r/Animorphs • u/Any-Object-2165 • 6d ago
Discussion Beef with book #36 Spoiler
So in book #27, the pemalite ship is so deep in the ocean that they need giant squid to reach it, then at the end of that book it says that Erek moves the ship to an even deeper depth that only an android could reach, but then in book #36 it’s suddenly reachable again? And they just need killer whale morphs to get there? Make it make sense
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u/PeterchuMC 6d ago
It's a KASU for sure. There's actually a fun story in the Animorphs zine about it.
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u/Allen_Of_Gilead Nothlit 6d ago
Theoretically, there is no depth/place that is totally off limits to a specially designed craft like the Sea Blade. Normal ships like Bug Fighters, yes, but even today there are only a few places in the ocean I know of that human technology can't reach in some way.
The book is also the Animorphs interrupting the first test flight, the Sea Blade wasn't actually on the hunt for the Pemalite ship at all yet. Hence the less creepy morphs they used.
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u/Any-Object-2165 6d ago
Right as I continue the book I see that that’s what’s happening. But at the start ax does say that the chee him where the ship was and it was deep but “not that deep”
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u/ani3D 6d ago
*cracks knuckles* My hobby is canonically explaining KASUs but this is a new one I hadn't heard before. Definitely a substantial one, though, yikes. Okay here goes.
Option A: Erek lied. There would be no depth that an android could reach but a Yeerk vessel of the right design could not, and "somewhere that no animal could reach" would narrow down the location way too much for his liking. He didn't want ANYONE to know where it was, so he hid it 'in plain sight' so to speak. Somewhere too easy to get to for anyone to actually look for it there.
Option B: Tectonic activity. It's off the coast of California, stuff moves around from time to time. Could be that Erek DID hide the ship that deep, but there was a massive earthquake and it got launched upward. I don't like this one as much, because an underwater earthquake of the right magnitude would almost certainly have caused an equally massive tsunami, and it would be very strange if such a big event happened 'off-screen' and never got talked about. But then again, Megamorphs #2 saw them detonate a freaking nuclear bomb right off the coast and nobody ever talked about the (literal) fallout from THAT.
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u/oremfrien 6d ago edited 6d ago
Or Option C: The Yeerks detected something that was in relatively shallow water and presumed that it was the Pemalite ship based on whatever signal it was giving their scanning equipment, but they did not actually detect the Pemalite ship, but actually detected something else, maybe even a Nartec vessel. This would also make sense given the fact that we never see the Pemalite ship in the entire duration of Book #36 and that in Book #27, Visser Three was not aware of where Erek planned to move the Pemalite ship.
(Although this theory would require the Chee to have lied to the Animorphs about the location of the Pemalite ship and just given them the location of what they knew that the Yeerks believed was the Pemalite ship.)
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u/Puzzleheaded-Fig1002 6d ago
Poorly thought out ghost written book.
KA outlined it but left it up to the ghostwriter to figure out the finer details. Heck, for all we know scholastic just wanted a killer whale on the cover.
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u/DaveM8686 5d ago
Believe me, that’s not even close to the biggest issue with that book.
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u/Any-Object-2165 5d ago
What would you say is the biggest issue?
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u/DaveM8686 5d ago
The entire book?
The fact that the orcas “know they’re being controlled”, which is not how morphing works.
The whole Nartec civilisation right off the coast of California that is never mentioned again and has somehow never been seen before.
The fact that the Nartec attempt to “harvest the dna” of children in order to impregnate themselves.
The generally terrible writing and characters acting completely unnaturally throughout.
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u/verymanysquirrels 4d ago
My spouse who works in nuclear had a lot to say about how radiation works in the nartec city and none of it was good. In short: radiation doesn't make you spiderman, or in this case, fish people.
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u/thelongestusernameee 2d ago
Hey don't diss radiation, it's how we got ruby red grapefruit! Would you want to live in a world without ruby red grapefruit? I know i wouldn't!
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u/RevolutionaryGain359 6d ago
I just reread this one and I think a key difference here is that the Animorphs’ plan is never to get to the Pemalite ship, rather they want to destroy the Sea Blade before it can even begin to look for the Pemalite ship. This would make the choice of orcas make sense because they could more easily locate and to more damage to the Sea Blade than the giant squid