Book #112 of 2022:
The Return by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs #48)
At this point in the Animorphs series, the overarching plot of the Yeerk invasion and teenage guerilla resistance war is entering its endgame. The companion books are all finished, and each of the six core protagonists has one more adventure to relate to us, before a final volume they’ll narrate together (a Megamorph in all but name). Starting off that sequence is this story, our last solo tale from Rachel.
I only wish it were stronger! There are definitely some interesting component elements here, but they pull against one another in their effectiveness and lose further momentum by being initially couched in a tedious structure of recursive dreams within dreams. See, Rachel is having nightmares where she chafes at Jake’s caution and challenges him for the team’s leadership, alongside hearing mysterious whispers, seeing a creepy red light, and feeling guilty over the measures she took way back in #22 The Solution to trap the group’s recruit-turned-enemy David as a rat. She repeatedly wakes, only to later realize that she’s simply caught in a different dream now. It’s not even clear when exactly she comes to for real — assuming that she ever does — but it’s at least a fifth of the way through the text, which is pretty far in for that sort of gambit.
It turns out, of course, that the arch-evil entity Crayak and his servant the Drode are behind these visions, and when they finally reveal themselves, they also bring their reality-bending powers to bear, which is why it’s so hard to decide how much of the entire experience is/isn’t an illusion. In a flash, the heroine can go from being a rat stuck in a box to her regular human self to that bizarre construct on the cover, the powerful yet monstrous “Super-Rachel.” It’s a temptation narrative, and these demons are offering the teen the ability to save the world from the Yeerks at the awful cost of a friend’s life (first Cassie and then Jake). If she refuses, they threaten her with the same nothlit fate that she brought upon David.
That old foe is here too, still a rat and at first presented as the mastermind behind Rachel’s kidnapping and imprisonment — a convoluted scheme involving human henchmen he’s paid off with money his small size somehow let him steal — before she realizes that he must have had help from someone like Crayak. I understand the impulse to bring back both of these antagonists one last time, and including them in a single encounter is reasonably efficient storytelling. But they represent fundamentally distinctive sorts of threats to Rachel, and author K. A. Applegate / ghostwriter Kimberly Morris never quite manage to get those working in tandem. Crayak’s games are disorienting to goad the narrator into hasty action, while David’s ruthlessness holds a mirror up to her own in an effort to get her to admit that they are equal and thus equally deserving of punishment. These separate ideas are not necessarily incompatible, and Rachel’s answer to both eventually hinges on her protesting that she’s one of the good guys, rather than a vicious champion who could topple and replace Visser One as earth’s conqueror or a cold-blooded killer like David. But the plot doesn’t link all this together as smoothly or explicitly as I’d like.
And for me personally, the rat side of things is the more successful storyline, anyway. Crayak and Super-Rachel and the dream nonsense is all a distraction from the compelling angle of throwing one of the girl’s most shameful acts back at her in a moment when she’s already feeling self-doubt about her role on a team with her apparently less-bloodthirsty friends. Downgrading David to merely another Crayak subordinate is a waste, especially when it’s a foregone conclusion that she won’t ultimately accept the terms of his nefarious offer. There’s something safe and almost quaint about tempting Rachel with razor claws and crocodile skin, but David’s accusations about her character in contrast still pack a wallop. I suspect that’s why he gets the final say in this title, exhausted and begging his long-time rival for death as she sits and weeps over him. The best writing decision in the whole book is to end in a tense ambiguity that keeps her eventual response from us, letting readers ponder for ourselves just who Rachel is and what she’s willing to do when called.
[Content warning for body horror, claustrophobia, drowning, gun violence, and gore.]
★★★☆☆
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