In "The Arrival," an Andalite ship with four Andlaites arrives on Earth, apparently on an assassination mission. Instead of professional warriors, however, the Andalites are a bunch of misfits with secrets of their own: a blustering coward, a pragmatic criminal, a desperate professor, and a naïve prodigy. Jake further demonstrates his abilities as a strategist and leader throughout the book, combining firm resolve with talented deception. Ax, meanwhile, gets his first kiss and realizes where his true loyalties lie.

This Ax book continues the ideas of his other books: that Andalites are not perfect. Andalite society is just as riddled with intrigue, double-dealing, traitors, and government hypocrisy as human society. The book reinforces the ideas that it is impossible to label an entire species (or race) as uniformly this or that. I definitely liked this book, though found the trip to the Yeerk pool unnecessary and contrived as well as the break in at the Community Center too easy and simple.

Xmas present for my son, who is loving this series!

Great book! Will purchase from seller again!

I thought that this book really showed Ax's character and that he isn't just some annoying superior guy with no personality. He's really sweet

Getting right to some action kept the exposition from dragging.

Ax was amusingly proud of himself in Chapter 2. I also liked the point about the different battle morphs being complementary.

Knowing roughly what happens here, I saw a lot of foreshadowing. I suppose that's good writing.

I've thought a lot about the other Andalites, but forgot they showed up so soon. That makes sense as a non-resolution to the initial confrontation, but this series has a habit of stringing things along.

I'm reminded of Ax hesitating to kill Alloran in #8 The Alien, and I was glad to see the text make that comparison. I know Arbat has an additional reason, and not fulfilling their stated mission may speak to their hidden mission.

I saw Ax's crush right away and didn't mind that being elaborated on. Here we see a practical problem of morphing another particular sentient. Goofing around in human morph is still amusing with other Andalites. It was great to get a whole Ax/Estrid date of that later.

No wonder the Animorphs snapped again. "Thought you were done but you weren't" feels rather stressful even in much less serious situations. Bringing out the dark side of Rachel is the most obvious effect.

It's definitely not a typical military mission; even a civilian like me noticed. The breaches in decorum come to mind. Ax asking about his action station seemed like a contrast. That is something a crewmember would find out upon being assigned to a ship. Action Stations is an actual British term; the US Navy equivalent is General Quarters.

Are the Andalites unfairly dismissing Earth or do they really have other important battles elsewhere? Do they understand how crucial it is to keep this many host bodies away from the Yeerks? The other Andalites are seeing the Animorphs at their worst, so some of the disdain is understandable.

Apparently Ax finds it easier to see Andalite cultural flaws in others of his species. From a meta perspective, that seems like a humanity allegory.

The book did a good job of gradually revealing the mystery.

The secret plan seems unnecessary even from the brutal war tactics perspective, even without sentimentality to my own species.

The ending was also something different. The human shields both show how hard a target we are for the Yeerks and fear of Visser Three hurting the Yeerks.

Woo-hoo, the Andalites arrived. Or should we be rejoicing? Urgh, poor Ax. This one totally wowed me. Jake really kicked butts and took names. He's pretty confident as the leader of the secret military of Earth, yes?

Notable moments and inconsistencies:

This book is ghostwritten by Kimberly Morris.

Odd that subordinate Yeerks are cautioning against killing a person because Visser Three will be furious at the loss of a host body. Visser Three constantly kills host bodies unnecessarily. If it was really about preserving hosts, Visser Three would hold a host until the Yeerk inside starved, then re-infest the person with a different Yeerk. Of course, Visser Three is also a hypocrite, so it's possible that he would be angry at an underling doing something he himself would do, but in general he does not act like host bodies are precious.

Usually, if one of the Animorphs is morphing to an animal that shares some characteristics with humans, those features will morph into the animal version (e.g., arms will become front legs, human noses become animal noses, etc.). But in this book, instead of having his ears migrate up to the top of his head like every other morph so far, Jake's tiger ears pop out of his hair before his human ears disappear. This is really an inconsistency, because while there's not a whole lot of logic to morphing in general, it does seem to have some general rules, and this description broke them.

In a previous book, Ax refers to having his second and third heart stop when he becomes a human, leaving him with one heart. This is the first place where it's clearly stated how many hearts Andalites have. But twice since then--once in The Andalite Chronicles and now again in this book--an Andalite refers to "both his hearts." Question is, which account is correct?

When Tobias and Ax find Estrid at the mall in human morph, it's made clear that she nabbed the DNA of another customer at the mall because they see the same person there. But it's never made clear how the heck an Andalite got into the mall to acquire a kid's DNA.

The Andalites the group meets in this book are named Estrid-Corill-Darrath, Gonrod-Isfall-Sonilli, Arbat-Elivat-Estoni, and Aloth-Attamil-Gahar. All are male except Estrid.

It seems ridiculous that Jake and the other human Animorphs would go into the Yeerk pool in their actual bodies. Especially Jake, whose brother is a Controller. He has another human form he could have used, though they were short on time. Just seems like an unnecessary, ridiculous risk.