An Un-Calibrated Centrifuge

I almost gave The Departure five stars because, my goodness, this is a good one, definitely one of my favorites as a kid and still one of my favorites now.

The tension and the danger feel real. The story is well-paced and reveals interesting details about the war between Yeerks, Andalites and humans.

We're seeing the Animorphs evolve. They're facing big decisions and they don't always agree, but you can see how they need each other and how they're a well-balanced team. I think this is a great lead-in to the David trilogy.

I do have a couple of questions which keep this book from being five stars. I'll put them under the cut.

My biggest question is what happens to Karen when the Yeerks find out she's no longer a controller? I mean, the end goal is to take her father, and when the Yeerks go to take him, they'll realize Aftran gave up Karen as her host. This should create a big problem for Aftran, Karen's family and the Animorphs. There might be something mentioned in a future book (I know Aftran makes at least one more appearance), so I'm afraid to google anything because I don't want to spoil it (even though I've read the series before there's a lot I've forgotten and it's fun to let the story unfold in each book).

That's my main problem with the book. I also don't believe that no one heard the battle at the beginning. Rachel was in elephant morph. ELEPHANT. Come on.