Animorphs #31: The Conspiracy

[Tobias_Marco]

<For those of you who don't know I just moved into a new place, and now I have no internet at home, so it will be a while before I can be on for hours at a time.>

Jake returns from school to discover that his great grandfather has died.
Jake's father insists that the family go to his home in a wooded cabin far away and help plan the funeral arrangements. They plan to be gone for three or four days; however, this presents a problem for Tom, who can not stay away from the Yeerk Pool for more than three days at time.
Even if he were to go to the Yeerk pool just before going to the cabin he would die before coming back.
Tom fights relentlessly with Jake's father about going and when they leave for a Sharing meeting together Jake fears that Tom may force their dad into involuntary Yeerk infestation, or even kill him. Jake must save his father, but for the first time, his quick thinking tactical mind freezes up.
A slight power struggle ensues between Jake and Marco who insists that Jake isn't thinking clearly on this matter. After several close calls protecting Jake's father, the Animorphs decide to make a distraction for the Yeerks so that Tom is no longer their top priority.
The Animorphs kidnap Chapman holding him hostage in an abandoned house to distract the Yeerks from taking care of Jake's father. To make the kidnap seem convincing they have Ax interrogate Chapman for hours. Afterward, they allow him to escape, and Ax insists that he will never do such a thing again as it is not the conduct of a warrior.
After this Jake insists on handling the situation by himself. With the distraction successful, Tom heads up to the cabin with the rest of the family.
In the middle of the night, Tom tries to kill his father with a dagger, but is stopped by Jake with the help of rest of the Animorphs, who are running a plan devised by Marco. Tom is injured and taken back to the hospital in the city where he has access to a Yeerk pool...and stuff.

[gh astly]

Ah, this book was an odd one from what I remember. If I have time, I'll re-read it tonight and post my thoughts.

[SimplyCass]

I didn't think too highly of this book. However, at least it advanced the plot, raised the stakes, for Jake to protect his parents. It was of course not as good as #26, but compared to the largely superfluous next Jake book, #36, which if I can use Fan fiction parlance is a classic PWP (Plot What Plot) book.

[Tobias_Marco]

<Now is about the time I should be posting the next book review, however not a lot of people have said anything about this book. Should we move on to the next book or keep talking about this one?>

[gh astly]

I don't know. I've just been quiet on here because I'm trying to get a ton of s*** done (school, moving, etc), so I haven't had time to read this one. Maybe we should hold off on the next one for a bit since nobody has said anything about this one, really.

[komaru6]

I like the short synopsis.

I didn't mind this book - I thought it was interesting (and maybe a bit of foreshadowing?) that the relationship between Jake and Controller Tom continued to escalate. We see that even "Fearless Leader" Jake has a difficult time controlling his own choices and emotions when it gets personal - he's only human - and the other animorphs let him deal, but also have his back.

[lady_summoner]

This one was ok. I liked the comparisons Jake made between himself and his Grandpa G. I think the most memorable part was when they kidnapped Chapman and Ax was really upset.

It would be nice to see more discussions, but I think the schedule of every other week should continue. People can post when they have time which seems to work best for this forum. Plus #33 is coming up soon and I think that needs to happen sooner rather than later.

[YeerkSalad]

I don't get why killing Jake's father would solve anything for Tom. Can anyone explain?
This book was interesting, though it took me about a week to read it. For such a short book, it seemed to drone on a bit, resulting in a tad bit of skimming, and a buttload of procrastinating.
On Cinnamon Bunzuh, Adam theorized that books 29-33 were essentially character studies. That makes a lot of sense. Despite this book being relatively plotless, thinking of it as such makes me like it a lot more. I enjoyed the book, but it certainly wasn't the best. Currently, TAC is the book holding that position. I have a feeling that I'll like #54. I don't know how it ends and don't want to (yet), but there are a lot of book endings that most people hate that I quite liked.
I'm looking at you, Mockingjay and The Giver.

There's nothing like a nice cold bowl of rambling, eh? Please don't kill me. *scampers out of room*

[blueloverw]

it was a good book(of course they are all decent) pretty dramatic but good! to bad they had to cut there camping trip short! shoulda held tom captive not chapman!

[caitlin]

I love this book! Shortly after this I think a lot of the books were written by ghost writers, and I think this one wasn't . It has a sort of interesting storyline but the character development , especially for Jake is great