Animorphs: Book 7: The Stranger:
So in this book, the Animorphs finally find a new entrance into the Yeerk Pool after the original entrance was shut at the end of the very first book. During their assault, things go wrong, but right before they get eaten by a Taxxon, everything freezes and they get introduced to...The Ellimist! Making his first appearance in the actual series, and his third appearance overall. He gives them a choice, stay and fight a war they WILL loose, or get whisked away to a safe zone planet with their friends and family.
Much like the previous book, this book introduces tons of stuff that hasn't been in the previous books, and a different format then normal. This book is also filled to the brim with all kinds of struggles, both internal and external. Apart from the obvious physical battles with the Yeerks, we have Rachel's dad offering her to move away with him, so Rachel has to struggle with if she wants to do that or not, if she wants to vote for moving her family to another planet and running from the fight, plus she has a huge blow-up on Marco, and Jake has a huge blow-up, for the first time, on her.
And best of all, the Animorphs are brought to the future that Earth faces, which is a very dark and disturbing future, which hits home hard with them. Luckily they find out that it's not THE future, but just one of many possible futures.
Rachel also gets her bear morph in this one, which is put to very good use, Tobias, my favorite character, is featured a bit more in this one then he was in the last couple, plus has a short return to his human body, and Marco's change in attitude from a couple books back, is noted by the other characters in this one, which is nice.
Also, Rachel uses her morphing to save some Elephants from a trainer that loves using a cattle prod on them. Nice to see that they do use their powers to save animals other then birds, lol. Oh, and in the Future scenes, when the Future Rachel and Visser Three state that time has been changed slightly – I wonder if that's from when the Ellimist changed history by making Elfangor not stay on Earth in the Andalite Chronicles. Something to think about.
Anything negative? It seems Applegate is back to being a tad bit redundant with the over-explaining of things that has been explained in almost every single book, and it seemed like this time, she took longer to re-explain some of those then she did in the last couple books. Also, despite my joy at finally having the Ellimist introduced in the series, some of the Ellimist stuff kind of contradicts what we know about him from The Ellimist Chronicles, although don't get me wrong, his scenes were nothing short of fantastic.