Book 29: The Sickness

[gh astly]

Because I'm not sure if I'll have internet tomorrow, I'll just post this now.
As usual, I stole the summary from Cinnamon Bunzuh.

Spoiler:

Ax is sick. His Tria gland is going to explode, and if Cassie doesn't take it out, he will die. Where is Ax's Tria gland? In his brain. Hooray. Also, Aftran (remember her?) has been arrested for treason and Visser Three is going to interrogate her and possibly find out all about the Animorphs. Keep in mind that Cassie once put Aftran inside her own head, so she knows basically everything ever. The Animorphs try to rescue Aftran, but they don't even make it to the Yeerk Pool before Jake gets sick. Ax's illness is somehow causing everyone else to get the flu. Except Cassie, because she is the narrator. So Cassie has to do the rescue alone. She does it by morphing a Yeerk from the Yeerk Peace Movement and taking his host down to the Pool. It works, and Aftran is rescued. Now it is time for surgery. Using her parents' tools, Cassie removes the Tria gland from Ax's brain in what is easily one of the top ten most epic scenes in the entire series. Ax is saved, but Aftran is going to die of Kandrona starvation if they don't figure something out. The Animorphs decide to give her the morphing power. From there, Aftran traps herself in whale form and goes on to live what I'm sure is a very fulfilling life in the Pacific Ocean.

I would say something clever, but I'm not in the mood. Have fun!

[Tobias_Marco]

<The first problem I have with this book is that Ax tells one of the Animorphs off screen that he doesn't think they will have uncontroled morphing like he does due to them not being Andalites.>
<Correct me if I'm wrong here, but as far as Ax knows the Animorphs are the first non-Andalites to ever use the Andalite morphing power, therefore this is the first time a morph capable, non-Andalite has ever been exposed to this illness. This means that Ax should have no idea at all how they will react to it.>
<Problem number 2, They call Erik King to watch Ax while they are busy elsewhere. The problem comes when they ask if one of the Chee can do what needs to be done to save Ax and are told that none of the Chee know anything useful. If the Chee were just alien robots that had lived on Earth for over 6000 years I would be alright with that, however the Howlers created an illness that made all the Chee's creators sick. We were told back in book 10 that the Chee did everything they could to heal their makers, none of it worked so they genetically bonded the essence of their makers into some wolves to make modern dogs.>
<If I was a Chee and my maker was sick the FIRST THING I would do is upload all available medical knowledge into my brain and share it with all other Chee to see if one of us could figure out how to save them.>
<Even if only one Chee knew how to save them, this Chee, being the one to actually perform the genetic engendering, should be able to operate on Ax.>
<Problem number three, Cassie morphs a Yeerk and takes over someone's mind. Lets look at this, a human male has two Yeerks, he lets one of them into his brain and puts the other in a plastic bag. He then goes to the Yeerk pool and then drops both Yeerks into the pool.>
<Why can't Cassie be the blind Yeerk in the zip-lock bag? This other Yeerk is already familiar with how to work the controls on this host?>

[gh astly]

I do agree that the third problem was a legitimate complaint and a part of the book that didn't make much sense, but the first complaint was pretty trivial, and as for the second, i'd assume Andalite anatomy is greatly different from Pemalite anatomy.
sorry if this seems a little blunt. i have to type this out on a DS, so less words are better right now

[Visser_5.1]

Andalite anatomy should be A LOT different from Pemalite anatomy, but shouldn't the Pemalite ship have medical scaners that can help with that kind of thing?

[gh astly]

I don't really see any reason why it would. As peaceful as the Pemalites were, I don't think they went around the galaxy healing other aliens.

[Tobias_Marco]

<Actually Elimist Chrinicals says they were created by Ellimist to do just that.>

[gh astly]

Well, I'll trust that you know that book better than I do, seeing as I only read it twice. Still, it's possible that if the Pemalite ship had medical scanning technology (not to say that it did; it was never stated in the books as far as I know), it could have been damaged or something.

[Tobias_Marco]

<In book #10 Eric says he can never forget fighting, these memories can never be deleted, even if the computers were damaged some how they would still have all the knowledge they had before they were attacked by the Howlers. Some of the Pemalite must have been doctors, the Chee that they spent time with would remember talking to them about new technologies and discoveries made, after all, isn't that what you do when you have a friend? You talk to them about what excites you?>
<The Chee would still have the knowledge, even if they did not have the equipment. They taught humans to boil water to clean it, they would know how to drill a hole in a head better then Cassie would.>

[gh astly]

Well, I guess that really, only basic surgical knowledge was needed in the end, since Cassie was able to do the surgery with only a little help from Ax.

[lady_summoner]

Despite some of the logical flaws, I really enjoyed this book. It’s probably my favorite Cassie book. I feel like crying at the end when Cassie doesn’t know what to do with Aftran. And then happy when they find a solution using the morphing cube.

TM, I also thought it was weird that not a single Chee has enough medical knowledge to help Ax. You’ll also remember in book 10 that Erek sewed someone’s arm back on after the battle. I think it would have been better to say they have the knowledge, but the chances of accidentally killing Ax were too high for them to do the operation. Maybe still a bit flimsy but better than implying that androids that have been around forever haven’t cracked open a medical book in thousands of years.

For problem number three, the answer is simple. Cassie secretly wanted to know what it was like to control another human being.

A couple more things to mention. Aftran was able to thought-speak while Ax was unconscious. I thought Yeerks couldn’t control unconscious people since they seemed to have an issue with it in book #18 when the Anis morphed mosquitoes. Maybe it’s a bit different with thought-speak itself?

After the surgery Cassie says his skull would fuse back with the circle piece in time and it would take him a few days to recover. Since the Tria glad has been removed, couldn’t he just morph to recover instantly?

And why on Earth was Marco wearing a flannel shirt to a school dance!? I know it was the 90s but it seems like the dance was a bit more formal than that.