The Message

Book Number:  4
Written by:  Katherine Applegate and Michael Grant
Page Count:  158
Narrator:  Cassie

Synopsis

After Tobias almost eats Cassie (as a squirrel), they have a bonding moment in Cassie's barn where they discover they're both having the same dream.  Thankfully it's not of a burned man in a ratty hat with a razor glove, but rather about someone trapped under the ocean calling for help.  They tell the other Animorphs about their dream the next day, where Jake shows them a clip of the news (because taping the news is his hobby) that show fragments of an Andalite spaceship washing ashore.  As if on cue, both Cassie and Tobias pass out and dream of the call again.  Upon waking up, they decide that there's an Andalite in the ocean calling other Andalites to save him.  Since there are no Andalites around, ANIMORPHS TO THE RESCUE!

They do some recon at the beach, but are almost caught by Controllers who conveniently showed up at the same time, they escape by turning into fresh-water fish in the ocean (ouch).  They decide they need to get some more salt-water friendly morphs to investigate the deep.  They head to the Gardens to acquire some dolphin DNA, which Cassie objects too because they're too smart and shouldn't have their DNA stolen.  Sure, Cassie.  Since her argument doesn't make sense, they acquire the DNA anyway and head into the ocean with their dolphin morphs.  The dolphin brains wind up too playful for them and they dick around for about an hour, until they find a humpback whale being attacked by a group of tiger sharks.  The Animorphs come to the rescue and chase the sharks away, but Marco is critically injured and forced to morph back into a human prematurely.  While Jake and Rachel tend to Marco, Cassie "speaks" to the whale (IN THE ART OF EXPRESSION), and he "tells" her the location of the Andalite spaceship.

The Animorphs retreat for the time being and come up with a plan to reach the Andalite ship, which is too far out for a single morph.  Cassie visits Marco's house and apologizes for almost getting him killed.  Marco assures her she's not the one getting him killed, it's the bad guys who are shooting at them.  And sometimes a shark.  After bonding time, the Animorphs decide their next course of action is to morph into seagulls and fly onto an outgoing ship, morph back into humans, wait until they're in position, then jump off the side as dolphins to find the ship.

That plan seems more complicated in writing than it is in execution.  That's what they do, anyway.

Jumping back in as dolphins, they find the Andalite ship and enter it.  There they find an Andalite, who doesn't trust them because they are these weird pink things in leotards that crawled in through his airlock.  He is the brother of Prince Elfangor, Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill.  The Animorphs just call him Ax.  No reason.  They tell him of how Elfangor died protecting them and how he gave them the power to morph to fight the Yeerks.  Since his brother/prince is now dead, he requests where their prince is so he can serve him.  They all point to Jake.

Lol.  Prince Jake.  I love it.

Suddenly they hear sonar blasts and assume the Yeerks are here, because of fucking course they are.  The Animorphs escape the ship before it blows as dolphins, while Ax morphs a tiger shark.  They make their getaway, dodging Taxxons, who swim remarkably well for being giant bugs (and they explode real good too).  Soon Visser Three goes for a swim and morphs into a giant sea monster alien to chase them down.  The Animorphs try to flee but he tires them out.  They turn to make a last stand when Visser Three is HEAD BUTTED BY A FUCKING SPERM WHALE!  This is quite possibly the most badass thing that has ever happened.  As the whales single handedly take Visser Three to school (pun intended?), the Animorphs and Ax hitch a ride on one of them and morph back into humans, as the whale takes them closer to land.

Back on land, Cassie decides it's best to keep Ax in the meadow near her house.  He then acquires DNA from Jake, Cassie, Rachel, and Marco (don't worry, all you sticklers, he asked for consent), and morphs into a male human form that combines all of their features.  So, Ax is now some Animorph illegitimate love child of a DNA orgy.

The book ends with Cassie returning to the dolphins at the Gardens, to "ask for consent."  She morphs in the tank to show them what she does.  Unsurprisingly, they don't care.  But they ask her to dance!  I bet you five bucks that they asked her to dance to this song:

Observations

This 90's series is reading less 90's than I thought it would.  But upon further inspection, there is a reason for that, and I hate it.  I was reading a passage on this Kindle edition where Jake recorded something off of TV using a VHS, and Marco mocks him for using "ancient technology" and not a DVR.  First, DVR's weren't a thing in the 90's.  Second, if they're trying to rewrite these books to pass these kids off as modern day children, I'm sorry but no 13-year-old today knows what a VHS or a VCR is, let alone had a blank tape handy to tape the 6 o'clock news.

I reject your revisionist history.  I want my Xena, Warrior Princess references, goddammit.  It's just not Animorphs without them.

But alas, here we are at the fourth book, and these books needed a "Green Ranger" I guess and a sixth Animorph is brought in, this time an actual Andalite.  This is the book that introduces us to Ax, Elfangor's little brother, who has been sitting at the bottom of the ocean since all of this started.  When I was younger, Ax always seemed something like a gimmick character, something like an "auxiliary Animorph" or the "pet alien/Great Gazoo" character.  But reading this book as an adult, it occurs to me that Ax does serve a purpose, as a lot of what the Animorphs bear witness to is a little beyond their comprehension.  Ax actually services context for this series, because while the surface of Animorphs is kids with superpowers fighting aliens, the people who write it care enough to craft a lore for it.  While a lot of it can be simple or derivative, there is thought put into it, and Ax becomes a character that's familiar enough with it to relate it to the characters who are ignorant to it.

That being said, the Animorphs are not very receptive to it initially.  There's a very weird rejection in the third act to just how bad the Yeerks are.  Ax relates that the Yeerks leave the worlds they conquer a barren wasteland, and the Animorphs are like "No, why would they?  YOU LYIN'!  WHY DO YOU LIE?"  I mean, I know these characters are kids, but they do know they're fighting bad guys right?  Did they think they were just infesting everyoneçs heads so they can go home and watch TV?  The moment is played as the Animorphs rejecting the size of the battle they've inherited, but they're fighting aliens who have been shooting disintegration rays at them.  Does this really make it that much bigger?

On that note, if there's something that bugs me about this one it's that the emotional response opposing logical response is a bit inconsistent, even if our main characters are 13.  Cassie is our narrator this time, and she's a much calmer head than the others, though her emotions tend to get the better of her.  She has this weird idea in her head that being able to turn into animals is "as bad as the Yeerks," and the logic she employs for it is completely backwards.  She sees morphing into animals as "controlling" them, but the idea of the morphing is that the being being morphed into is the same as the one who morphed, it's just a new body.  The mind is yours, the mind is always yours.  You're not controlling a creature, you're controlling yourself, you've just changed the form of your own body.

That's not to say she doesn't have an argument, I think she just saya it wrong.  If she related her uneasiness with "If someone stole my DNA and copied my body, I'd be freaked out and feel violated."  See, that's a valid point, but she never makes it.  And the book could even work it in with the conclusion where Ax acquires each of the Animorphs as being something of a climax to that reluctance.  But they didn't.  This is a missed opportunity.

But Cassie is of many conflicting opinions.  She's uncertain of a lot of things, and a lot of The Message is about her learning to trust herself.  She makes decisions in this book, and she regrets them because they have consequences, unable to cope with the fact that any action creates a reaction.  The person who helps her cope with this is surprisingly Marco, who the writers are still trying to make likable.  They're getting better at it, but the next book is a Marco book, and that fact sends shivers up my spine.  So I don't think they've quite succeeded at it yet.