But then, we didn't get a chance to hear of any of the other Horks decisions, because the author never really wrote about it - maybe they talked to Toby beforehand and said that they would prefer to fight for their homes over running, and she was their mouthpiece.
That's not a bad point there. I can pretty easily picture Jara or Ket deciding to take a stand and fight rather than running (perhaps not completely understanding that they'd need to run away in the end, anyway), and I'm sure other Hork-bajir in the colony may have felt the same way. So, yeah, maybe we can chalk that up to something that happened off-screen.
I imagine the phrase "Free or dead" was uttered a lot. Toby probably got fed up of that. =P
Oh, hey! On the subject of books we don't like! #34!
I actually rather liked the general concept for #34, but I think the problem lies in where the book falls in the narration order. Cassie, being the narrator, was contractually bound to be the one who ended up getting possessed. And, since gender-bending was probably out of the question, it had to be Aldrea who possessed her. *sigh* Which is where we have the problem. Seriously, Dak would have been a MUCH better fit for Cassie. Two people who wanted desperately to keep to a non-violent lifestyle, while being forced into a war. Heckuva lot better than trying to shoehorn pacifist Cassie into being anything like the ruthless Aldrea.
Ideally, though, I'd have loved to see Dak and Jake be the co-stars in this book. Both of them shoved into a position of leadership in a war they'd never asked for, and both of them just doing the best they could. I would have loved to see them compare their own lives to one another.
*sigh* I guess I don't like #34 for much the same reason I don't like #47. Missed opportunities.
Agreed! It did seem strange that Cassie was picked, but obviously, for the reasons you stated, it had to be her. It would have been amazing to bring Dak in instead, not only for the relationship to Jake (I imagine that if it was a Jake book, Dak would have been used instead, and it probably would have been better), but also because Toby could probably relate much better and would do a little more than sit in the background like a prop.
Also, another problem with this book is that fact that the whole plotline is never mentioned again! I put that down, again, to ghost-writers who didn't quite know what to do with some things.
34 was pretty weird. They probably could have made it a jake book, where Dak possessed him. Of course it would have been nice to just let Toby narrate the book, and at the end she could stay with the new rebellion like she should have. Instead she gets kidnapped by the group to go back to earth, and at the end of the series she doesn't even take her people back to her planet. She somehow gets a position in congress, and her people are in Yellowstone.
A Toby narrated book would probably do a good job of explaining a lot of things. There's a good fic on FanFiction.net that does exactly that - Earth Diary of Toby Hamee.
All in all, I don't think we can accurately judge Toby's character, because her actions were severely limited and most of it came at a time when the series was written by inconsistent ghost-writers. Sad, really.