The Attack (Animorphs)

infobox Book |
name = The Attack
title_orig =
translator =


image_caption = Jake morphing into a Siberian Tiger
author = K. A. Applegate
illustrator = David B. Mattingly
cover_artist =
country = United States
language = English
series = Animorphs #26
genre = Science fiction novel
publisher = Scholastic
release_date = February 1999
english_release_date =
media_type = Print (Paperback)
pages = 145
isbn = 0-590-76259-1
preceded_by = The Extreme
followed_by = The Exposed "The Attack" is the twenty-sixth book in the "Animorphs" series, written by K.A. Applegate. It is narrated by Jake.

Plot Summary

When the Animorphs go to see a performance of the "Lion King", the Ellimist freezes time and appears to enlist their aid. It tells them there is another force more powerful than it, the 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 the yeerk in his head died in the sixth book, "The Capture".

The Ellimist tells that when Crayak first appeared, they waged a long, brutal war that destroyed a large portion of the galaxy. The war was damaging to both of them, and they realised that they must 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 Halpek, giving Tobias his morphing power back, twisting time to make sure Elfangor gave 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. This time there's an alien race the Crayak wants to destroy, and the Ellimist can't let that happen. Whether the aliens, the Iskoort, survive will be determined by setting seven of the Ellimist's warriors against seven of Crayak's Howlers, the race that destroyed the Pemalites and will destroy the Iskoort if they win, on the Iskoort home world.

The Animorphs choose Erek King as their seventh person, 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 bizarre and grating, but not actually evil. The seven enlist a young Iskoort trader named Guide to show them around.

Eventually they run into one of the Howlers. Even alone, it proves to be completely superior: it can be hurt and smacked around, but it's a heavily armed lethally dangerous combatant and heals its wounds immediately. They barely survive the fight, while the Howler is left unharmed. Regrouping, they buy copies of Howler memories from Guide, in exchange of pledging copies of their own memories should they survive - such items would make Guide fabulously wealthy so far away from the human and Andalite spheres of influence. Erek watches the memories, and all the massacres the Howlers have committed. They work out 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.

Around this point it's revealed that the Iskoort are all Yeerks. Violence is narrowly averted as the Iskoort turn out to be an offshoot or a lost colony of some sort that has made its own host bodies and moved from being parasitic to symbiosis for a peaceful way of being. Should the two races ever meet, the Yeerk would gain an option to end their conquest.

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 falcon, pulling to safety with a spiteful quip as the Howler plummets to its death. Back atop, Jake reunites with the others. Cassie runs up to and kisses him, prompting Rachel to say that "it's about time".

Jake morphs the Howler with the others under strict orders to kill him if he loses his mind to the instincts of a superpredator. He finds no such things. Instead, he discovers that Howlers are little children. They're manufactured, they have a lifespan of three years; they find killing a fun and exciting game. Since Jake has no memory of the death of the Howler he killed, Crayak must erase any memories of defeat that the Howlers get.

The Animorphs make the memory-recordings, while Erek and Guide join in. When the Howlers next attack, the Animorphs use Howler-Jake to stun one of them and force the entire memories of eight beings into the impossible purity of its mind, along them the knowledge that the non-Howlers are real beings. Crayak is forced to destroy all six Howlers before the memories can reach the rest of the race, but one memory remains, that of Cassie kissing Jake. The contaminated Howlers are essentially ruined.

The Ellimist wins, and the Iskoort live. Taking his warriors back to their own planet, the Ellimist reveals that the day's actions will save an entire race in months, when the Howlers will try to kiss their enemies instead of killing them. In three hundred years' time, the Iskoort will meet the Yeerks.

The following night, Jake tries and fails to turn his dreams from the child he sent to its doom.

Morphs

Trivia

*According to the Anibase, K. A. Applegate included Jake and Cassie's first kiss in this book, not only as a nod to the Animorphs fanbase, but as homage to the first interracial kiss on TV, between Captain Kirk and Lieutenant Uhura on '. The first "Animorphs" kiss was better received than "Star Treks, which ignited a storm of angry response, thirty years before the publication of "The Attack".
*This is the eighth book to feature a cover morph that was not acquired in the book. Jake acquired his Siberian tiger morph in the first book, "The Invasion".
*The front cover quote is, "Change is necessary...."
*The inside front cover quote is, "It's time to meet the tiger...."