Book Review: The Hork-Bajir Chronicles by K. A. Applegate

Book #295 of 2021:

The Hork-Bajir Chronicles by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs Chronicles #2)

This prequel is the richest and most complex entry in the Animorphs franchise yet, even more so than The Andalite Chronicles, which I believe was the last time in this series reread that I ventured that claim. It’s also the earliest installment we’ve gotten so far — not counting time-travel to the Cretaceous period! — transporting readers back to the Yeerks’ original escape from their homeworld and subsequent invasion of the Hork-Bajir planet.

One of the biggest surprises to (re)discover as an adult is that this encounter is nevertheless set in our year 1968, a mere three decades prior to the events of the main novels. Either I didn’t pick up on that detail as a kid or it just didn’t strike me as remarkable, but the fact that the Yeerk Empire and its enslavement of multiple species has all been forged within living memory seems like a vital piece of context for their campaign against the earth and occasional strategic missteps here, not to mention their failure to contain the resistance band of our regular heroes. Although they appear to carry the advantage of superior power and technology, the alien warmongers are still somewhat figuring all this out as they go along. The Andalite morphing capability is likewise a fairly new invention at this point, not yet in widespread use and unknown to the Yeerks, and the nonintervention principle of Seerow’s Kindness is not as hard and firm as it will seem to Aximili as a child.

But back to the tale at hand. An initial framing device finds the Animorph Tobias visiting the colony of free Hork-Bajir that he helped liberate in #13 The Change, where he accepts their invitation to settle in for a campfire story. Despite these creatures’ apparent simplicity — the hawk-boy notes that he’s expecting to hear something like, “Yeerks come. Bad. Fighting. Yeerks win. We lose.” — he is somehow caught and immersed, with the three alternating perspectives of the rest of the book representing what he learns that night. There are no humans at all in the ensuing narrative, but the different extraterrestrial cultures that emerge are fleshed-out and engaging.

Following a brief scene of the Yeerks overpowering their Andalite guards to steal ships and whisk a quarter million of their slug-like population offplanet, abusing the trust of the prince who had generously shared knowledge of such things with them, we skip forward two years to that disgraced soldier’s posting in an obscure system, where he’s been assigned to study the native lifeforms and nominally be on the lookout for signs of enemy activity (but mostly stay out of the way of the distant galactic war effort). With him are his wife, son, and daughter Aldrea, the latter of whom is one of our new narrators. She strikes up a friendship with another, the Hork-Bajir Dak Hamee, who has an intelligence far beyond anything else seen in his species. He is a seer, born once in a generation to help navigate an upcoming change, or so the elders say. He already displays an advanced intellect, but with his new friend to teach him further, his mind blossoms into levels of insight and reasoning that neither of them could have predicted.

The relationship of these two figures is the core of the text, an affectionate connection that’s fraught with arrogant colonialist condescension regardless, as Dak is increasingly quick to point out. The widening gulf between him and his people is soon mirrored on her side, especially after the Yeerks do show up and slaughter her family. In the fierce-looking but gentle Hork-Bajir — their claws are designed for stripping bark off trees, not fighting — the parasites seem to have identified their perfect next host bodies. With no assistance from the Andalites expected for months, our protagonists are forced to fight back themselves and train his brethren to become guerilla warriors: a route they are happy to adopt unquestioningly but that he considers a heartbreaking yet necessary corruption.

That mixture of hope and sorrow is essential to this title, which is both bleak and suffused with a blazing spirit. It’s ultimately a tragedy, as we knew it would be from the start. The pacifistic herbivores are destined to be imperial shock troops, wholly conquered and made to serve their masters. This is a losing battle, and when reinforcements finally arrive, Aldrea is disgusted by their patronizing attitude and horrified to discover they’re developing a biological weapon to kill off Dak’s race and keep them from being used as tools for their foes. (The Arn, a civilization of genetic manipulators dwelling in cliffs deep in the planet’s interior who actually created the Hork-Bajir for environmental control, similarly opt not to commit to helping the species they see as weak children, instead simply altering their own biology to prevent infestation — a move that results in their capture as raw slave labor for the Yeerks.) But she and Dak continue waging their hopeless struggle, growing ever closer in their commitment and despair and inadvertently inspiring future Hork-Bajir like the ones Tobias knows — as well as forming a cautionary parallel for humanity’s own invasion that he’s been witnessing and attempting to resist.

The third viewpoint woven throughout this novel is that of Esplin 9466, the Yeerk who will one day be known by his military rank of Visser Three. He’s not really a sympathetic character, but he offers us our first extended look at how his race sees the universe and their role in it. Like Aftran 942 in #19 The Departure, he paints a brutal picture of life outside a host and the ecstasy of mobility and senses within one. He plays an important part in the subjugation of the Hork-Bajir too, much as we previously saw him do for the Taxxons in The Andalite Chronicles, later in his personal timeline.

Overall, this is an excellent space opera with complicated heroes and villains that strengthens the worldbuilding and history of this saga yet could also stand alone as an independent read or introduction to it, given the minimal spoilers or required background information. With war crimes of allies that are rightly condemned, heroic sacrifices in a tragically doomed cause, nuanced discussions of morality and self-determination, and a G-rated interspecies romance, it may be the single best Animorphs volume of the lot.

[Content warning for sexism and gore.]

★★★★★

Like this review?
–Throw me a quick one-time donation here!
https://ko-fi.com/lesserjoke
–Subscribe here to support my writing and weigh in on what I read next!
https://patreon.com/lesserjoke
–Follow along on Goodreads here!
https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/6288479-joe-kessler
–Or click here to browse through all my previous reviews!
https://lesserjoke.home.blog