Reviews with content warning for Confinement - The Decision

Reviews tagging 'Confinement'

The Decision by K.A. Applegate

1 review

ramiel's review against another edition

adventurous emotional funny tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

In Ax's first book, way way long ago, his personal identity crisis was set as the struggle between his life on Earth vs. his life on the andalite home planet, and growing up in the military. It culminated in a decision to not keep secrets from his human friends, even if telling them would go against every direct order he's ever been given.

We're very proud of him.

This book takes things a step further. Instead of Ax speaking to another andalite via space Zoom, Ax finds himself on a real andalite ship, face to face and in person with other andalite warriors. The same problem applies, only magnifies itself: should he listen to the andalites, locking his human friends away and excluding them from the mission as he's told? Will he try to return home with the andalites?

(The answers, of course, are yes and yes, but as Animorphs books usually do, what Ax thinks he wants ends up backfiring horribly on him.)

My tail blade was at her throat before I knew it.
She stared at me with cool, blue human eyes. "What's the matter, Ax? Does the truth hurt? You blew us off so you could suck up to Captain Creep back there. If we go and find more Andalites, what happens? You tell us to go sit in a corner and be nice while you start yes, sir-ing ad no, sir-ing the next Andalite you see?"

Anyway, the details of this book are absolutely whack and 100% uses weird space-time nonsense to explain what's going on. If you remember from a previous book (I want to say it was a Rachel or Marco book), the kids found out that when they morphed into small animals, all their excess mass went into this place called Zero Space (where space means absolutely nothing). There's a chance that, if you morph something small enough, you'll end up popping into Zero Space instead.

It's supposed to be an impossibly small chance.

I looked around frantically. I turned my stalk eyes in every direction. I saw my own body, inside and out. An n-dimensional jigsaw puzzle, twisted so that I could see my own body.

Well... so is a space ship coming across you right as you're about to die in a Zero Space vacuum, but the kids are full of miracles these days.

We blame the Ellimist in this house.

Anyway, getting a little deeper into things:

Not only does Ax struggle with his "Earth vs. Andalites" duality here, but we also continue to see the effects of, checks notes, indoctrinating children into the military. Because, Ax is a child soldier like the rest of the kids, yes... but Ax also takes it one step further than them: he was in the Andalite military, he was born and brought up with these ideas of the honorable warrior and noble death and sacrifice and shaming "cowardice" (at a certain point Ax faces off against Visser 3, an actual adult probably twice his size, and feels ashamed and guilty for wanting to run away, even though he didn't even run away - these kids keep doing this) and all the other things war very much isn't.

Ax's first book also went into comparing giving morphing technology to the humans to how Seerow gave space faring technology to the Yeerks. In this one, we see an Andalite betray his crew to the Yeerks, leading to a full on ritualistic suicide. Ax wonders if, by firmly choosing Jake as his only leader after this event, he's not doing the exact same thing.

He's not, I'm pretty sure that one's more of a stretch, because the Captain actually was chill with everyone dying, but it was still an interesting part of Ax's development this book.

The doubts he has even after he's firmed his resolve.

Aside from Ax's identity crisis and self-loathing over perceived cowardice slash desire to prove himself afterwards: we finally get to see Leera!

Honestly, the Leerans are some of my favorite aliens in the Animorphs universe (I say this about nearly every alien as we come across them but I can't help it if they're good). They're a major threat as enemies, being able to read minds, and the kids get very close to being found out... but it turns out the Leerans are a major threat to the Yeerks as enemies too, because they manage to break the control of their Yeerks long enough to teach the kids how to free them. And they don't even die if you bite the Yeerk out of them.

Other things I found interesting:
There's a moment where Ax admits that Elfangor broke the laws of Seerow's Kindness and gave the kids morphing technology. It's interesting to me that the person who defends his actions is the traitor... I don't think Ax touches back on this, but that could have sent him into a whole other spiral.
<Elfangor was my friend as well as my prince. I'll believe he broke the rules. I'll never believe he did wrong.>

I mentioned that this does tell me that Elfangor broke rules all the fucking time after he rejoined the military too. Yolo.

Part of the plot is that you can use blood to acquire a morph... I feel like this was probably retconned or forgotten later but that brings up so many questions. I'm pretty sure you can't acquire something that's already dead... but what's the limit on that? How long can blood be out of the body before you can't morph it? And etc.

Moments that annoyed me:
A HUGE plot point is that there's a traitor among the Andalites, which Ax starts suspecting when he sees Visser 3 morph a bird that can only be found on the Andalite home planet. This is considered THE PROOF that there's a traitor and that Visser 3 has been on the Andalite home world recently. But... Alloran had morphing powers before Visser 3 took his body, and the kafit bird is stated in this very book to be a popular species for young Andalites to morph. Why would your first instinct be to assume it was Visser 3 who acquired that morph and not a younger Alloran?

The plot starts out with the kids trying to acquire some government guy Chapman hit with his car for reasons. Visser 3 wants the government guy fixed, but he's in a coma, and the doctors who work under Visser 3 apparently express doubt at being able to save him because whatever happened, it affected his brain stem. The brain stem, which controls breathing and also serves as the gateway for your brain to send messages to the rest of your body. It could be a mild damage, but they describe this guy as being in a coma. Not only does this man wake up, he wakes up totally fine like he was just taking a nap and tries to slap some mosquitoes away. Which... its possible the Yeerks managed some magicscience there, but listen...

Other Little Animorphs Things:
Doctor Coaldwin, the andalite doctor who was absolutely mad scientist-esque, was probably one of my favorite one-off characters. He just gets so excited about the humans and the Zero Space weirdness.

Ax shows off that he's learning sarcasm and how to make jokes. The opening scene is also him going absolutely ham for some Cinnabons and trying to steal some from people still trying to eat theirs. Obvious mood whiplash moments.

Marco and Rachel ganging up on Ax again just like in the last book because they're ruthless is still one of my favorite things.

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