Animorphs is a book series written by on KA Applegate. They are mainly aimed at 12 - 16 year olds, though exibit a mild 'Harry Potter' effect, ie older people like them too. The series tells the story of a group of Human kids who are trying desperately to resist a secret alien invasion. Their only weapon is the power to 'morph' into any animal they touch, a power granted to them by the dying Andalite* Prince Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul as a last resort to save our endangered planet. The only problem: their enemy, the Yeerks, are completely ruthless, incredibly secretive, and have enormous numbers.

The Books

The original Animorphs book, The Invasion, was published in the USA in 1996 and the series has now grown to include approximately 45. Though the books are rather short and done in large type, don't be fooled. They expose the full psychological effects of war on Humans, and are rarely simple scifi adventures. They focus more on the toll exacted by constant battle on the hearts and minds of people to whom the whole thing was never meant to happen. The characters frequently question the morality of what they are doing and if there is really any point to it; though they achieve a large number of small victories, the invasion relentlessly marches on. Even what victories they do manage to grab sometimes turn bad, with free Yeerk traitors being terminated and security being raised on Yeerk projects.

As has been said, the defenders' sole weapon is the power to morph. They do this by touching animals and 'aquiring' them, or extracting a sample of their DNA to use as a template for the new form. All it takes to aquire an organism is to touch it and think about it. This generally (though does not always) put the animal into a trance, the effects of which continue for about ten seconds afterwards. This means that one have a way to make escape easier if they find themselves face to face with a tiger, and also means that the animal does not run away while they're copying its genetic plan.

To aquire the ability to morph, a small blue box called an 'Escafil device' is used. The way it is used in the books is by the one to receive the power touching the top while an Andalite touches the bottom. Though it is never specifically said that an Andalite must be involved in the process, that is the general belief. Once in an aquired form, one may stay that way for two earth hours. After that time, they will be stuck like that forever. This happens to Tobias at the end of the book one, but he later regains his powers after an encounter with an Ellimist.

"Morphing is not some neat, sensible, process where you gradually become something else." This quote, or a variant of it, appears in every book. Once one starts, they first of all change size*, and various bady parts sprout of their own accord. One can feel their bones grinding and internal organs reshaping and rearranging themselves. It feels like a Novocaine injection from a dentist - one knows it should hurt, but it doesn't. Each book also features a flicker-book style series in the bottom left corner of one of the characters morphing, generally from a human into an animal, though there are other things. These images are also shown in a brief series of overlapping pictures on the front cover. While morphed, one can communicate telepathically, either to just one person, to a few, or to everybody within range. This telepathy has about the same range as normal speech, but is not affected by barriers and can be understood by anyone, no matter what their language or intelligence.

The books make out that the narrators are not safe, and the Yeerks are everywhere. They all begin with something along the lines of 'My name is Jake, and I can't tell you my last name, or where I live*. It's too dangerous. If the Yeerks find us, it's all over'. The books are all entitled The [something], eg The Invasion, The Visitor, The Encounter, etc. They are alternately told from the point of view of each animorph, in the order Jake, Rachel, Tobias/Ax*, Cassie, and Marco. Each gives their own slant on the war and how the others all seem to react.

Characters

Jake

Jake is the leader by common consent. No one elected him, they just all kind of followed him, and when Ax asked who their Prince (leader) was, everyone turned to Jake. Jake is generally seen as being some sort of general, and has had a lot of growing up to do in a very short period of time. Though the Animorph's ages are never revealed, 14 is generally seen as being a good approximation. Jake has to act like a military commander of about 40, and take responsibilty for almost all dangers faced by the rest of the group. For this reason, the war has hit him the hardest. Jake's brother, Tom, is a Controller*.

Rachel

Marco sums up Rachel pretty well - "Has it all - looks and brains." Rachel is the bravest warrior, though as she herself is fond of saying, bravery is not about lack of fear - that's insanity. Bravery is about being afraind and doing it anyway. Whenever the team are deciding whether or not to undertake a mission, Rachel is the first to say "I'm in!" She has coped remarkably well with her parents' divorce, and takes gymnastics classes.

Tobias

Tobias, through a rather complicated series of events, is actually Elfangor's son, but is a Human, or at least, he was. He never knew his father and his mother disappeared when he was about four, and he ended up being shunted back and forth across the country between an aunt and uncle who don't really want him, and don't even try to find him after he 'disappears'. At the end of book 1, Tobias becomes trapped in hawk form, which causes him great mental anguish, but he later gets over it and in fact tends to be the most cheerful (or at least the least maudlin) of the team. For the most part, Tobias lives like a hawk, but talks to his friends every day, and often flies into the local park to read over people's shoulders. With his hawk's eyes, he can do this from great distances. In book 13, he regains his power to morph, albeit with his hawk body as his basic form. Tobias is often described as their first casualty, and Rachel tends to get rather protective of him.

Cassie

Cassie is the daughter of two vets, and Marco calls a tree-hugger due to her highly pacific (and vegetarian) nature. She and her dad rescue sick and injured animals and heal them in their barn, and it is from here that the Animorphs obtain most of their animal forms. Cassie regularly wishes she could quit the whole war and just go back to the way things were, stop the fighting, or maybe find some sort of peaceful solution. This is not to be. She has a crush on Jake and no fashion sense.

Marco

Marco is the joker in the pack, though this is his way of coping. His philosophy, which his mother thought him before she dsappeared, is that you can either look at the world as sad or funny. For example, it is sad that hundreds of poeple are killed in war, but funny that people get that obsessed over a useless patch of desert land. However, when the subject gets up close and personal (ie his mother), then even Marco cannot laugh it off. He is highly suspicious, but this makes him good at seeing past the surface of things. He also knows that occasionally, it is better to seem insane than reasonable.

Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthil

Ax is Elfangor's brother and the sole survivor of the Andalite force sent to save Earth, which, if it is captured by the Yeerks, will make them unstoppable due to sheer numbers. Having an Andalite is not as good as it might seem, since Ax is just a young apprentice warrior, and indeed is pretty much the Andalite counterpart to the Animorphs. Still, compared to Humans, he is hyper-intelligent and knows a lot about the various aliens they encounter, plus has an extremely accurate biological clock. When he narrates a book, he gives a very quirky account of Human society ("Humans wear clothes because they believe many parts of their bodies to be unacceptable. They are correct, but about the wrong parts. There is nothing uglier than a Human nose." - from book 8, The Alien). Ax's Human morph is a male combination of attributes from the other Animorphs, except for Tobias, who was still a permanently hawk when they found him. Since they are both outsiders, Ax and Tobias form a deep friendship, known to Andalites as shorm. Since Andalites have no mouths, Ax's desperation to experience taste tends to get them into trouble. His favourite food is chocolate, followed by chilli and cigarette stubs.

Visser Three

Visser Three, as his name suggests, is third in charge of the Yeerk army, and is also in charge of the invasion of Earth. He is the only Andalite-Controller in the galaxy. His Andalite body is that of the disgraced Alloran-Semitur-Corass, who attempted to prevent the Yeerks from conquering the Hork-Bajir by using a 'molecular virus,' a forbidden weapon of lethal proportions, as described in The Hork-Bajir Chronicles, a prequel to Animorphs. Elfangor also had a role to play in Alloran becoming a controller, which is described in The Andalite Chronicles. Visser Three has a lesser favoured twin, Esplin 9466, and is unaware that the Animorphs are not Andalites. A number of his underlings suspect the truth, but they are too afraid to make mention of it.

Erek

Erek is a Chee, a race of dog-like humanoid androids. Though he appears about 14, he is actually incredibly ancient, and know more than anyone else on Earth (except for the other Chee). He occasionally joins the Animorphs on their missions, but he programming does not allow him to fight.

Aliens

Obviously, no scifi series would be complete without a selection of weird aliens, and Animorphs is no exception. Check these guys out:

Andalites

Resembling blue centaurs with no mouths, scorpion tails, seven fingers on each hand, and two auxilliary stalk eyes, the Andalites like to portray themselvs as the galactic good guys, but in fact are arrogant to the point where they will refuse any and all help, whatever good it maight do. They have a strict law called Seerow's Kindness which forbids giving advanced technology to more primitive races, named after the Andalite Prince who gave the Yeerks the ability to travel through space. They eat through their hooves. Though they tell their people that they are doing well in the war against the Yeerks, they are in fact losing.

Yeerks

A race of parasites, similar to the Gou'uld in Stargate. Yeerks enter a host though the ear and attach to the brain, linking their neurons so that the host is completely dominated and the Yeerk has access to all of the host's memories. The host cannot access the Yeerk's memories beyond what the Yeerk decides to show them, but may feel the Yeerk's emotions. There is no way to tell if someone is possessed by a Yeerk, as they will behave exactly the same as they always have. Yeerks must leave their host every three days to enter a 'Yeerk pool' and soak up 'Kandrona Rays,' waves emmitted from a machine designed to simulate the Yeerk's home sun. If they do not get this regular Kandrona fix, they will die. The supreme Yeerk authority is the Council of Thirteen, and below that, there are around 42 'Vissers,' which are basically generals. Visser Three is the only Andalite Controller, and Visser One inhabits the body of Marco's mother. One who is possessed by a Yeerk in known as a Controller.

Gedds

Asymmetrical, stupid, monkey-like organisms with poor powers of sight. The original hosts of the Yeerks. Given to low-ranking Yeerks.

Hork-Bajir

Very tall with a lot of blades and claws, but are actually very peaceful, who feed on nothing more dangerous than tree bark. The Yeerks, however, use their claws and blades for killing. They are not spectacularly intelligent, and their native language contains a mere 500 words. Every so often, a 'seer' is born to them, supposedly to guide them through a dangerous phase, but is actually just the random result of suppressed intelligence popping up despite advanced genetic engineering. The Hork-Bajir were first created by a race called the Arn as guardians of a delicate ecosystem which they created in order to survive after an asteroid collided with their home planet. There is a colony of free Hork-Bajir living in a romote mountain range on Earth, which the Yeerks are always trying to find. Yeerks use the Hork-Bajir for combat.

Taxxons

Giant, carnivorous, cannibalistic centipedes, whose hunger is so intense not even a Yeerk cane control it. The Taxxon home world is mostly barren wasteland, and the race submitted to Yeerk control voluntarily. There is a small group of rebel Taxxons fighting against the Yeerks on the home world. Taxxons-Controllers are generally used for technical jobs.

Leerans

A race of giant telepathic frogs, with tenacles in place of front legs. Visser One is leading the invasion of the Leeran home world, using Yeerk-implanted, genetically enhanced hammerhead sharks as soldiers. Leeran telepathy prevents the Yeerks from using their normal tactics of gradualy assimilating all intelligent races on a planet.

Helmacrons

A female-dominated race of 2mm tall humanoid insects, intent on conquering the galaxy in toy-like spaceships. They can use an Escafil Device to shrink other organisms to their level. The Animorphs defeat them by enlarging a group of males and sending them back to their home world to lead a revolution. With the way Helmacron minds operate, this will take an extraordinarily long time.

Ellimists

Their original form is unknown, and their very existence is considered by many of the more intelligent races to be nothing more than the intergalactic equivalent of a fairy tale. The Ellimists were once simply organic beings, but their technology progressed to a stage where they successfully screwed with time, and ended up as a race of pan-dimensional, omniscient, potentially omnipotent beings; in short, gods. One of them shows up in the series from time to time to send the animorphs on various errands, despite them having a strict (and frequently broken) code of not interfereing in the affairs of other races. They tend to get around this by finding loopholes, generally by getting some members of those other races carry out their desires. Elfangor also has an encounter with one in The Andalite Chronicles, where he sees one in its true form: "An indescribable being of light and time and space."*. The ultimate aim of all Ellimists is for all other races to live together in peace and harmony.

Crayak

A single being, enemy on the Ellimists and just as powerful. Part organic, part machine, sits on a throne kilometres tall, and has a single, enormous, all-seeing eye. Crayak believes that there should only be one race in the Universe, and that race under his control. To this end, he created the Howlers. Crayak is first seen at the end on book 6,when the Yeerk that has entered Jake's brain dies, but it is not for some time that the true significance of this is revealed.

Pemalites and Chee

The Pemalites are a race of humanoid canines, and the Chee are their robotic creations. The Pemalite home world was once an idyllic place of total harmony, and the race's advanced science was used only to perpetuate peace and love. When they developed a robot that could tell a joke (the first Chee), they held a celebration that lasted a year.

However, their peace was eventually shattered when the Howlers appeared and started a massacre. The Howlers used both lasers and germ warfare, but their most lethal weapon was their namesake: the howls. All Pemalites, upon hearing it, dropped dead after a few minutes, but the Chee were unaffected. They evacuated the planet, taking the last few Pemalites with them; Pemalites that were all close to death due to the Howlers' germ warfare.

The Chee landed on Earth with a mere six Pemalites still alive. Seeing no way to save their creators, the Chee transplanted the souls of the last Pemalites into wolves, since wolves were genetically the closest animals on the planet. This gave rise to super-emotional, almost always happy dogs. The Chee, meanwhile, stayed to help their creators, using holograms to appear as humans. These holograms are super-advanced, even appearing to age, but insect eyes can see through them. Every few years, the Chee seem to die, but in fact just load a new hologram. Though incredibly intelligent and sophisticated, the Chee are specifically programmed to be incapable of violence. They believe that all life is sacred, and to this end, work in some ways to free humanity from Yeerk oppression, but also to preserve the Yeerks.

Howlers

A race of war-like cyborgs created by Crayak, whose only purpose is to wipe out all other life. Though they are equipped with eyes that automatically scan other life forms and detect weaknesses, built-in guns and high intelligence, their greatest weapon is their namesake. The Howlers are the most dangerous race in the entire Universe, and the only way to defeat them is to outsmart them - which is actually surprisingly easy, since their knowledge tends to be fairly empirical.

Iskoort

A race off Yeerks from the distant future, who saw that what they were doing was wrong and so genetically engineered bodies specifically for themselves to inhabit, bodies with no will of their own, who could not, in fact, survive without a Yeerk - or, as they know themselves, Yoort. The Yoort also gentically engineered themselves so that they could only inhabit, this new body, which they called an Isk (Isk + Yoort = Iskoort). The Ellimist and Crayak each set a team of champions to fight over the Iskoort on their behalfs - the Ellimist chooses the Animorphs and Erek; Crayak chooses seven Howlers.

Skrit Na

The Skrit Na drive flying saucers and their life cycle is divided into two stages. The primary stage, the Skrit, resembles a huge, many-legged cockroach, and is quite stupid. After a few years, it spins a cocoon, and a few months later, a Na hatches. The Na are the series' obligatory take on the 'Gray,' (typical Roswell-Area 51-type) alien, is quite intelligent, and Na run the civilisation of the species. The Skrit Na are a race of collectors, extracting samples of organic life from various planets and bringing it back to their own world. Why they do this is not known.

Conclusion

In 1999, Animorphs was converted into a short-lived TV series on BBC and Nickelodeon. Despite the popularity of the books, the TV series was a critical and commercial flop. People simply weren't interested, though it didn't help matters that the series deviated a lot from the books and lacked many of the anti-war undertones of the books. The books, themselves, however, continued to sell extremely well. If you want to read a series about the true effects of war, a scifi conspiracy series where the Humans are losing, or feel you have outgrown Harry Potter, then Animorphs is well worth checking out.