The Weakness

By: Katherine Applegate

Narrated by: Emily Ellet

Length: 2 hrs and 29 mins

Publisher's summary

Jake has to attend a wedding out of town. No one has been designated to take over as leader of the Animorphs. But when Tobias tells the others that he's found the place where Visser Three currently feeds, there is a unanimous agreement on going after him. The kids acquire cheetah morphs to run the visser down.

Unfortunately, there's a new player on the scene: an inspector sent by the Council of Thirteen to check on Visser Three's eternal problems. The inspector has a Garatron host body. Garatrons are the newest hosts: like Andalites, but with shocking speed—and no morphing technology. This Garatron-Controller outruns the Animorphs and Ax in their cheetah morphs, saving Visser Three.

The kids soon realize this inspector may provide a way to do away with Visser Three. If they can convince the inspector that the visser is totally incompetent, totally unable to stop the "Andalite bandits," maybe the Visser will be recalled. Now a dispute breaks out: Who will run the mission in Jake's absence? Marco and Rachel are the main aspirants. Cassie takes herself out. Tobias and Ax bow out. In the end, Marco lets Rachel take control.

Rachel stages a series of reckless Rachel raids to harass known Controllers, with the goal of making the Visser seem impotent. But Rachel's recklessness and impatience betray her when her failure to plan results in Cassie being captured and taken to the Yeerk pool. Rachel's confidence collapses. She learns about the flip side of leadership, the difficult choices Jake makes all the time. The kids rescue Cassie with a spectacular assault on the Yeerk pool. Rachel has succeeded, but her interest in leading is considerably diminished.

©1999 Katherine Applegate (P)2022 Scholastic Inc

Rachel goes Rambo

while this isn't the strongest story in the entry, partially because it was part of the Ghost Rider the audiobook performance is still appreciated and Emily Ellot does a great job capturing her character.

Manic Rachel

Rachel at here most manic! Ghost writer didn't quite get Rachel so the version we get is a bit out of character

Rachel has officially gone insane

Did no one at Scholastic read this? She flew a fr*cking plane into a building. It's official, Rachel is psychotic.

The Worst of Animorphs

Rachel acts like a caricature of herself. She's stupid, arrogant and mean. All of her character development up to this point is ignored. In fact, she's less mature here than she was at the start of the series. It's infuriating. Skip this one unless you feel the need to read every single Animorphs book. To me, it doesn't deserve to be headcanon.