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Jake has to attend a wedding out of town. No one has been designated to take over as leader of the Animorphs. But when Tobias tells the others that he's found the place where Visser Three currently feeds, there is a unanimous agreement on going after him. The kids acquire cheetah morphs to run the visser down. Unfortunately, there's a new player on the scene: an inspector sent by the Council of Thirteen to check on Visser Three's eternal problems. The inspector has a Garatron host body. show more Garatrons are the newest hosts: like Andalites, but with shocking speed, and no morphing technology. this Garatron-Controller outruns the Animorphs and Ax in their cheetah morphs, saving Visser Three. The kids soon realize this inspector may provide a way to do away with Visser Three. If they can convince the inspector that the visser is totally incompetent, totally unable to stop the "Andalite bandits," maybe the Visser will be recalled. Now a dispute breaks out: Who will run the mission in Jake's absence? Marco and Rachel are the main aspirants. Cassie takes herself out. Tobias and Ax bow out. In the end, Marco lets Rachel take control. Rachel stages a series of reckless Rachel raids to harass known Controllers, with the goal of making the Visser seem impotent. But Rachel's recklessness and impatience betray her when her failure to plan results in Cassie being captured and taken to the Yeerk pool. Rachel's confidence collapses. She learns about the flip side of leadership, the difficult choices Jake makes all the time. The kids rescue Cassie with a spectacular assault on the Yeerk pool. Rachel has succeeded, but her interest in leading is considerably diminished. show lessTags
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Jake is absent so the team decides to put Rachel in charge when a report comes in of discovering the Visser's secret feeding spot. They can't pass up the opportunity to try and get the enemy. Rachel is all for just trying to chase him down (using a new cheetah morph) but of course they fail. Also meet a new alien creature, the only good thing here being that the Visser and this new enemy the Inspector appear to despise each other, which is to the Animorphs' advantage. Then they decide to rush around town storming different shops and locations one after the other making it appear that they have much larger numbers than in reality, so the Visser will look bad in front of the Inspector. Causing a lot of conspicuous damage and probably show more hurting innocent people (not like them at all). Then to bash in on a meeting of high-up Controllers, all of them using polar bear form instead of their usual battle morphs. It goes badly. Cassie gets captured and almost forced into the Yeerk pool. The others barely save her in time- using bird of prey morphs and one cobra. They pretty much only escape because when Marco-as-cobra takes the Inspector down, the Visser and all his underlings just stand there staring, instead of grabbing the Animorphs who are exhausted and injured. All these frenetic attacks without much planning were Rachel's push, but she has doubts the whole time and feels terrible about putting her friends in danger and afterwards when Jake returns asks him: how do you do it? how can you stand to make those decisions, putting your friends' lives on the line? He flinches for a moment then closes it off and says: I just don't think about it. Well, I could have done without all the hectic nonsense fighting scenes, but the ending had a more serious note.
from the Dogear Diary show less
from the Dogear Diary show less
I liked kick ass Rachel learning that going in fighting isn't always the best plan.
A short comment for every book of the series until I get a chance to re-read them. All three of my sons and I loved this series and read every single book - I even bought every single book (most, but not all, used; some through school book sales). I'm excited to re-read them to see how the five main characters develop and to watch all the different transformations again.
The best books appeal to *readers* universally - not children versus adults. These may not be quite worthy of the adjective 'best' but they do have that crossover appeal.
The best books appeal to *readers* universally - not children versus adults. These may not be quite worthy of the adjective 'best' but they do have that crossover appeal.
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4,052 works; 110 members
Author Information

448+ Works 89,854 Members
Katherine Applegate was born in Michigan on July 19, 1956. She writes science fiction, young adult romances, and pop-up books. She is the author of the Making Waves, Making Out, and Roscoe Riley Rules series. She writes the Animorphs, Everworld, and Remnants series under the pen name K. A. Applegate. She also writes under the pen names of C. show more Archer, Catherine Kendall and Elizabeth Benning. She has received numerous awards including a Golden Duck Award (Eleanor Cameron Award for Middle Grades) for The Message in 1997, the SCBWI 2008 Golden Kite Award for Best Fiction and the Bank Street 2008 Josette Frank Award for Home of the Brave, and the 2013 Newbery Medal and the Rebecca Caudill Young Readers' Book Award (Illinois) for The One and Only Ivan. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Series
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- The Weakness (Animorphs #37) (Animorphs #37)
- Original title
- The Weakness
- Original publication date
- 2000-01
- People/Characters
- Rachel [in Animorphs]; Tobias [in Animorphs]; Marco [in Animorphs]; Cassie [in Animorphs]; "Ax" Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill; Jake [in Animorphs] (show all 7); Esplin 9466 (Visser Three)
- Important places
- USA
- First words
- My name is Rachel. There's a person the Bible named Rachel.
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Statistics
- Members
- 698
- Popularity
- 40,630
- Reviews
- 5
- Rating
- (3.25)
- Languages
- English, French, Norwegian (Bokmål)
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 11
- ASINs
- 4






























































