1) The beginning of this book starts off with a pretty interesting concept. The Yeerks are producing mass quantities of portable Kandrona. What do you think of this idea, and why wasn't it attempted earlier in the series? It seems like a pretty obvious solution to their biggest weakness.
I'm with you. To me, if it's economically feasible to give every Yeerk a little machine so they don't have to travel twice a week down to the unsecured and very susceptible to attack home base, this is game over. I like how it was handled in #30--there ARE portable Kandronas, but they're huge, unweildy, and they're only good for one go anyway--but if you could make a small, portable, rechargable source of sustenance? Um, why aren't we trying a lot harder to do that?
2) I always find it interesting that the kid snapping a picture in the alley is really the first instance where the Animorphs have to actively worry about being caught on film. Seeing as we are 42 books into the series, you would think this would have popped up before (didn't malls have security camera's in the 90's?). What do you think of this lack of evidence throughout the series?
I think it's something that in our current Orwellian age is a little bit hindsight is 20/20...such drastic advances in digital technology have occurred since the series was published that it's you'd think that the Google Earth people would have caught them on film or something. Imagine what Cassie's barn would look like from satellite, lol, or Ax's scoop. ANYWAY, the truth is, this whole thing felt like a very awkward b-plot to keep Marco involved, however tangentially. Just too many questions--why was that kid carrying a disposable camera around with him anyway? And if he caught something so fantastic that he was willing to run away to protect it, why didn't he go out to a 24-hour Wal-Mart and get it developed immediately? Or at least hide it a little better. Whatever, the Marco parts of this book were stupid. Then again, so were the Rachel parts.
3) Similarly, how different would it be if the Animorphs were fighting today? Video camera's are everywhere, and digital photography is the norm, so how would that change things?
We all talk about how different it would be but honestly I'm thinking of that exchange in Thank You For Smoking...whatever, how did it go, "how can we convince people that they're allowed to smoke on a space station?" "Oh, thank God for the 'whatever' device." Like Ax would have just been at some point "I can engineer a small EMP that will power down any surveillance equipment in this area." Done, go home, cash the check, game set match etc.
4) Why did the Helmacrons have to make a reappearance? WHY!?
ikrite. This instead of a Skrit Na centric book, or even another appearance by the Leerans, or maybe a deep-space exploratory group of Iskoort or something. Anything but the g-d Helmacrons...
5) Any comments on the whole Magic School bus theme of this book?
Just that this is the point they were really, really running out of ideas.
6) Anything else?
I think I said somewhere else that even though I'm not technically a fan of #24, I was impressed with how spot-on KA's scaling was. I even did the math and figured out that Marco and Cassie morphing to flies after being shrunk to 1 mm or whatever would be able to see molecules. Like, she showed her work. But this book felt all over the place. The Helmacrons are tiny, and the Animorphs being shrunk 1/100 of their size would leave them entirely unable to cross any distance of Marco's body. It would take them WEEKS to get up his nose, and at that size they'd probably be able to slip through pores and spaces between cells in his body to get anywhere they wanted. Also, the chemistry of the whole thing, them getting burned up by acid, like, what? Acid doesn't just burn, it REACTS with other chemicals, other molecules. They're already just a tad bit bigger than molecules, so what molecules are reacting? I mean the acid molecules would be too big to react with the molecules they're made of, unless instead of getting SHRUNK like they got CHOPPED DOWN, you know what I mean? But in that case, without the fanon explanation of remote controlling morphs from Z-space, they have a very tiny fraction left of brain cells to think with, probably not enough even to run autonomic bodily functions.
I mean, basically, my point is that this book is just really really stupid.
