Warning for mild spoilers.

The introductions are over, we know the kids and their motives, the basis for their conflict and character arcs has been set, so in this book we, checks notes,

have Jake getting infested by the same aliens he and his friends are risking their lives to save Earth from and to force it out they have to starve it, which means Jake is trapped with a dying alien in his head. And there's 56 more books to go.

I love any narrative where we get a chance to see an outsider's perspective of our heroes. In Animorphs, this book is my favorite showcase of that. The upcoming David arc is another great example of it, but The Capture stands out to me since it's one of the early books and already we see how brutal these kids have to and can be and how much of a unit they already are.

One more reason to like this book: the direct threads connecting Jake's actions here to his future self in the endgame. It's in this book where he's first given the option of killing defenseless yeerks, and he goes and boils them alive. But the yeerks haven't been fleshed out and humanized by the narrative and the kids don't know the nuances of their enemy yet —the concept of seeing the yeerks as nuanced and sentient creatures is only a seed by the end of the book, so readers are characters alike have a surface level understanding of the enemy— so while on a first read you probably don't think much of it, it's horrific on a reread. And it makes Jake's actions in the future even more damning.

Jake being infested by Tom's former yeerk serves to solidify his motive of wanting to save his brother. As a narrative device it also shakes up the usual format of the books a bit and I enjoy that. It also gives us a glimpse of the symbiotic process (I would like to know even more about it please) and a first hand account of the experience as an unwilling host, in case the stakes and the scale of the situation the kids are fighting against wasn't clear enough.

This book marks the debut of other players in the war such as the Crayak and we also get hints that there's more to the Andalites (and their relationship to the Yeerks) than what our heroes have been told.

The descriptions of Jake trapped with the dying Temrash in his head are Haunting, and so is the bit with Temrash torturing Jake with Tom's holdover memories.

As for the audiobook: Loved it, as usual. Another voice that took me some time to get used to but that once I did I enjoyed. Particularly liked Temrash's voice and the Rachel-as-a-valley-girl imitation.

No highlights for the book because I don't even know where to start from. This book is simply a favorite.