Hi Jared,
This might be one of the most useful books to the series. Maybe not the best, but a lot happens in a very short amount of time.
Title: The Alien
Series: Animorphs; Book 8
Author: K. A. Applegate
Genre: Science Fiction
Audience: Youth
ROTS Setting: CU, Modern, Aliens
Synopsis: What would you do if you were the only alien trapped on a strange planet? Probably freak out, right? Well, that’s what Ax feels like doing. But as an Andalite warrior-cadet, he has to be pretty cool about stuff like that. He’s been hanging out with the Animorphs ever since the Dome ship was destroyed by the Yeerks and his brother, Prince Elfangor, was destroyed by Visser Three. Life on Earth is pretty different for Ax. But there is one thing he, Cassie, Marco, Jake, Rachel, and Tobias have in common. Something that one alien, four kids and a hawk know they have to do: stop the Yeerks…
Recommendation: Highly recommend this series.
First, this is Ax’s first POV book. He doesn’t get very many in the series but they’re usually informative. Ax is, of course, an alien. An Andalite to be specific. He’s young and stranded on Earth during the same battle that ended with Elfangor, his older brother, giving the Animorphs the power to morph. He’s also a bit odd…. you know, alien. In this book he’s continuing his attempts to learn about humans and it goes hilariously bad. Along the way he must decide whether to side with his human friends or with his own people even though they are “about a billion Earth miles” away. In the end it does wonders for Ax’s character and really cements his place on the team.
The plot is good from Ax’s perspective, but the behavior of the others felt a bit off from the previous books. They’re suddenly suspicious of Ax and I never felt that in the previous books.
My biggest grip is the “billion Earth miles” comments that Ax makes twice in the book when describing how far away his homeworld is. Either his conversion between units and his math is wrong, which is unlikely given how he is with numbers, or this is an error on the part of the person writing it, or it was intentional just like how they won’t say their last names or the name of towns and stuff. For secrecy. I’m inclined to go with the latter. (BTW, a billion Earth miles would put it somewhere between Saturn and Uranus. Also 1 light year is close to 5 trillion miles.) Which means we can’t glean any useful information in regards to where or how far away the Andalite homeworld is……dang it!
Anyway, it’s a good book and a welcome addition to the story and how the Andalites factor into everything.
Robert
Links
The Secret; Book 9 >>
Reading Over The Shoulder 