Animorphs #31: The Conspiracy Plot: Jake and the family going on a long trip due to a death in the family -- they have to get to the funeral. The only problem is that they're going to be gone longer than three days, which leaves Tom in a little bind. He could force him to go to a meeting of the Sharing, in which case Jake's father would be happy to let Tom stay and yet another family member made a Controller. Or, if that doesn't work, he might be forced to kill him.  So Jake, too has a decision to make, which life is more important, and which fate is more horrible?

Main Plot Points:

• Jake's great-grandfather, Grampa G, died suddenly, and the family had to travel away for his funeral. The problem is that they'll be gone for more than three days . . .
• Tom tries to take Jake's dad to a meeting of The Sharing to infest him.
• Trying to get Yeerk attention away from Tom and his dad, Jake and the gang kidnaps Chapman.
• Before the wake, Tom tries to kill Jake's dad.

Personality Conflicts:

• Jake, Jake Jake. You know just a couple weeks ago I had praised you for being levelheaded and rational? Well in this book, Jake is on the verge of going insane -- he even admits it to the group. However, just like in #6, his friends are always there for him even when he insists on going it alone.
• Marco and he are having a little tensions about this. They've both had these little "family matters" going on, they just dealt with them in different ways.
• Ax is getting a little ticked off at Jake. As Jake said "I'm Ax's prince, but the whole respect thing goes only so far." He's also a little angry at him for making him pull the whole thing with kidnapping Chapman. Think he's on his way to declaring his independence from Jake? (a free-thinking Andalite? He'll be the first in thirty years . . .)

Notes and Observations:

• Marco says "We spent a really unpleasant afternoon in the middle of World War II, you many recall," (in a discussion about wars) referring to their little quantum leaping in MM3. Yet Jake wasn't there: he died in the Revolutionary War and didn't come back until they averted John Barryman's birth in the 1960's.
• Jake and Tom (or whoever it is controlling Tom right now) have had their first really meaningful conversation in the entire series. They were talking about the morals versus the "just win," sides of war. It was interesting because they both had their own double meanings. Jake would say something, supposedly about Grampa G, that was really about the Animorphs-Yeerk war, and Tom would say something, supposedly what a skeptical teenage boy would say, that was really his own views on the war of his people, though he couldn't let Jake know that. Then Jake would respond to the Yeerk via his moralistic thinking, not revealing to Tom who he really was. It was a wonderful scene.
• Incidentally, Tom tried to use the SS dagger that he and Jake were talking about to murder Jake's dad. It makes sense that he wouldn't try to drown him --- after all, he could "swim like a fish," though there was that current (I really don't think that was the Animorphs) which is very probable if it was a manmade lake --Tom should have known about it, though. Back to the point, it seems strange that Tom would murder Jake's dad in a way that would so strongly point to him. But then again, he was about to die and getting pretty desperate.

Unanswered Questions:

• As in #30, we have a case of Controller family members knowing a bit too much about one's identity. Although Tom didn't look at the tiger and say "Whoa, you're Jake, aren't you?" it seemed slightly suspicious about the tiger, then poof!, there's Jake. And Jake said, "I'd attack, and he'd know I was the enemy." Does Tom suspect, and ,if so, will he tell? This brings us to the #30 problem -- K.A. might as well have come out and said that Visser One is still alive. I was waiting for this book to see if there were any references, but none detected. Maybe we'll have to wait until the next Marco book.

Comments:
This was one of the best Animorphs books I've read in a long while. Before it came out, everyone was saying "It's ghostwritten, so I know it's going to suck." However, it definitely did not suck. Even though it was ghostwritten, the writing was very much like KA's, and either she did a lot of editing on the final copy, or we really need to get Laura Battyanyi-Wiess into a long-term contract before she leaves to do her own series. Plus it focuses on an important but often pushed-aside element that has been introduced from Book #1.

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