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ramiel's review
dark
emotional
funny
reflective
tense
fast-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
Overall I'd say Cassie's books, along with Rachel's, happen to be some of my favorites purely because I do love the way Cassie sees the world. This is the first book narrated by Cassie in the series, and I think it does a good job introducing her character properly (as all the kids' "first books" do) and giving her a starting point, a base, a reason to fight.
Like Jake to Tom, Rachel to Melissa and "other peoples' relationships", to Tobias deciding to live as a human and a hawk, to Marco and his mother and family, to Ax and his culture - at the end of the book Cassie is determined to continue to fight when Ax tells the group that the Yeerks would destroy Earth and cause many creatures to go extinct.
That voice churned my insides. I felt my own hatred flaring up to match his. The images Ax had painted - an Earth brown and empty and filled with nothing but the slaves of the Yeerks...
I had lived my entire life without feeling hatred. It is a sickening feeling. It burns and burns, and sometimes you think it's a fire that will never go out.
My favorite thing, a bit I forgot happened in this specific book, was the interaction between Marco and Cassie after Marco's near-death-experience (he's had like one per book now it feels). Cassie, the emotional center, the pacifist of the group feels like because she made the decision to go after the message in her dreams that means Marco's near-death was her fault. Marco, blunt, sarcastic, and joking, refuses to accept the apology because he "didn't have to go, and chose to anyway" and going on to tell her that making choices like this, life-and-death, was a part of their lives now, a part they just had to accept (have we mentioned these characters are 13 years old?). It's a good scene, and I don't believe she'd get the same blunt, no nonsense response from Jake or Rachel, the people she's already established as being the closest to in the group, this early in the series (as they're both incredibly soft towards her), and it does a good job in building up the relationships and team dynamics that would continue into the following books.
Setting aside one thing I didn't like in this book first: it's the introduction of the constant argument through the books that "morphing a sentient creature is just like taking control of a sentient creature" and that still makes No Sense To Me. Still, that Cassie's allowed the room to explore the ethics and morality of morphing and the war itself without tearing her down is something I love. While I wish the reasoning made more sense, I think that the broader theme of "ethics during war" is very important to Cassie's development, and really makes her character.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Gore, Grief, Slavery, and Violence
Moderate: Animal death, Blood, Genocide, Panic attacks/disorders, and Suicidal thoughts
Minor: Death
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