Last time, Wanderer/Melanie were about to die, but crazy Uncle Jeb saved them. Something tells me things are about to get worse for our “heroes,” though.
Chapter 13
Wanderer/Melanie immediately ask if Jared and Jamie are with Uncle Jeb. He says no, but I am not convinced. And you shouldn’t be either! He also gives a really lame excuse for leaving them, so it’s very super duper mega obvious that he does not trust Wanderer/Melanie and knows that there is a soul in the body.
“Look,” Uncle Jeb said after a moment. “I, uh, have something to take care of. You rest for a bit, and I’ll be back for you.”
To kill you. Or at least that’s what I think he’ll be back for.
Now Wanderer narrates the story as “we,” by the way. Or at least she has started to since they almost died, so don’t get too confused if I throw some quotes in and she’s going, “We this, we that blah blah.” Anyway, they angst about Jared and Jamie and wish they were dead because life is pointless without them. So they’re depressed and sleep for a little again, and when they wake up, they hear Uncle Jeb talking to other people. Apparently there are like eight people with him! I bet they’ve all baked cookies or something for Wanderer/Melanie…what? They’re an angry mini-mob? Oh, okay. Surprise, surprise.
One of the men even has a machete. Yikes! Even though this is clearly a Bad Situation, Melanie is fucking stupid.
I saw horror, but Melanie saw all this with wonder, her mind boggling at their numbers. Eight human survivors. She’d thought Jeb was alone or, in the best case scenario, with only two others. To see so many of her kind alive filled her with joy.
Don’t worry, Wanderer points out that she’s being an idiot, but does Melanie listen? Sort of. But there are dumber things to worry about. Wanderer suspects Jeb and the others have only left them alive to torture them, specifically Wanderer for her secret. She tells us that she’s thinking this secret and that she’s hidden it from Melanie behind, you know, their mind wall.
Melanie was hardly even curious on the other side of the wall; she made no effort to break through it.
Wanderer also thinks about how much torture she’ll be able to endure, and apparently that part of the thought process is something Melanie has access to because she’s like, “Just tell Uncle Jeb that I’m here!’
Oh, really, Melanie? You’re going to have a member of the alien race that your uncle has been suspicious of since the beginning tell him that actually you’re still aware and hanging out in the body alongside her? Do you really think that’s going to fly?
Luckily, once Wanderer points out that that would only make them think she was a Seeker, Melanie realizes that telling Uncle Jeb the truth probably wouldn’t go over too well. Jeb does, however, step in when the man with a machete makes moves to kill Wanderer/Melanie. Melanie’s aunt also suggests that they could learn a lot about the alien, and after this Melanie starts asking about how the family is doing (because she’s an idiot). So her aunt comes over, slaps her, and says she’s not gonna be fooled by a parasite.
They blindfold Melanie/Wanderer to lead her back to their camp. On the way there, Jeb explains he’s not doing this out of sympathy but out of curiosity. Ooh mysterious. Anyway, after lots of walking and lots of thinking basically the same thoughts over and over again about whether it would be easier to kill themselves than be tortured, their blindfolds are removed, and now they’re in a cave of sorts. With loads of people! Seems like the human race ain’t doing so bad after all.
And…SOMEONE WHO THEY RECOGNIZE IS IN THE CROWD! Bet you can’t guess who it is…
Chapter 14
It’s Jared. And he’s not too thrilled about the situation. He’s no longer all jokey-jokey. He means business this time. Melanie, again, is stupid and tries to run over to him with her arms out (I guess to hug him), and even though Wanderer tries to stop her, she can’t. Jared smacks them and they fall ON THE GROUND.
Ug, and you can tell it’s a Stephenie Meyer book because here we go with the beautiful nonsense.
Jared was walking toward us, and his face was the same as those of the barbarians in the desert—only it was beautiful rather than frightening in its fury.
Wanderer correctly wonders if his beauty means anything when he is clearly about to kill them.
From the crowd, a doctor steps forward and begins examining Wanderer/Melanie. Oh, also, they see Melanie’s cousin Sharon in the crowd, but no sign of Jamie yet. The doctor seems alright, he says “her” instead of “it,” so there’s that.
Suddenly, though, Jared speaks up.
Jared answered through his teeth. “I’ll tell you the problem, Doc. What’s the difference between letting you have it or Jeb putting a bullet in its head?”
I trembled. Jeb patted my arm.
The doctor blinked again. “Well” was all he said. Jared answered his own question. “The difference is, if Jeb kills it, at least it dies cleanly.”
Basically the doctor’s argument is like, “But this is for science! Maybe this time we’ll get it right and remove the soul successfully or learn something new!”
All of a sudden Wanderer/Melanie start to pass out, and as they do they ask for Jamie, and Jared says he’s fine…and that’s how this chapter ends? God, nothing at all funny happened but also nothing interesting. Talk about a snooze cruise! Sorry, y’all!
All that and I’m not even going to explain why I raised my hand.
HA! Damn it Bellomy, the poll was very clear!
Wanda really doesn’t strike me as the “resisting torture” type. Maybe I’m wrong, but…
It took me way too long to realize who Wanda was. And no she seems like she’d crack in a fucking second, she could barely stand being hot in the desert for an hour.
In the Animorphs series, did human’s learn how to remove a “yerk”, and if so without harm to the human? I don’t remember all the details of that series, but I do remember it making a whole lot more sense than this book.
I thought they eventually did? It definitely made way more sense! I think I’m going to wiki it to see what happened.
I remember that the yeerks had to leave the host body every three days to get nutrients or something. There was a relatively early entry in the series where one of the animorphs accidentally gets a yeerk in him and they just sort of lock him up for three days and wait it out. Don’t know if they ever came up with a better way than that, I didn’t finish the series when I was a kid.
To answer your question, yes. Matthew explained it below – the yeerks need to get to a nutrient pool (“yeerk pool”) every three days or they die. So to kill a yeerk you need to imprison it’s host for three days so it can’t get to the yeerk pool, then the host is free.
The series needed to come up with increasingly creative ways for why they didn’t just tie Jake’s controller brother down and have either Ax morph him or the Chee make holograms of him so that he could be freed. I think it was all related to inner-yeerk politics and the chain of command.
Also, yes, there was an early book where they tied Jake down for three days to kill the yeerk in his head.
And interestingly enough if I remember correctly I believe a yeerk is actually removed via brain surgery later in the series, though I could be wrong.
Some of those ghost-written books were terrible, but some were real gems. The “Chronicles” companion books are terrific (specifically loved “Visser” and “The Hork-Bajir Chronicles”).
…Actually, he explained it above, but same drift.
Thanks! I figured the hive mind would have the answers.
I think I already gave this warning a few weeks ago, but…it’s literally gonna be one big snooze cruise up until chapter 32..! (And then again after that.) I would seriously consider doing one big post on chapters 15-31 next week – I’m not kidding. It would suck for you and Matt having to read all of those chapters in one go, but hey: you were the ones offering to read bad books, so we didn’t have to. 😉
Hmmm maybe. The only problem is I’m working at a super intensive 6-week program, so it’s hard enough finding time to read 2 chapters. Also, enough things happen in one chapter that I feel like we need to explain so that other chapters (boring as they be) make sense. Otherwise, I’d love this plan. Man oh man it’s rough.
As much as we’d love to up the number of chapters we read per post when things get boring/just to get through it faster so we can read MORE BAD BOOKS for you guys, like we did last fall with Hush Hush, it’s really time-intensive and not the easiest thing for us to do. We’ll see how boring it gets.
No, I completely understand – to be honest, I’m already massively impressed by how you guys find the time and dedication to update this blog every weekday! (Thanks from a fan! :)) I read “The Host” while being in bed with the flu, which gave me lots of extra time. To this day, I do not understand why this book had to have 600 pages… I don’t think the writing style is as bad as in 50 Shades of Grey, but it’s just that…nothing happens!
the mental wall thing reminds me of that movie village of the damned, where the kids are aliens. Does anyone else remember that?
No but I just read a plot summary, and now I totally get why it does. The guy just keeps thinking about a brick wall so they can’t take over his mind 0o