Book 44: The Revelation

Publishing Date: September 2000

Narrator: Marco

My rating:

Marco and the Animorphs suspect the Yeerks will go after Marco’s father when he suddenly announces his engineering firm has discovered Zero-space. With little time to think, Marco acts to save his only family left – but then the Animorphs learn Visser One is being tried at the Yeerk Pool as a traitor. Can Marco rebuild the most important thing the Yeerks took from him – his family?

This book is where you can leap back in to the main story arc quite firmly without missing a lot from the previous books. It’s an important story to be told – not only Does Marco risk everything to save his dad, whom he’s pretty certain is not a Controller, but they then lose their home, Marco’s step-mother, their lives, basically. Marco and his dad move in with the Chee while Marco’s dad helps Ax to build a Zero-space transmitter, which intercepts the fateful message that Visser One is back on Earth and dying.

So the Animorphs act – the only way they can know what the Yeerks’ plans are is to ask someone directly involved, and they can rescue Marco’s mother while they’re at it. The action in the book remains pretty high – it’s certainly not a character study. Marco is again forced to take point where his mother is concerned, which I don’t think is fair, but Jake trusts him to do the right thing. Most of the time.

There’s something to be said that even though Marco is my least favourite Animorph, it’s his stories that always make me cry. I’ve never lost my mother (thankfully) but there’s something about the emotion of a young boy desperate to save his mother that yanks at my heartstrings. I really admire Eva as a secondary character – she’s so strong with what she’s been through, and she refuses to be beaten, even when her body is broken almost beyond repair. It’s so lovely to see Marco’s family come together despite what tore them apart, and it’s satisfying to see the end of Edriss, even if I never quite grasped quite how evil she was. This is because it’s mostly not demonstrated, it’s relayed through stories.

One thing I really like is that Ax often struggles to be able to fly the Yeerk ships, which is awesome because he is neither a) a Taxxon b) a Yeerk c) a fully trained Andalite fighter pilot. So yay for realism. Ax sucks at piloting and that’s realistic.

There’s not much else to say about the book except that everyone stays mostly in character and Tobias says some dark things about torture – he’s still recovering from his run ins with Taylor. There’s not much room for comedy as it’s a serious novel dealing with serious issues and the plot is snappy and satisfying.

Everything changes from now on.

Join me for a review of #46: The Deception next week!

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