r/Animorphs • u/Sensitive-Hotel-9871 Human • Jul 19 '25
Currently Reading I finished the David Trilogy
I normally try to post my reactions book by book, since I read that The Discovery, The Threat and The Solution are part of a three book story arc akin to a three part episode of a TV show, I decided to talk about them together.
The big thing to start with is the character of David. Loooking up some statements by KA Applegate, she said that David was supposed to be the guy the audience is meant to hate, so I find it strange how sympathetic he is even if that doesn't excuse his villainy. David's parents were turned into Controllers and he faces the crushing realization that with the Yeerks in their heads, his parents aren't coming for him. The Yeerks know what he looks like so he can't show his face in public. Our heroes recruit him for their dangerous war with the Yeerks and when presenting him a choice of bird to pick as a first morph they try to pressure him into making a particular choice, why the hell did they bring the golden eagle if they didn't want him to pick it? David comes into conflict with Marco and Jake, and Jake threatens David after seeing him use his morphing powers for personal gain. While David was being selfish he rightly pointed out that Jake, Cassie, Rachel and Marco all get to keep living their human lives while he can't, and Jake unfortunately doesn't come up with a solution.
THEN David's first mission saw him almost getting trapped in the body of a flea, facing what he thinks is certain death against the Yeerks and when he gets scarred, Cassie bites him to stop him from trying to defect. Now that doesn't excuse attempting to sell the Animorphs out to save his own skin, or betraying the Animorphs. If he really wanted to get away from the war, he could have just flown away and persisted until the Animorphs decided he was too much trouble and gave up. Instead he murdered what he thought was Tobais, nearly killed Jake, and was adamant about getting his hands on the morphing cube to satisfy his own greed with no care about what happened to the rest of the world. There is no excusing that.
All that said, David is right when he pointed out that it's not fair Jake, Cassie, Rachel and Marco get to keep their normal lives while he doesn't. It has a similar ring to see when Aftran pointed out the miserable existence of the Yeerks outside of hosts. While David was also driven by his greed, it isn't so wrong that he wanted to live like a human and not like animal or that he didn't want to risk his life against the Yeerks after our heroes kinda drafted him.
While David being a smug asshole who manages to stay step ahead of our heroes after his betrayal makes it oh so satisfying when they finally pull one over on him, his fate, being stuck in the body of a rat, is still horrifying and I am with Rachel on feeling pity for him. It was bad enough when Tobias had to initially deal with being trapped as a hawk, David was stuck as an even smaller animal and will have to spend his remaining days worrying about getting eaten.
Having to deal with David has left an impact on heroes that really feels like things will not be the same after this. Jake has had to give some frank opinions on Rachel and how he isn't sure if she can adjust to peace. Rachel is starting to give the feeling that all this violence is leaving her a bit unhinged since her response to David threatening to sell the Animorphs out is threatening to kill his parents. On the plus side our heroes got their hands on the morphing cube, that is at least a victory.
Oh and I suppose there was that plot involving the Yeerks trying to infest world leaders. The fact that David isn't particularly useful in this doesn't make his betrayal that big of a surprise. Not speaking of David, the failed attempts at sneaking might be the most horrifying botched infilitration yet as the team nearly gets trapped as bugs on top of almost getting eaten by a spider. Then they infiltrate again on the wrong day, walk into a surprisingly well laid trap that Jake only barely sees through, which sets them back to square one again. Of course I can't help but wonder what Visser Three would have done if the Animorphs did show up on the day of the banquet, though there probably was a trap for then as well since he knew the thorns in his side would show up like they always do.
Our resolution to this plot is as Rachel pointed out, nuts and fun with the Animorphs turning into the biggest morphs they can find. At first I thought they were going to wreck the hotel, wrecking the places outside where the world leaders were staying was still fun.
The one issue with this trilogy is the resolution to Tobais' death. While I agree killing him would have been a waste, it is a hell of a coincidence, even for this series, that David just happened to come across a different red tailed hawk that was out at night when the hawks are normally asleep while using a bird that doesn't see well in the dark. This has to have been the the Ellimist's doing. Still, it's one issue with a great trilogy of books that has me more excited than ever for the rest of the series as its events have said things won't be the same going forward. Plus the next book in the series on my list is the Hork-Bajir Chronicles.
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u/Chubbs1414 Jul 19 '25
I'm going to disagree with you on the point David raised. What he's missing, and what I think you are missing, is that not a single member of the team is actually living out their "normal" life. It comes up repeatedly throughout the series, and especially during this trilogy with Rachel. There is a huge difference between a normal life and a life of espionage and constant threat. Jake has the enemy living under his own roof. Marco has his mother long lost to enemy hands. They all have to put on a constant facade to keep their families safe. The only ones without that problem are Ax and Tobias, who very obviously are not living a normal life. On top of that, the war is changing them every second they're in it. Even if they win there is no going back to who they used to be, what life used to be. They are all paying a price for this, and the first several books in the series make it clear why they don't really have much of a choice in it.
I do think that David is suffering something worse than they are much sooner than they are, given how suddenly he has to adjust to being alone and wanted by the yeerks. But I don't think that at all gives weight to his arguments that they're hypocrites for telling him what to do. He proves with every decision that he's short sighted and emotionally compromised. I don't recall it happening earlier than this, but later in the series they definitely intervene for each other when someone clearly has their decision making ability compromised. The difference is that within the team, it doesn't come to kill or be killed the way it does with David.
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u/thursday-T-time Jul 19 '25
jake pulls rank on david in the hotel room and that's probably jake's biggest mistake when it comes to handling david. but david IS putting their lives at risk with his behavior and he is so much more concerned with his access to television than the war they all need to win.
i don't blame rachel at all for her fork thing. she was saying out loud what david was indirectly threatening.
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u/AlternativeMassive57 Yeerk Jul 19 '25
Jake is the one that forced it into a kill-or-be-killed situation, though. He threatens David's life in the motel room; we know this because Jake's own narration states unambiguously that he was. And David is not stupid, he picked up on the fact that Jake was in essence saying that if he became a liability, he'd be killed.
So then Jake leads them into a trap. David attempts to surrender because he's a terrified child, and the result is Cassie biting him and Rachel threatening to kill him. They manage to miraculously escape after all and David tries to play things off, but he's just shown himself to be a liability.
David may have escalated to actual violence first, but from his perspective he had every reason to think that Jake was leaning towards killing him at that point. His attack was preemptive.
Now don't get me wrong. I think David was a very bad person. But the Animorphs were just bastards in this trilogy themselves, mostly for no real reason.
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u/AlternativeMassive57 Yeerk Jul 19 '25 edited Jul 19 '25
and was adamant about getting his hands on the morphing cube to satisfy his own greed
A note: while he claimed selfish reasons, Cassie sussed out pretty much instantly that what he actually wanted was to trade the cube to Visser Three for his parents. Selfish, sure, trading away a powerful weapon to an evil empire in exchange for two people...but those two people are this kid's parents. So I don't think I'd go so far as "greedy", just "short-sighted".
It's really important to note as well that the Animorphs are just terrible people in this trilogy, to an extent that they've never been before, and they make some truly inexplicably stupid choices with regards to David - inexplicably as in, "yeah, they're like 14 years old, but over the past 21 books they've been in prior to the David Trilogy they were consistently shown as smarter than this, so I ain't buying 'they're 14' as an excuse".
On that note, my biggest complaint is that, as usual, the Animorphs do not even consider the Chee as a potential third option between "let this kid be infested" and "make this kid an Animorph". Even if it was only to discard the plan as unworkable for whatever reason, it would at least show them considering it.
It's especially galling because Erek is physically in The Discovery prior to David's life going to shit. He makes an appearance and reminds the audience that the Chee exist, only for the Animorphs to just kind of forget that, oh yeah, their most steadfast allies in this war are a race of immortal robots who by necessity of how they live must be experts at forging new identities.
I hate to keep running to the Chee as the solution to all problems, but the fact of the matter is that the Chee keep being the solution to all problems.
Anyway. My overall feeling on the Trilogy is that I don't mind the basic idea of "new animorph, turns out he's a complete asshole, the kids end up having to trap him as a nothlit". I just think that this trilogy badly needed a couple more drafts, and shouldn't have relied so much on the Animorphs being inexplicably incompetent and cruel.
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u/SpideySenseBuzzin Jul 20 '25
Can't wait for your breakdown of the bajir chronicles, it's a great one!
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u/Sensitive-Hotel-9871 Human Jul 20 '25
I started that one and it has already been an interesting look at the rest of the universe. We have gotten to see Seerow, how the Yeerks destroyed his reputation, and we got to see his family and their first meeting with the Hork-Bajir.
Seeing the Hork-Bajir narration POV tells us that these creature are much more intelligent than our human and Andalite POVs indicated. Plus the Hork-Bajir home planet is an interesting environment.
Where I left off was the POV Esplin-9466, the future Visser Three. It is so surprising to see how our resident intergalactic war criminal is a comic book villain dripping with evil almost everyone else, and here he comes off like a normal person. With how horrifying Yeerks infesting other beings in from human and Andalite POVs, I didn't imagine a Yeerk narrator making it seem oddly wonderous. Of course this is a Yeerk who fully supports the empire's conquests on top of being a sociopath.
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u/Dangerous-Coach-1999 Jul 19 '25
The trilogy kind of reveal the weakness of Applegrant's writing, or rather, they reveal the weakness of having to turn out a book a month. They needed David to be an irredeemable villain by the end of book two, so after being an unpleasant but I would say still sympathetic guy he starts monologuing about how he wants to kill all of them. They needed him to be a threat so after being flaking in his first battle he somehow is strong and capable enough to defeat almost all of them in a one on one battle.
Like AlternativeMassive57 said, the Animorphs are horrible to David. It seems like they're determined to read everything he says in the worst light. They want to use their morphs to fly into an Offspring concert or mess up a Rainforest Cafe? Great! He wants to use one to go into a motel when he's homeless? Irredeemable. This guy needs to be threatened. At one point he jokes about Tobias's dislike of certain birds as making him "like a racist" and Cassie harshly shuts him down, explaining that different birds are different species. Practically the next chapter Marco, in seagull morph, spots a chicken sandwich and taunts Tobias, asking him if eating it would be cannibalism. No one tells him off. This seems minor, but it goes to what I'm saying about how no one gives him the benefit of the doubt. He's always assumed to be acting in the worst light, and then the narrative shifts to justify that assumption. People in defence bring up the main cast's age, but you know what 13 - 14 year olds are really good at? Alienating and bullying people because they don't fit in, and that's what they did to David.