Ugh, 41 is terrible. The only good things about it are the Marco/Rachel interaction in the beginning and the scene with Tobias as Elfangor. Everything else is saccharine ("do you think someday I'll free my friends?" amazing art kid), irrelevant, wannabe clever ("get it, Rachel's all ugly now? Because she's so pretty? Oh and also Marco's a Visser just like his mom! IRONIES!") or just wall-bangingly stupid (Jake conclusion of "I almost sentenced Rachel and Marco to death, but you know what I really regret? Not stopping to pander to Cassie's need to mope!"). And not to mention the frigging moon ray. Moons are not suns, Yeerks! Really, that's the best Jake's subconscious can come up with. I could have taken it being nonsensical if it wasn't so dang bad in every other way, too.
I mean, I'm one of Cassie's few devoted fans, and even I wanted to beat her upside the head in that one. And Jake for pandering to her. Again, he nearly sentenced Rachel and Marco to death, but his biggest problem is that he didn't play nursemaid to Cassie's pollyannaing? Terrible conclusion to a terrible book. I can't believe I waded through 150 pages of that - twice - for that sorry excuse for a payoff.
I mean, I love me some nonsensical dream sequences. They're my favorite thing to write and among my favorite things to read. One of my other peeves in the series is that their dreams/nightmares are often too linear - Jake's dream in #6 or Marco's dream in #30 being examples of that. Neither of them really have dream logic to them, and that bothers me. Meanwhile, by contrast, Marco's dreams in #5 and #15 have really deranged nightmare logic to them, which works for me, and Cassie's in #19 are flashbacks, which also makes sense.
But #41 doesn't make sense in normal logic or follow the rules of dream logic. It feels less like the "and then surreal stuff happened and I instantly understood it and/or didn't question it" nature of dreams or the "my subconscious is unloading all its crazy onto me at once in a completely impossible way!" of nightmare logic. There's no jumping back and forth in the sequence of events, there's no fixating on repetition, there's no people randomly changing identities, no big location switches. It's too linear and plausible for dreams and too stupid and convenient for reality. It just feels like someone had ten pages of ideas and then just did a bunch of "...and then!", and added a few incongruities to try and have it masquerade as a dream.
So, it fails as a story, it fails as a dream, it fails as a plot set-up, it fails as an insight to Jake's character, it fails as a standalone piece...*whew* Pretty much, I hate #41. I hate every page and nearly every letter on that godforsaken book. I like to pretend it didn't happen and thankfully, the series canon pretty much agrees, as it's never mentioned again.
As for repeating lines, it's the specific descriptions that bother me. It's like KA came up with a few stock phrases to have the Anis use whenever they morphed, and just recycled them. Lazy writing. There are so many other words that also convey "bulge".