I hated #41 because the moral at the end seemed to be catering to Cassie's whims was more important than Rachel and Marco's lives. It was a hugely unflattering depiction of Cassie and of Jake and a total perversion of their relationship, IMO. Throw in some saccharine scenes about child artists, some 'tee hee ironic!' bit about Marco being a Visser, and a completely unimaginative and unbelievable dream setting and it's easily my least favorite book KA has ever (ghost)written, and that includes the entirety of Remnants.
. . . Darn it! I can't quite bring myself to completely disagree with you on any of those points. Curse you! Curse you for being so poignantly correct and forcing me to question one of my favorite books!
Seriously, though, yeah, okay, I will admit it could have been a better book. I guess I never really minded the perversion of Jake/Cassie, since I was never a huge fan of that pairing to begin with. But I do actually think it could have been a lot better if the ending was left truly ambiguous. I think it was kinda sorta supposed to be ambiguous-ish, but they hinted so strongly about which option Jake chose that it didn't really work out that way, which is a shame.
IMHO (and I'm not trying to start fights with any Cassie-fans, but) Cassie does have some minor characteristics of a
Black Hole Sue throughout the the majority of the series, so the fact that she plays that role in one book is hardly cause to hate the book.
ANYWAY!
1) Top Five Favourite Animorph Missions/Battles
Probably the whole Veleek incident. Playing tag with a dust-monster from Saturn? AWESOME.
The first and last battle in earth's history ever to involve oatmeal, FTW
The AMR
The destruction of the Kandrona in #7, their first decisive victory
Rescuing Aftran in #29
2) Top Five worst/lamest Animorph Missions/Battles
Toby deciding to sacrifice about half of her people for nothing more than vague and meaningless concepts that they surely did not understand
The Cow incident
The Andalite porta-potty
Trying to get the Blue box from David
The campaign against Mr. Tennant in #35
3)Top Five Greatest Animorphs Covers
The inside cover of Megamorphs 2, with all the Anis and a dinosaur, rawr!
As much as I hate to say anything nice about Alternamorphs, they did have pretty sweet covers
The Hork-Bajir Chronicles
The Andalite Chronicles
The Message (#4)
4) Top Five Worst/Lamest Animorphs Covers
The Familiar (#41)
The Return (#48)
The Resistance (#47) (come on, a beaver? Really?)
The Encounter (#3) (mainly just because the cut-out keeps getting caught on my other books)
The Forgotten (#11) (in part because Scholastic promptly decided that Jake's battle morph MUST be a jaguar, right?)
