one.

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That’s… a really strange story. And hard to talk about without spoiling the main conceit, which they at least seem to want to keep semi-hidden.

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It’s an odd one to pair with The Reunion. In both cases, we have an Animorph with a family member controller. In both cases, it’s too close to home. But Marco made the call–even if it’s going to tear him up later to do it.

Now it’s Jake’s turn.

You know what Marco and I used to talk about? Whether Batman could beat Spiderman. Whether Sega was better than Nintendo. Whether some girl would rather go out with him or me.

And now . . .

“What are we, anymore, Marco? What has happened to us?”

He didn’t answer. I didn’t expect him to. We both knew what had happened.

Man these books get dark.

That’s one reason I like them. They don’t get into everything, but they really do get into enough.

<Interesting,> Ax observed. <Bearded, white-coated creatures with hooves. And horns. Grazers. I would point out the similarities between the mountain goat and Andalites, except for my extremely disappointing experience with the cow.> (The Experiment)

And so Marco’s mom is back–and after the mess of The Decision, she’s not Visser One anymore. But if anything, that means that she hates Visser Three all the more… and would stop at nothing to get back at him. Even if that means allying herself with the ‘Andalite Bandits’.

Marco of course deals with this in a perfectly reasonable and level headed manner.

“What do you do when you have to make a decision, and each choice is horrible? What would you do, Rachel? If it was your mom or dad or sisters. What would you do, Xena?”

…

Rachel came back and sat beside me on the bed. She didn’t hug me. Rachel’s not a hugger. But she sat there with me.

“One battle at a time, Marco. One battle at a time.”

It’s an intense book and man I feel for Marco. Tobias and Ax are really going through some stuff, but they’re only sort of human any more. Of the remaining Animorphs–well, I think that it’s Marco that’s gone through the most. And this book certainly doesn’t go easy on him.

Huh, I didn’t know they made these!

Animorphs, but choose your own adventure style.

Neat idea, subpar execution.

Each of the ‘choices’ has only one correct answer. There are no branches and every dead end sees you killed and reset. And even with that, it’s barely 3/4 the length of most of the Animorph books–already short.

So… meh? There are only two. We’ll see if I read the other.

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“You ever notice how many different ways there are to say ’throwing up’?” Marco asked as we passed Dunkin’ Donuts, the first in the row of fast food places dotting the main street running through town. “There’s vomiting, of course. Hurling. Tossing your cookies. Puking, a classic. Ralphing.”

I was glad Marco was filling up the silence. Even though I thought he could have come up with a better topic.

“There’s cascading. But I prefer the terms that are more real. Like blowing chunks. Spewing your guts.”

Marco took a deep breath and kept on talking as we made our way past Taco Bell. “Tangoing with the toilet. That’s a good one,” he said reflectively. “Technicolor yawn.”

The one where everyone gets sick (Ax deathly so) and Cassie has to go on a solo rescue mission to the Yeerk pool.

Quite a story and quite a bit more Cassie than we often get. Being the action hero no less!

A solid one.

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I am fond of the quote “When you’ve met one Aspergian, you’ve met one Aspergian. We are all unique.” That may be true, but now that I’m meeting other Aspergians, I am finding that some traits I thought were unique to me are actually characteristic of Aspergians.

John Robison–John Elder–grew up with autism (or what would once have been diagnosed as Aspergers before DSM-5). He was always an odd kid and had to grow up quick and come up with all manner of interesting coping mechanisms to survive in a world that wasn’t entirely sure how to deal with him.

It doesn’t help that he had an… interesting home life, also described by his brother in the memoir Running with Scissors–and later planted the seed that grew into Look Me in the Eye.

You should write a memoir. About Asperger’s, about growing up not knowing what you had. A memoir where you tell all your stories. Tell everything.” About five minutes later, he e-mailed me a sample chapter. “Like this?” was the subject line of the e-mail. Yes. Like that. Once again, my brilliant brother had found a way to channel his unstoppable Asperger energy and talent. When he decided to research our family history and create a family tree, the document ended up being more than two thousand pages long. So once the idea of writing a memoir was in his head, he dove in with an intensity that would send most people straight into a psychiatric hospital.

Although found that although people didn’t always do what he expected, electronics most certainly did. This lead to quite the career, building, repairing, and upgrading sound systems, including building a lot of the custom hardware used by the band KISS–and then later also getting into designing the electronics in toys and eventually repairing expensive cars.

Certainly not where I expected his story to go, I’ll say that much, but the way he describes the story, each step just makes so much sense.

Another fascinating half of the book (to me) is hearing John Elder describe the world he lives in. I’ll go into more specifics in a later section, but this was really the part of the book that stood out to me. Like the quote says/implies, every is different–and those with autism are no exception… but that doesn’t mean that people who’s brains tend the same way might just see the world the same way. Some of these things I’ve never seen put into words before. Worth the read just for that.

Overall, I quite enjoyed this book. If you have autism (diagnosed or not)–or if you know someone with autism (and I expect you do, even if you don’t know it), I recommend giving it a read. Perhaps you’ll see something of yourself in it.

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The one where Ax watches entirely too much TV.

<Look, Tobias! Victor and Nikki are doing that thing again!> I pointed at the screen.

<Uh-huh.> His hawk eyes were trained on the little screen as Victor tightened his arms around Nikki. <It’s called kissing, Ax-man. Just like yesterday. And the day before. Kissing. Everyone does it. Of course, you need lips.>

<Ah. Well . . .> Tobias rearranged his wings noisily. <It’s definitely got a purpose. By the way, Marco’s heading this way.>

Way too much.

Marco sighed. “Whatever you call it, it basically reeks, you know. I think it’s time I introduced you to some better programming, Ax. Buffy. Party of Five, maybe. Cops. South Park. Something, anything better than this. Although she is hot.”

<Yes, she is hot. This is why she often wears less artificial skin.>

“Yeah, well, I think you may have your cause and effect turned around there. Hey, you know what you need? A TV Guide.”

Entirely too much.

“Nothing but lame sitcom reruns this week,” she said. “You’re not missing anything.”

<There are always These Messages,> I pointed out.

“These what?”

<The shorter shows that are displayed between longer shows. These Messages. They are often my favorites. “Zestfully clean! Zestfully clean! You’re not fully clean unless you’re Zestfully clean!” So much information condensed into so brief a format. So much emotional intensity.>

“You’re starting to scare me, Ax.”

Yes. The entire book is like that.

Oh, there’s also something about a machine to remove free will, which seems to fall into the ‘duh, that’s not possible category’:

“I wanted to tell him. I wanted to say, Look, it can’t be done. You don’t understand! There’s no such thing as a human being without a free will. It’s . . . it’s . . . idiotic! But he’s no scientist, much less a philosopher. You can’t separate a sentient creature from free will. They are free will. Yeerk, Hork-Bajir, human, it doesn’t matter. A sentient species has free will like an object has mass. You can’t separate them! But Visser Three doesn’t listen.”

Which… annoyed me more than it probably should have.

We don’t know what free will is. But you very much can seemingly take away people’s free will. That’s what whole classes of drugs are designed to do.

Onward.

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