The Mutation - Katherine Applegate
Brought to you by The Moonlight Library!Jake and the Animorphs discover Visser Three’s newest toy, the Sea Blade, a ship designed to discover the location of the hidden Pemalite ship. If the Yeerks get their hands on that, it’s all over. The Animorphs need to stop Visser Three at all costs, even if it means entering an unknown world full of amphibious human mutations…This book is pretty crap. There, I said it. It’s not badly written, but the plot it just so… it’s like they didn’t even try. Applegate or her ghost writer. The Animorphs get trapped underwater in a giant cave that is supposed to be Atlantis or something, and it’s ruled by mutated humans with blue skin and gills and enormous eyes. The amphibious people call themselves Nartec and can speak every language because they steal shipwrecks and turn the survivors into mummies after extracting their DNA to help with their breeding program.Still with me? Yes, this is an Animorphs book. The Nartec aren’t aliens, they’re mutated humans, rapidly dying out after thousands of years of living way below the surface just off the coast of California in a hidden cave.Still with me?There is no reason why humans haven’t discovered the Nartec – the Animorphs can reach the save in orca morph. They didn’t need their giant squids, so it’s not particularly deep. And all those unaccounted for shipwrecks? Don’t you think someone would have found something when ships are being towed from two oceans away? And why didn’t the Nartec take anything from the Titanic? It would have been prime for them. (probably on the wrong side of the ocean)Still with me?Visser Three shows up to help them escape their watery prison and the Animorphs betray him at the last minute.Don’t read this book. It’s a waste of time. Jake spends most of his time moping and questioning himself and beating himself up because he keeps making the wrong decisions. Yet the Animorphs emerge relatively unscathed, as usual, and the Nartec are never heard from again in the entire series.