Animorphs #23: The Pretender thoughts (pt. 2):
"Comforting, knowing you have an on-call grizzly bear" (p. 19). Sir, I love them.
"Mostly I was just nervous... What temptations would I have to face? Strange word, temptations. Strange concept. But that's what worried me most. Temptation" (p. 19). Tobias, are you Catholic? If not, you probably should be. You'd nail it, I'm sure.
Interesting that Tobias mentions morphing "slowly at first, because my mind was confused" (p. 21). Goes back to the theory that morphing speed reflects morphing comfort. And I'm still headcanoning that that weird thing with him being unable to heal in MM2 was mental, not technological.
This is maybe the only time we get an 18th-century-style blank line in place of a name anywhere in the series. I feel like the rest of the time, the books just dodge around any mention of last names. The ghost writer's influence at work, perhaps?
I love the sequence with Tobias realizing he's a lot more tough and capable of taking care of himself in the real world than he was as a human kid.
On p. 35 the book mentions "a harrier I knew as Cassie" — that one feels like it's almost certainly the ghost writer's error, since otherwise the series is so good at keeping track of who has what morphs.
One of my favorite parts of this book is the hork-bajir taking on their own agenda, and how little they care about what the Animorphs might think of said agenda as long as Jake doesn't get in their way. They're allies, they might regard Tobias as a friend, but they are not part of the team.
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