Book Review: The Revelation by K. A. Applegate

Book #88 of 2022:

The Revelation by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs #45)

[Note: Spoiler warning! It was too hard to write a review for this book without going into significant detail about its various surprises.]

This series has been spinning its wheels for a while now, putting out volumes that are sometimes better and sometimes worse but generally pretty episodic overall, doing little to alter the status quo and advance any larger plot. Luckily, all of that changes here, in spectacularly thrilling fashion. Marco’s dad is working on a research project that discovers evidence of zero-space — a development Ax is hilariously miffed about, showing his usual Andalite concern / jealousy over the speed of human technological progress — and could soon allow earth to communicate instantly with anywhere else in the universe. The Yeerks understandably want to keep that under wraps, and swoop in to take all the engineers as Controllers. Only Marco, who has already lost one parent to the enemy, can’t stand to sit back and watch it happen again with his customary detached strategic analysis. He jumps in and saves his dad, bringing our first instance of an Animorph coming clean to their family about the ongoing alien invasion and the kids’ secret resistance campaign against it.

It’s a major coming-of-age moment, which on this reread reminds me of Joyce Summers finally learning about her daughter Buffy‘s extracurricular habit of vampire-slaying. It’s exciting for the narrative to no longer have to sneak around that particular obstacle, and it forces a parental reckoning of how the young protagonist has grown up, in many ways reversing the ordinary child/guardian dynamic with the assertion of familiarity in this strange and dangerous world. To the extent that these novels are allegorical for normal teenage life, with its confusing physical changes and deadly serious drama, Marco is crossing a recognizable threshold here into adult maturity and responsibilities. And his father must grapple not only with the loss of his comfortable existence in society and his new status as a fugitive among the free Hork-Bajir colony, but also with the realization that his little boy has become a hardened soldier willing to kill and die for the mission.

Marco’s days as a regular teen are over now too, which is perhaps even more surprising of a shift. Realizing that the Yeerks will aim to take him and his stepmom in order to control the situation, he has the Chee fake his death to shut down that avenue of a lead. From now on, he will be living off the grid with those pacifist robots, the biggest upset in a character’s home life since Tobias got stuck as a hawk way back in book #1. (I don’t quite get why our narrator would live somewhere different than his father, though.)

Working together, Ax and Marco’s dad are able to finish constructing the z-space device, which is the only element of this story that feels a bit too conveniently coincidental to me, as they immediately learn that Visser One, the nominal Yeerk leader whose host is his mother, has been brought home to be executed by Kandrona starvation for treason. It’s the culmination of a long-running power struggle between her and the more merciless Visser Three, and another great sign of the series plot moving forward. The Animorphs rush to the side of their tentative ally, although it’s not clear whether the plan is to do something to restore her leadership position and stop her rival from launching the all-out war he favors, or simply to prevent her from sharing their secrets and to rescue Marco’s mom. In any event, amid the chaos of another exhilarating Yeerk pool action sequence, it’s the latter task that wins out as Edriss 562’s winding journey comes to a definitive close. The human host has been saved, but the way is cleared for the team’s brutal adversary to become the new military commander.

In one last twist of the knife, Marco sees his parents unexpectedly reunited, but only because in a return of his usual coldness, he’s left his stepmother to be seized by the Yeerks and falsely implied to his dad that she might have been a Controller all along and their relationship nothing but a ploy. It’s a sting that helps mitigate the treacly unlikeliness of this happily-ever-after, and an appropriately somber note to end on as the heroes finally make contact with the Andalite fleet across the galaxy and really kick off the series endgame.

I’ve almost given this title a full five stars, in recognition of ghostwriter Ellen Geroux surpassing even her typical skill to deliver a rousing and continuity-heavy adventure. There are just a few of those small details that stand out as minor weaknesses, although I’d still say this is one of the stronger later installments of the franchise overall.

[Content warning for body horror, gun violence, and gore.]

★★★★☆

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