Review by veraamber - The Capture

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veraamber 's review for:

The Capture by K.A. Applegate

4.75

dark sad tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

I know we all dunk on Temrash, but man, that guy is an idiot. I find it hard to believe he reacts so negatively to seeing an Andalite in person when we know he has extensive experience interacting with Visser Three. It's also quite a coincidence that of any of the Yeerks in the jacuzzi, Temrash is the one to

infest Jake, his former host's brother

. A lot of coincidences in this series can be attributed to (book 7 spoilers)

the Ellimist directly meddling in events,

but this doesn't make sense to me as (book 7 spoilers)

an Ellimist plan. Making sure Marco encountered Visser One was important to motivate Marco to continue fighting, but Jake was already very motivated.

So this seems like a real coincidence rather than (book 7 spoilers)

intentionally manipulated to happen.

Otherwise, this book is excellent. I like the Animorphs figuring out the necessity of testing morphs, and seeing them try out a variety of different morphs for different situations (especially

directly counteracting Jake's morphs with the horned owl morph

). I loved seeing more information about the Yeerk homeworld and Yeerk emotions - especially that Yeerks permanently carry a piece of former hosts with them. This is our first look into the Yeerk psyche and why Yeerks (especially Visser Three) behave in the way that they do. I loved the first peek at (book 7 spoilers)

Crayak's physical form and how he's directly responsible for what the Yeerks are up to. I'm curious as to whether Temrash ever directly interacted with Crayak himself, of if Temrash's vision of Crayak is more of a genetic memory. Seerowpedia concludes that Crayak is personally showing a vision of himself to Jake, not Temrash, but I don't see textual evidence for that.

I also think "the Yeerk homeworld has very limited biodiversity" is a good explanation for why they're so unprepared to handle what the Animorphs get up to. However, I find it tough to believe a planet's ecosystem could evolve to have Gedd and Yeerks - both very anatomically complex animals - while only having ~100 animal species on the entire planet. Even if the entire planet is one biome (or only a small portion of the planet is inhabitable), that seems unlikely without major extinction events that somehow left the Gedd untouched.

In other positives, this book is only the second victory of any kind against the Yeerks (after nearly failing to destroy the Yeerk's truck ship). Jake personally

kills hundreds of Yeerks in the jacuzzi and prevents the infestation of the governor

. Of course, this was not an easy victory, as we see from the direct emotional trauma caused by Temrash.

Content Warnings