It's Animorphing Time: Book 7 - The Stranger
We get to meet The Ellimist and a bear rides an elevator.
Don’t worry, folks! I did not forget about my pledge to read all the Animorphs books! After a (extended) holiday hiatus, we are back on track to discuss the weirdest yet most endearing series from the late-90s marketed to children who had no idea the stranglehold it would have on their psyche.
Book 7 of the mainline Animorphs series is called The Stranger and we are back in the POV of Rachel, Jake’s cousin. After the hospital conspiracy in book 6, we take a more grounded and less conspiratorial premise with The Stranger until…
We start with Rachel and Cassie at the circus. As the pair witness the animal abuse and cruelty happening around them, they decide they are going to give the elephant trainer trauma about it. The trainer uses the electric cattle prods on the elephants which enrages the Animorphing pair.
Rachel morphs into an elephant in order to teach the trainer a lesson and we get another disgusting scene:
People say I’m pretty. I don’t know and I really don’t care. But I’ll tell you one thing - no one who has ever seen me morph into an elephant ever used the word “pretty” to describe it.
I felt the thickening of my legs and arms.
I watched as my skin grew leathery and gray as mud.
I felt a sudden sprouting of my trunk as my nose and upper lip seemed to explode outward.
“Pinocchio, eat your heart out,” Cassie whispered.
I felt the teeth in the front of my mouth run together, and then begin to grow and grow into long, spear-length tusks. It’s a creepy sensation, by the way. Not painful, but definitely creepy.
Rachel proceeds to wrap her trunk around the abusive animal trainer and lift them off the ground. Using “thought-speak,” Rachel threatens them to start treating the animals right. Absolute badassery.
The team discovers that there is a portal in the changing room at THE GAP (good lord) where Controllers are going to charge their slug overlords in the Yeerk Pool. While the Animorphs plan for a recon mission, Rachel is dealing with the divorce of her parents. The fundamental Millennial moment of divorced parents plays out on the page which, I think, is a great way to have the discussion. I assume lots of children in divorced households would read books to get away from what was bothering them at home and here was a safe space for the characters to talk about it. The problem Rachel faces, though, is she has to choose between her mother and father. Her mother will stay in the town where Rachel grew up but her father is moving thousands of miles away and if she chooses him, she will leave her mother and the Animorphs behind.
But who cares about that right now? It’s time for the gang to morph into cockroaches in the dressing room of THE GAP and have a meltdown as they watch their bodies contort in the mirrors.
“AHHHHH” I cried, startled by the nauseating sight of the skin of my back melting into two huge, hard, brown wings.
Cassie was too far gone to say “shh,” but she held one of her hands up to what was left of her lips. Just then her extra legs came popping out of her stomach, and I think I would have yelped again except that I no longer had a mouth.
I heard a slurping sound as the last of my bones dissolved and I sagged into my exoskeleton.
If you thought Ax and Marco’s mom were surprises, boy oh boy, now we get to meet The Ellimist.
As the recon mission goes sideways and as our heroes are about to be eaten by a Taxxon, time stands still and the team is back in human form while Taxxons and Controllers are frozen in time. The group is approached by The Ellimist who states that humanity is doomed and the only way to save it is for these outstanding children and their families to go with him. He wants to save an “endangered” race. Tobias has also appeared here in his human form for the first time since being stuck as a bird.
The team declines the offer.The Ellimist unfreezes time and they are back, except Tobias, in the mouth of a Taxxon where the team is swallowed. This allows for a gory moment where they demorph inside the Taxxon making it EXPLODE. Sheesh. How gross.
After their botched recon mission and ending up meeting another new alien, the team disbands and Rachel deals with her unraveling home life.
The group is then approached by The Ellimist a 2nd time and he’s like Y’ALL I CAN’T CHANGE THE FUTURE WITH ANY SPECIFIC DETAILS BUT MAYBE THIS TRIPPY FUTURE VISION WILL MAKE YOU THINK OF SOMETHING.
With that The Ellimist shows the gang the future of humanity and its destruction.
I wanted to sound tough, Like I wasn’t impressed. That was a lie. Worms larger than a grown man were crawling through holes in the mall. Skeletons lay across desks in the shattered ruins of our school, and clutched the wheels of rusted cars.
The air felt strange. The why was no longer the sky of earth. The trees were dying.
In this vision, we also see that Visser Three is now Visser One and Rachel has become a subservient controller working as his right-hand person. Rachel smartly in this vision sees that the EGS Tower is still fully functional and untouched by the end of the world here. They are then pulled back and The Ellimist congratulates Rachel on her observation skills.
We are then treated to a full out raid by the Animorphs as they head to the top EGS Tower (in current day). The artwork on the inside of the book’s jacket depicts this scene of the team riding the elevator up in full transformations.
At the top of the building, on the final floor, the team discovers a Kandrona. This is an artificial sun that replicates the one on the Yeerks homeworld - it allows them to live offworld. Rachel barrels the Kandrona out the window with in her elephant morph.
Delaying the Yeerks and Visser Three once again, the Animorphs save humanity…for now.
To come full circle, Rachel decides to stay with her mother and with her friends. She says goodbye to her father and understands her work here is not over.
The Animorphs covers are truly timeless. Peak art.
Yes! Yes! Yes!