Recap / Animorphs: The Alien

Following

Narrator: Ax

Ax deals with being trapped on Earth, along with his duty to put an end to Visser Three.

Tropes:

• Alien Sky: Ax looks at Earth's sky with the waning moon and thinks about how his planet has four moons, at least two of which are always visible.
• Aliens Love Human Food: The insight into Ax's psyche reveals he considers human foods to be their greatest accomplishment, especially cinnamon buns, Snickers bars, and vinegar, not to mention things that aren't food. He also really loves the very spicy "chili of doom" made by Cassie's father.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: The Animorphs finally ask how Andalites eat with No Mouth. Ax reveals they absorb water and nutrients through their hooves.
• Broken Pedestal: When he calls home, Ax's relief at seeing other Andalites after months without is short-lived as Lirem, who should be a wise and responsible leader, strong-arms him into Taking the Heat for Elfangor violating the Law of Seerow's Kindness. Part of the reason for the law is to keep aliens from realizing how badly the Andalites screwed up and when Ax tells the Animorphs about Seerow trusting the Yeerks and being betrayed he expects serious consternation and blame.
• Changed My Mind, Kid: Ax's caginess around Andalite secrets costs him the trust of the Animorphs. As a matter of honor he then tries to kill Visser Three alone. The rest of the team comes barreling in to save him anyway.
• Death Seeker: Visser Three's host, Alloran-Semitur-Corrass, begs Ax to kill him when the Yeerk momentarily leaves his brain. Ax is unable to find it in him to kill a helpless fellow Andalite.
• Dying as Yourself: Visser Three's body is bitten by a rattlesnake and then attacked by the Animorphs, so he bails out into a nearby stream. Alloran, too weakened by venom to morph or to kill himself, tells the Animorphs that he will be healed and reinfested and begs them to kill him, but the team are still unhardened and can't do it.
• Enemy Mine: When Ax calls home, he's interrupted by a human-Controller who actually puts down his weapon to talk. After the events of Animorphs: The Stranger when the Animorphs destroyed the ground-based Kandrona generator, Visser Three claimed he'd found a way for all the Earth-bound Yeerks to survive but in fact just had the "important" ones, including ones he favored, shuttled back and forth to feed on the Pool ship and executed the others, including the Yeerk whom Eslin cared for. Eslin hates Ax and the other "Andalite bandits" but he hates Visser Three more, and gives Ax the Visser's feeding location so they can both try and get revenge.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Eslin cared deeply about Derane, who was from the same pool and went through training with him. This is the first indication in the series that Yeerks aren't simple evil parasites.
• Honor Before Reason: Upholding the Law of Seerow's Kindness means keeping quite a breadth of knowledge from aliens, even some basic things like how they know what the Yeerks will do, which seriously hampers any effort to cooperate. Ax comes to doubt this policy and think maybe if Lirem had trusted and shared with the Hork-Bajir they wouldn't have lost.
• Hot Sauce Drinking: Ax experiences chili for the first time, and enjoys it immensely.
• Humanity Is Infectious: Ax claims it's easy to forget you're not a human if you're an Andalite in human morph, though his idea of what normal human behavior is is frankly bizarre (and in a timeline without human friends to manage him, this gets him committed to an asylum).
• Humans Are Ugly: Ax mostly finds humans to be reasonable-looking enough, if a bit silly, but thinks their noses are by far the ugliest feature. He doesn't understand why they cover so much of their bodies but not this.
• Humans Through Alien Eyes: As the book is from Ax's point of view, it's also a good insight into his growing fondness and bewilderment about humans and their culture.
  The first thing an Andalite may notice about humans, is that they walk around on only two legs. It is very strange to see so many creatures balancing that way. But, despite this, they seldom fall over.
• I Cannot Self-Terminate: Alloran is briefly free, in the period between Visser Three fleeing into a stream and his backup arriving and capturing him. Having been infested for the better part of twenty-five years, and now afflicted by rattlesnake venom, Alloran collapses, barely able to move, struggling even to speak. He tries to cut his own throat with his tailblade but is too weak.
• Long-Lived: Ax says if he lives to two hundred he'll probably still be known as Elfangor's little brother. Lirem refers to being an aristh under Prince Seerow "many centuries ago", though that seems to contradict Ax's statement which implies two centuries is an impressive lifespan.
• Mister Seahorse: Suggested to be the case with Andalites, at least some of the time, when Ax, meeting Cassie's father, thinks that he's male "like all human fathers".
• Out of Focus: In an effort to get closer to Ax, Jake takes him to school, Marco takes him to a bookstore, Cassie takes him to dinner with her parents, and of course Tobias is with him at many points including accompanying him to the observatory. Rachel, as the Animorph most suspicious of Ax and least capable of playing nice, doesn't have an outing with him, though she does pick out his clothes, which the other boys think would make him a Bully Magnet. Nonetheless, she's the one to rescue him when he's about to be killed mid-demorph.
• Poor Communication Kills: Just a few books ago in Animorphs: The Predator, the Animorphs went to great effort to try and get Ax back home and were nearly killed several times. In this book he modifies a human radio telescope to allow him to talk to someone on his homeworld, which is altogether a much less risky venture, but he hides it from them. He doesn't tell Jake that the controller-teacher whose Yeerk is dying in his head will be killed, and that he'd known the destruction of the ground-based Kandrona would result in many humans dying similarly. One of the central conflicts of this book is that the other Animorphs want Ax to be less cagy and feel that his unwillingness to share any information is a sign that he's untrustworthy and holds them in contempt. He's really holding the Law of Seerow's Kindness to be so all-encompassing that he can't share anything of substance at all, and ashamed of the Andalites' role in the rise of the Yeerks.
• The Promise: Tobias swears by Elfangor that he won't tell the other Animorphs about Ax going to the observatory. And he doesn't... but he does meet them with blood and a shred of a Human-Controller's shirt on his talons. He also tells Ax he won't tell them Ax is going to try to kill Visser Three, or follow him. After finding that Ax feels a warrior can honorably tell secrets to their Prince if ordered, Tobias finds Jake off-screen, gets him to ask, and takes everyone to the location in question.
• "Reading Is Cool" Aesop: Ax is effusive about human books and finds them far superior to human computers. The wording could be taken as "Andalites invented computers before books" or just be a complaint that using a late Nineties computer is more difficult than using a book.
  Books are an amazing human invention. They allow instant access to information simply by turning pieces of paper. They are much faster to use than computers. Surprisingly, humans invented books before computers. They do many things backward.
• The Reveal: Ax reveals the story of Seerow, the Andalite who took pity on the Yeerks and gave them advanced technology, which they subsequently used to conquer other alien species they could use as hosts.
• Running Gag: In this book the human characters are constantly hinting and half-saying they want to know how Ax eats with No Mouth. He doesn't get it, once replying with "I have hooves, don't I?", until he's outright asked at the end of the book.
• Scaled Up: Ax acquires a rattlesnake after nearly stepping on it and being warned by Tobias. Rattlesnake morph is crucial to his plan to take down Visser Three.
• Taking the Heat: Ax is forced to take the blame for giving five humans the ability to morph by the Andalite Council. This is mostly done to protect Elfangor's heroic reputation in Andalite society.
• Talking to Plants: Running through the forest, Ax thinks that the trees of Earth are silent, unlike those on his homeworld.
• Trapped in the Host: A Yeerk whose host is killed is trapped in their brain, unable to disengage without someone to cut the skull open and rescue them, and dies before long. So at the end of the book, when his body's been envenomated and is surrounded by the "Andalite bandits", Visser Three bails out of Alloran and into a stream.
• Wham Line: Downplayed. Before he falls unconscious, Alloran reveals that the Yeerks have made headway into the Andalite home world. This would be a huge game-changer in the war, if it wasn't only going to be relevant once, ten books later.