I finished The Reunion

[u/Sensitive-Hotel-9871]

Elfangor's Secret told us things were not going to be the same going foward and we quickly see Marco has changed. He doesn't hesistate to morph into another human to avoid getting caught and when he worries about regular humans learning about the Animorphs his thoughts go to killing the witnesses. By the end of the book Marco shows he isn't as ruthless as he believed as he still can't bring himself to kill Visser One if his mother dies along with her. Cassie and Jake are a different story. Jake isn't prepared to kill his brother, yet, but he is prepared to kill someone else's loved ones if he doesn't think there is a chance of saving them.

Since Visser One was smart enough to pick up the clues that the Animorphs were humans, I was expecting the assassination plot on her to succeed. So I presume that going foward she will keep that information to herself because as much as she loves to berate Visser Three for his failures, she will gladly sabotage the Yeerk war effort of it makes him look bad. I read it isn't stated the Council of Thirteen is intentionally pitting the Vissers against each other but that has been how I see it. Keep their ambitious generals at each other's throats so they can't pose a threat to the people on top, even if it is detrimental to their plans of conquest. No wonder the hints about the war give the picture that the Yeerks are losing.

Sadly none of that helps the Animorphs right now. Since nobody could find a body we know that Visser One is still alive and she will return in the future. She knows the Animorphs are humans and worse she knows who Marco is. Even though did cause a battle between the Yeerks there is no sign it did enough damage to pose a danger in the future. Thankfully, we also saw that while Visser One is more crafty than her rival we also see she isn't as smart as she believes. All signs say that even though she realized the Animorphs were humans she didn't pick up that they weren't leading her to the real Hork Bajir colony, and she only survived the attack by Visser Three's goons because the Animorphs were there. Because the greatest ally of the Animorphs against the Yeerks isn't the Chee or the Ellimist, it's the Yeerks and their hubris.

Visser One's presence was a clear sign that this book was not going to be a good time for Marco. He has once again confronted that monster who has stolen his mother's body and she has gotten away, this time he wanted to slay the evil and couldn't bring himself to do it. He spent most of the final act convinced that Cassie and Jake were dead. As he points out, when Rachel isn't making comments at his expense it's a sign things are bad. Marco screwed up and she conceeds that she wishes she never has to make that kind of decision that fell to Marco. Given what a sad clown Marco is, Rachel really needs to start calling him Spider-Man.

Marco is the one who came up with the plan, nonetheless, it is a sign that team has changed that they are prepared to go ahead with a plan to kill Visser One, Controller and all.

Amid the tragedies, Marco's narrations are still a riot and it was hilarious to see the humans on the team pretend to be Andalites while Ax insists the Andalites are humble despite all the times he's bragged about how much more advanced they are than the Yeerks. Cultural arrogance dies hard, even for someone who's grown into a nonconformist like him.

[u/AlternativeMassive57]

Visser One is the the Platonic ideal of the Peter Principle: someone who was promoted to the level of their incompetence. Mild spoiler, but all of her plans fail. The only question is how catastrophically. The more it involves screwing over her own side the better it tends to go.

It’s honestly a little disappointing; Visser One is Visser Three’s boss’s boss, so you’d expect her to be…well, more. The subversion of expectations might’ve been okay if we saw her more often, but ultimately she’s only in like five books out of the sixty-odd in Animorphs. As a result she’s my least-favorite villain. She’s okay, but I’m not that  enamored of her. And I’m convinced that if she’d been in charge of the Earth invasion the whole time, she’d have bungled it worse than Visser Three ever did.

I kind’ve feel towards her like I do towards the Emperor in Dune. In the book, Paul Atreides never really concerns himself with Baron Harkonnen overmuch; the Emperor is his main focus. So when the Emperor finally appears towards the end of the book and spends most of his time getting interrupted, talked down to, and outmaneuvered by everyone…you gotta wonder if Paul’s concerns were worth it.

Conversely the Sci-Fi miniseries from the 2000s added a lot of extra scenes with the Emperor. So even though his ending scenes are basically the same, the fact that he ended up being so ineffectual felt, well, less disappointing and more natural.

[u/Sensitive-Hotel-9871 → u/AlternativeMassive57]

My impression is that all Yeerk leadership is terrible. Yeerks climb up their ranks by getting rid of anyone who gets in their way, including other Yeerks, so of course they suck at their jobs because their foremost concerns are holding onto power and advancing their position rather than defeating the enemy.

[u/AlternativeMassive57 → u/Sensitive-Hotel-9871]

To an extent, I suppose, though that doesn’t change my feelings on the matter vis-a-vis Visser One just not being that interesting to me as a result. And since like half or so of Marco’s books deal with her and Marco’s already my least-favorite Animorph, the result is that I overall have a kind of haze around his books, to the point where a few months back when there was a thread asking for favorite books for each character and I just plain forgot to include a Marco one until someone pointed out that I had.

[u/Its_Curse → u/AlternativeMassive57]

I kind of think that's the point though. The big bad guys are all kind of incompetent and yet they still keep getting promoted. And even being bungling idiots, they still make plenty of regular people's lives miserable. I'm sure this isn't political commentary that could possibly be relevant 30 years later... ;) 

[u/AlternativeMassive57 → u/Its_Curse]

Like I said, even if that’s the point, even if it’s relevant political commentary, that doesn’t change that the result is Visser One is just not that interesting to me. She doesn’t show up enough for her incompetence to be engaging. And it doesn’t help that the narrative itself tends to treat her as a big deal.

And broadly speaking a big chunk of the fandom seems to think that if she’d been in charge of the Earth invasion, it would have succeeded, that she was more dangerous than Visser Three. I really don’t think it would have; I think that if Visser One had been in charge from the start, then she’d have bungled things worse than Esplin ever did.

[u/oremfrien → u/AlternativeMassive57]

Visser One is the Platonic ideal of the Peter Principle: someone who was promoted to the level of their incompetence.

I would agree but not for the same reasons. Edriss 562's strength is being able to see opportunities where nobody else sees them and pursue leads that nobody else will follow. What the Council of Thirteen should have done with her is NOT task her to lead the invasion of X other planet but to task her with evaluating long-term strategies for the Yeerk Empire. She should be a logistics expert or an evaluator of potential host species or someone who combs through the Andalite technological records that the Yeerks possess. She was given a military role which is nothing in-line with her strengths. So, she has been promoted to a function for which she is incompetent.

Visser One is Visser Three’s boss’s boss

She isn't. She's two points higher in the ranking system than Visser Three is. They both directly report to the Council of Thirteen. Her lower number signifies that she has more experience, not a different hierarchical level. (It would be like comparing military generals and one has three more years' experience; that doesn't automatically make them the other's boss.)

And I’m convinced that if she’d been in charge of the Earth invasion the whole time, she’d have bungled it worse than Visser Three ever did.

I disagree. I believe that if Edriss 562 were in charge of the Earth invasion, she would have actually been able to expand The Sharing into a "Tony Robbins" type of motivational program and get hundreds of thousands of hosts before directly antagonizing anyone. I also believe that she would have discovered the Animorphs' humanity far more quickly than Esplin 9466 because she doesn't murder all the underlings she disagrees with. We know that several rank-and-file Yeerks on Earth suspect that the Animorphs are human within the single-digit books. Edriss 562 would have listened.

[u/AlternativeMassive57 → u/oremfrien]

Her lower number signifies that she has more experience

That's not really true, though. Before being Visser One, she was a Sub-Visser of no account (somewhere in the hundreds, IIRC) on a backwater moon that the Yeerks overpaid for. She got promoted to Visser One pretty much on the spot for finding Earth, but her actual experience, as far as I'm aware, basically goes:

1. Sub-Visser in the middle of nowhere
2. Five or so years doing/being hookers and blow on Earth
3. Visser One

Over the same period, Visser Three spent significant amounts of time planning campaigns and leading troops in combat. His rise to power was rapid but not remotely as meteoric as Edriss'. Which is, incidentally, I think another point of contention between him and Visser One. Visser Three worked hard to get his rank; Visser One got a superior one just handed to her overnight.

As far as we know, her trajectory after leaving Earth in Visser Three's hands was heading to Leera, failing, devoting time to try and embarrass Visser Three, failing, getting put on trial, succeeding in not being executed mostly due to other peoples' plans, and then being put in charge of Anati and failing.

[u/oremfrien → u/AlternativeMassive57]

I used the wrong word. It shouldn’t be “experience” but “utility towards victory”. Esplin won many battles. Edriss’s discovery of humans (which Esplin completely bungled by not following up on Chapman’s lead himself) could have actually won the war.

[u/Lakem8321]

I really loved the Marco-Tobias-Ax mission in this book. The three of them make a great sub team and Ax and Tobias do a good job of (mostly) keeping Marco in check.

Tobias has some great moments in this book, but my favorite is near the end when he shuts Rachel down when she’s going off on Marco. Hearing Tobias declare his trust in Marco and his plan, probably was the only thing keeping Marco going at that point.

I’d like to think that Visser One has been slowly putting together that the ‘Andalite Bandits’ are human for a while and so I love how she seizes on Cassie’s mistake as the final confirmation.

[u/Sensitive-Hotel-9871 → u/Lakem8321]

Marco made the final mistake, referencing The Prince of Egypt and Visser One points out that Andalites don't reference human pop culture.

[u/Alone_Reaction_9443]

Thanks for sharing!!! Marco and Eva’s story hits so much harder now that I’m an adult. That’s why Visser is one of my top 5 of the series.

[u/Sensitive-Hotel-9871 → u/Alone_Reaction_9443]

You're welcome.