Animorphs #6: The Capture Plot: It was really bad when Jake found out his older brother was one of them. It was even worse when Tobias stayed in his morph too long. But nothing compares to the horror the Animorphs are about to face. Nothing. Jake, Rachel, Tobias, Cassie and Marco have a feeling they know where the Yeerks' new base is located. And they've even figured out how to get in -- how many people notice a few flies on the wall? But they never figured they might get caught. Or that Jake could fall into the Yeerk pool. That Jake could become a human controller. A Yeerk. The enemy.

Main Plot Points:

• The Yeerks want to infest the mayor of the town, who is soon running for govorner.
• Jake gets infested -- eep!
• Big revelations during the fugue.

Characters Introduced/Mentioned:

• Temrash 114, the Yeerk who was previously Tom's controller, going to infest the mayor.

Morphs:

• Coachroach (Jake)
• Fly
• Jake (Ax)

Personality Conflicts:

• This book is mainly Jake-centered. Jake finds out about Tom and how he became captured. His main conflict here is between hope and despair. There are also some things about Tom we had previously had no idea of.
• The Animorphs have a conflict of their own, because they have to deal not only with attacking Jake, but also with the realization that the enemy could be any one of them -- they're not just Them as they'd like to think.

Notes and Observations:

• We get to see "inside" stuff of the Yeerks here, like how they live, how they think (well, this particular one at least, you ought know they're not all the same) and what its like for them to die.
• The term for the time when the Yeerk dies and its thoughts and memories all go frazzle in it's host's brain is called the "fugue." Not exactly familiar with that term, I looked it up. My American Language Dictionary defines fugue (among other things) as:
  A pathological amnesiac condition during which the patient is apparently conscious of his actions but on return to normal has no recollection of them. So that's why I hadn't heard of it --- I havn't taken AP Psychology yet. This isn't entirely accurate of what happens in a Yeerk's fugue, but it could have been formed on the basis of Yeerks' thought-transmiting as actions, and he/she/it has no control of them at this time.

Comments: Another gotta-read. Okay, Jake becomes a Controller, a big turning-point in the Tom subplot (you need to read this before reading #31). We also learn some stuff about Yeerks. Temrash, the Yeerk in this book, is your typical powerhungry conquerer, a dime-a-dozen steriotype as far as Yeerks go. Yet somehow he manages to convey a sense of being an individual, not just part of "The Enemy," but a mind that, if destroyed, is gone forever. This is kind of a forerunner to #19.

<= Book #5 |  Book #7 =>
        Books | Vortex