Seerowpedia
Register
Advertisement
This article is written from a Real World point of view.

"The Howlers. You have heard of them before. Crayak and I have agreed to decide the issue by a contest of champions. His against mine. He has named the Howlers themselves, a group of seven. I am to pit my seven champions against his."
―The Ellimist to the Animorphs[src]

The Attack, published in January 1999 and written by K.A. Applegate and Michael Grant, is the twenty-sixth book in the Animorphs series. It is the ninth book narrated by Jake and his sixth book as sole narrator.

Plot

Official Description

The Animorphs have met the Ellimist. He "helped" to save the kids when they were about to be eaten by a Taxxon. He "helped" to free two Hork-Bajir and restored Tobias's morphing ability. But, even though the Ellimist has enormous power, he is not all-powerful. He has an enemy. The Crayak.

So, the Crayak and the Ellimist decide that a battle will prove their ultimate power. But they don't intend to fight each other. The Ellimist will choose the Animorphs, Ax, and Erek, the Chee; the Crayak will choose his own army. But if the Animorphs lose they will be erased from the universe altogether. And there'll be no one left to fight the Yeerks...

Plot Summary

This section needs a rewrite

When the Animorphs go to see a performance of The Lion King at a school assembly, the Ellimist freezes time and appears (in the form of someone they were familiar with, a girl in their school named Beth) to enlist their aid. He tells them there is another force more powerful than him, Crayak, who wants to be able to control the entire fabric of time and space. The Ellimist reveals that this creature is the blood-red eye Jake saw when his Yeerk, Temrash 114, had died.

The Ellimist tells them that when Crayak first appeared, they waged a long, brutal war that destroyed a tenth of the galaxy. The war was damaging to both of them, and they realized that they must instead have a much more subtle battle, comparable to a chess game. All the times the Ellimist has helped them (showing them the location of the Kandrona, freeing Jara Hamee and Ket Halpak, restoring Tobias' morphing power, twisting time to enable Elfangor to give the Animorphs the morphing power while Tobias still remained his son) have all been small moves in this game, all helping the Animorphs gain an advantage over the Yeerks.

Crayak is targeting another race, the Iskoort, and this interferes with the Ellimist's concealed agenda. The fate of the Iskoort will be determined through a proxy battle with rules of engagement. The Crayak and the Ellimist will each choose seven combatants to face off on the Iskoort homeworld. Crayak has chosen seven of his shock troops, the Howlers, members of the race that destroyed the Pemalites, and will destroy the Iskoort if the Howlers defeat the Animorphs on Crayak's behalf.

Having only six members, the Animorphs choose Erek King as their seventh, and they are taken to the Iskoort world, a huge metropolis miles above the ground. The whole area is basically a huge marketplace, where anything can be bought or sold. While the Iskoort turn out to be bizarre and grating, they are not actually evil. The Animorphs and Erek enlist a young Iskoort trader named Guide to show them around.

The Attack Illustration

The Animorphs in their battle morphs, with Jake in his tiger morph, taking on a Howler

Eventually, they run into one of the Howlers. Even alone, it proves to be completely superior in battle: it can be hurt, but it is heavily armed and a lethal combatant in its own right. They barely survive the fight, while the Howler quickly recovers from its injuries. Regrouping, they buy copies of Howler memories with Guide's assistance, in exchange of pledging copies of their own memories should they survive. Such exciting memories would make Guide fabulously wealthy while giving the Animorphs the financial assets necessary to move along the Iskoort world at will. Ax determines that the Iskoort homeworld is sufficiently isolated from Yeerk influence for this transfer of information to be of negligible risk to Animorph secrecy on Earth. Erek watches the purchased Howler memories, revealing all the massacres the Howlers have committed. They determine that the Howlers were created by Crayak, and that they have collective memories, giving them each thousands of years of battle experience. There are no memories of the Howlers ever being defeated.

The Animorphs find a new safehouse as Guide mentions a personal errand: A function of Iskoort physiology requires the Iskoort to separate into two halves, the Isk, the body, and a slug-like entity, the Yoort. Guide continues to explain that every three days, Iskoort must separate so the Yoort can feed. Upon recognition of the similarities to the Yeerks, chaos ensues, interrupting Guide, and violence is narrowly averted. Guide explains early Iskoort history, closely resembling the Yeerks' current existence of conquering and enslaving alien races. The Iskoort ancestors disliked their evolved biology of parasitism, instead employing genetic engineering to create a primary host, the Isk, and additionally altered Yoort physiology to become true symbiotes in order to maintain the established standard of living but removing the necessary violence.

At this point, the relevance of the Iskoort to both the Ellimist and the Crayak is revealed. Should the Yeerks ever interact with the Iskoort, the Yeerks would learn of a possibility for nonviolent existence. Since the Yeerks are conquerors, the desired nonviolence of some Yeerks and dissidence within the Yeerk Empire would delay Crayak's goal of dictatorship over the galaxy and ultimately, the universe. Even worse (in Crayak's view), the Yeerks could abandon their current imperialistic nature, forcing Crayak to find new conquerors to unite the galaxy under his rule.

After several narrow escapes, Jake and a Howler both fall off a building towards the ground below. Jake acquires the Howler and quickly morphs to peregrine falcon, pulling to safety with a spiteful quip as the Howler plummets to its death. Back atop, Jake reunites with the others. Jake and Cassie run to each other and kiss, prompting Rachel to say that "it's about time".

Jake morphs the Howler under guard with the others under strict orders to kill him if he loses control to the instincts of a killer created by Crayak. He finds no such things. Instead, he discovers that Howlers have the personalities of little children: the Howlers consider their battles to be fun and exciting games and have no perception that they are hurting real people and annihilating entire civilizations.

The Animorphs make the memory-recordings, along with Erek and Guide. When the Howlers next attack, the Animorphs use Jake in Howler morph to stun one of them and force the entire combined memories of the eight of them (the Animorphs plus Erek and Guide) into the Howlers, along with the knowledge that the non-Howlers are real beings. Crayak is forced to destroy all six Howlers before the memories can contaminate the collective memory. The Animorphs win the standoff on behalf of the Ellimist.

The Ellimist transports the Animorphs to n-dimensional space in order to talk with Crayak face-to-face in a way that the Animorphs can see. Crayak concedes defeat and agrees that the Iskoort will live. Jake morphs the Howler in order to determine the effectiveness of the Animorphs' "memory contamination" attack. He finds nothing in the collective Howler memory relating to the Iskoort homeworld. Since all Howlers share a single, collective memory and Jake in Howler morph has no memory of the fallen Howler falling by Jake's hand, Jake determines that Crayak obliterates unsuccessful Howlers before these memories of defeat blemish the collective memory, ensuring that only a streak of flawless Howler victories remain; however, a single incident from the Iskoort homeworld has penetrated the collective memory: that of Jake and Cassie kissing.

Taking his warriors back to Earth, the Ellimist talks with the Animorphs further. He reveals that in a few months' time, on the next Howler raid, the Howlers will attempt to kiss their targets. The contaminated Howlers are no longer useful as Crayak's shock troops. The Ellimist also reveals that in three hundred years' time, the Iskoort will meet the Yeerks.

The following night, Jake tries to dream about Cassie to keep his mind off of the Howler he sent plummeting to its death, but finds himself unable to do so.

Appearances

Protagonists:

Supporting Characters:

Antagonists:

Other Characters:

Locations:

Items:

Major/Highlighted Events

  • Crayak is introduced as the antithesis to the Ellimist and the being Jake saw at the end of The Capture.
  • The Ellimist explains that Crayak is intent on destroying a species known as the Iskoort using the Howlers, his personal shock troops who were responsible for eliminating the Pemalites. The Ellimist, wishing to protect the Iskoort, comes to an agreement with Crayak – a contest of champions, in which a seven-on-seven battle to the death will determine the Iskoort's fate. Crayak's seven champions, his handpicked Howlers, versus the six Animorphs and Erek King. The Animorphs and Erek agree, and they are whisked away by the Ellimist to the Iskoort homeworld.
  • Jake and Cassie kiss for the first time.
  • Jake acquires and morphs a Howler; having discovered that they possess a collective memory, he dumps his life memories into the other Howlers. Crayak is forced to kill all seven of his Howlers to prevent Jake's memories from reaching the other Howlers in the galaxy, since the Howlers are children who believe killing is a game and Jake's memories would reveal the truth to them. With the deaths of the seven Howlers, the Ellimist's team wins and the Iskoort race is saved. However, the memory of Jake and Cassie's kiss gets through to all the Howlers, rendering them harmless and forcing Crayak to eliminate them all.
  • It is divulged that the Iskoort are related and possibly originated from the Yeerks, and that the supposed reason the Ellimist wanted to save them is because three centuries into the future, the Iskoort might meet the Yeerks and the Yeerks may realize that they could become symbiotes rather than parasites.
  • Angered by Jake's actions, Crayak sets his sights personally on Jake, promising the young Animorph that he will exact vengeance.
  • Jake and the others Animorphs are revealed to be aware that Elfangor is the father of Tobias; additionally, they are shown a memory of Elfangor being taken from his life as a human and restored to Andalite society by the Ellimist.

Morphs

Morpher Morphs acquired Morphs used
Jake Howler Siberian Tiger, Housefly, Peregrine Falcon, Howler
Rachel - Grizzly Bear, Housefly, Bald Eagle
Tobias - Housefly
Cassie -- Wolf, Housefly, Osprey
Marco -- Silverback Gorilla (Big Jim), Housefly, Osprey
Ax -- Housefly, Northern Harrier

Trivia

  • The cover quote is, "Change is necessary...."
  • The inside cover quote is, "It's time to meet the tiger...."
  • This is the eighth book in which the cover art does not depict a morph acquired in the book, with Jake having acquired the Siberian tiger in The Invasion.
  • This book marks the third instance of the Animorphs leaving Earth, after The Predator and The Decision.
  • This is the fourth book in the series in which the narrator is the only person to acquire a new morph.
  • This is also the first book in the Animorph series that does not contain the word "Animorph."
  • ANIBASE: K.A. Applegate had this to say about a very memorable scene in this book:
    • "The Jake and Cassie kiss was not only something Ani-Fans had wanted for a long time, it was our small homage to the first interracial kiss on TV, the famous Captain Kirk, Lieutenant Uhura moment. That long-ago kiss ignited a storm of angry response. For us, we always got lots of fan mail, and not a single letter that we ever saw complained about the kiss between a black character and a white character. Mostly what readers said was, 'It's about time!'"

Goofs/Inconsistencies

  • Jake says it is impossible to describe his nightmare, but then goes on to describe it.
  • The Ellimist tells Jake that when Crayak saw him after his Yeerk died, he became interested in him because he had seen that the Ellimist had made his presence known to Jake before. However, Crayak saw Jake at the end of #6 (The Capture) while Jake met the Ellimist for the first time in #7 (The Stranger).
  • Ax views a chart of the Milky Way and says there is a distance of 500,000,000 light years between the Iskoort planet and Earth, but Milky Way is only 100,000 light years across.

Gallery

U.S. Images

International Covers

Books
Main Series #1 The Invasion | #2 The Visitor | #3 The Encounter | #4 The Message | #5 The Predator | #6 The Capture | #7 The Stranger | #8 The Alien | #9 The Secret | #10 The Android | #11 The Forgotten | #12 The Reaction | #13 The Change | #14 The Unknown | #15 The Escape | #16 The Warning | #17 The Underground | #18 The Decision | #19 The Departure | #20 The Discovery | #21 The Threat | #22 The Solution | #23 The Pretender | #24 The Suspicion | #25 The Extreme | #26 The Attack | #27 The Exposed | #28 The Experiment | #29 The Sickness | #30 The Reunion | #31 The Conspiracy | #32 The Separation | #33 The Illusion | #34 The Prophecy | #35 The Proposal | #36 The Mutation | #37 The Weakness | #38 The Arrival | #39 The Hidden | #40 The Other | #41 The Familiar | #42 The Journey | #43 The Test | #44 The Unexpected | #45 The Revelation | #46 The Deception | #47 The Resistance | #48 The Return | #49 The Diversion | #50 The Ultimate | #51 The Absolute | #52 The Sacrifice | #53 The Answer | #54 The Beginning
Megamorphs The Andalite's Gift | In the Time of Dinosaurs | Elfangor's Secret | Back to Before
Chronicles The Andalite Chronicles | The Hork-Bajir Chronicles | VISSER | The Ellimist Chronicles
Alternamorphs The First Journey | The Next Passage
TV Tie-Ins Meet the Stars of Animorphs
Graphic Novels #1 The Invasion | #2 The Visitor | #3 The Encounter | #4 The Message
Advertisement