Name: The Encounter
ISBN: 9780590629799

K. A. Applegate

Warned to never stay in his animal shape for more than two hours, Tobias forgets when he becomes involved in a rescue campaign and faces being trapped in a hawk's body forever. Original.

The Encounter

Maga P

<Yeah. I know. That's how I know that you are wrong, Rachel, at least partly. I am a human, yes. But I am also a hawk. I'm a predator who kills for food. And I'm also a human being who... who grieves, over death.>
She was terribly sad. She's very human, my friend Rachel.
♢ 3/62 OF THE ANIMORPHS REREAD  ⚠ tws for the entire series: war, death, child soldiers, child death, descriptions of gore, body horror, discussions of parental death, slugs, parasites, loss of free will, depictions of PTSD and trauma, ableism, imperialism. 
Tobias' books are about the search for his identity and personhood, about duality and finding yourself within it, about his role in the group (a theme for all of the animorphs!) and how he stands as a warning for the rest— and also for the reader to know that the stakes are real and will affect our protagonists, in case it wasn't clear from all the death and suffering they've already come across in only two books.

His narration is turned towards interiority and this one being the first, is the peak example of it, I think. It's after all one of those points where Tobias' identity is more fractured (what with Just being trapped in a hawk body and all) to the point of being suicidal, and the narration of his inner conflict is really really gutting— made even more poignant if you're listening to the audiobooks, whose narrator did a great job in carrying across Tobias' emotionality.

Highlights: The depiction of Tobias' relationship with Rachel, the Berensons being such battle axes As Usual, these kids deciding they'd rather die than be taken captive AND WE'RE ONLY ON BOOK 3, the entirety of the mall scene, and Rachel saying "a person isn't his body" and thus supporting the fact that you can 100% read Tobias as trans. TRANS RIGHTS 🏳️‍⚧️

renee badenoch

Reading The Encounter was fitting for 2020, in that both the book and this year are so full of immediate and ever-present danger that it’s hard not to become inured and apathetic to

a)risk of dying

b)risk of societal take-over by evil, despotic slug-creatures (yes, I mean Trump).

Tobias may be trapped and claustrophobic inside his hawk-body, and I’m trapped and claustrophobic inside my house. The major difference is that I have to read 54 Animorphs, 4 Animorphs Chronicles, 6 Megamorphs, and 3 Alternamorphs books, and all Tobias has to do is save the world.

There is a plot to The Encounter. It’s high-stakes as always: Tobias is flying and being emo and thinking about hitting on Rachel even though she’s a pretty blonde human and he’s a red-tailed hawk. Tobias sees a shimmer in the sky, and follows it: It is reaveled to be a giant space-truck that is taking water from earth and transporting it to the Yeerks in outer-space.

Tobias “Can we tell the cops?”

Rachel “No, some of the cops are controllers.”

Me, ear-splittingly loud, screaming at a bunch of fictional teens from 1996, “All cops are controllers, kids.”

Marco stops making terrible jokes for one goddam second and suggests that they figure out a way to break the invisibility barrier on the space-truck, causing the whole world (or their whole small suburban town) to see that aliens have invaded so they can get reinforcements in their fight against the aliens, instead of just being three teens and an emo hawk fighting off an entire alien race.
The plan to do this was kind of convoluted and involved turning into wolves, whereupon Jake almost gets into a fight with another wolf and Cassie calls him an alpha, and I’m again yelling at fictional teens from 1996,

“There’s no such thing as an alpha male, that’s based on faulty, debunked research, and I know you’re just teens in 1996, but would you believe that I still have to have this conversation with shitty dudes on Tinder in the year of Our Lord 2020? Yes, teens in 1996, I know it’s a waste of energy positively roasting shitty dudes on Tinder, but I have some scientific integrity”

The Teens™ turn into fish and get sucked up into the Yeerk ship and almost die. Rachel pleads with Tobias to kill them rather than let them get taken over by the Yeerks (because KA APPLEGATE DON’T FUCK AROUND) but Tobias gets a gun in his little hawk talons (adorable) and uses it to shoot aliens and then the ship explodes. The Animorphs are sad that they didn’t manage to do much to accomplish their plan, but they cheer themselves up by saying, “at least we blew up one tiny transport ship” which is the same half-hearted, exhausted, “this is better than nothing”energy I felt when Biden won the 2020 election.

1 star for being an absolutely apropos book for 2020

PS: More astute readers may recognize that this was published in 2022, not 2020, and to that I say: It’s still functionally 2020, what are you talking about?

cléo

** spoiler alert **
           “Be happy for me, and for all who fly free.”

Tobias é a prova viva que, no mundo da K.A. Applegate, toda ação tem uma reação (e de brinde uma consequência). No primeiro livro, ela mostrou isso com o Tobias passando do limite de 2 horas ao morfar em um Falcão de Cauda Vermelha e, por conta disso, fica preso nessa forma para sempre.

The Encounter nos apresenta a luta interna entre a parte humana do Tobias e entre a mente e os instintos do falcão que ele morfou. Applegate, na minha humilde opinião, fez um ótimo trabalho nos mostrando essa crise de identidade que o Tobias passa, principalmente o pânico que ele sentiu ao matar um rato pela primeira vez e as consequências que isso teve na sua mente já fragilizada. No entanto, esse plot que ele acaba passando pode ser um gatilho para algumas pessoas já que ele tentar se suicidar (uma das consequências ao matar e comer o rato).

Além disso, o livro também nos ajuda a entender o que as pessoas que estão sendo controladas pelos Yeerks estão passando, já que é uma situação similar a de Tobias: eles estão presos em seus próprios corpos (ou no corpo de um falcão, na situação do Tobias) e não podem fazer nada para escapar dessa situação. 

Ao acabar o livro, eu posso afirmar com todas as letras que o Tobias se tornou meu personagem favorito e que eu espero, do fundo do meu coração, que exista um jeito para que ele possa voltar a sua forma humana.

Nia C

Hauntingly beautiful. This book perfectly encapsulates the pain and the struggle Tobias is going through. This one is very emotional, tbh. Love it. 

Five stars and an A for ALL THE TOBIAS FEELS.