In my world, making hard choices is part of the deal. Sometimes I'm right, sometimes I'm wrong. Sometimes I just can't tell, even when the mission is over and we've all come out alive, at least.
Leave the Animorphs. Come back. Trust Aftran, the Yeerk. Trust her again. Take responsibility for the never-ending, always unfolding consequences of those decisions. Say no, I can't be part of this mission, can't be part of the mass-killing of innocent people no matter what the ultimate goal, I won't. Get involved anyway, commit acts maybe much worse. Why? To save some lives, not others. A choice. There's always a choice.
This is the last Cassie book before she suggests recruiting disabled kids and gives up the morphing cubes. Two major choices, neither of which she is fully comfortable with, both of which have HUGE consequences in the end of the war. Cassie is, of course, the person who least wants to live her life in shades of grey. Her life before Elfangor was committed to actively healing other creatures, which has hard choices, but those choices are on the scale of a single animal's life at a time. Not dozens of deaths, tearing people's throats out with her teeth.
The second paragraph where she elaborates on hard choices is also Cassie's greatest hits (solo missions) which bears a different sort of relevance to her finding herself on a different continent to the other Animorphs. Cassie wants to save all the lives, take none, trust that other people want the same. This book actually lets her pull that off once she's in Australia, which is nice this late in the war.
The other things I like about this is that it mentions #43. The fact that that was a watershed moment for Cassie, the first time saying no to an individual mission ending with her massacring the gas station and inconsolable and it carrying over us just really good. Animorphs generally tries to acknowledge the big moments but the scale of the series at this point means some moments are barely brushed on (which in itself can lend to the wear of the war) but I think the fact we get some Cassie introspection right before the start of the endgame is great.
