I am two-thirds of the way into the David trilogy. So just some basic thoughts: I’d never really noticed that Jake calls his fictional little brother Tommy as anything other than a kid name. But of course, it is his brother’s name.
It’s so clear even without David’s little outburst about Ax and Tobias not being human and the speech he makes over the dead hawk that he doesn’t see other people, human, hawk, or andalite, as people. He only talks to Marco because he needs a tool, and seeing Saddler as a solution to a problem and theft as fine because he DESERVES the life he wants as downright disturbing. Jake feels like he’s coming down on him hard in the hotel room but I wouldn’t have veiled my response, especially at that age, even with consideration for the week David is having. The world owes you nothing David, and it never will.
Tell you what does happen to David though - he exits his house via the window pursued by a combination Berenson and Hork-Bajir. Twice. Loser.
Kind of related, during the BB gun incident Rachel yells that she’s gonna find some way to hurt David at school tomorrow. It doesn’t seem like she had time but I wonder if he was tripped in the hall at any point (should’ve stolen his backpack).
I do love how emphatically 20 shows that Marco is smart, tactical and absolutely terrible with people. He gets put in charge of handling David accidentally and he knows he isn’t the person for the job, but it’s not that he reads David wrong, he’s just bad at making people do what he wants unless it’s a one-off. He does a good job for the most part, he’s just good at putting his foot in his mouth, and he doesn’t actually like David so why should David like him?
All the downtime in this trilogy is downtime because it’s there for the animorphs to hit a new low. Erek has news. David is selling the cube. Cassie wants to sing mmm-bop. Jake’s cousin got hit by a car.
21 particularly has waiting, but no chill. It’s just compounding action and drama til we hit the glass of the skylight that Marco smashed to save Tobias back in book 3.
Speaking of book 3 - this is the first mission in a while where Tobias has to stay outside for logistical reason, and also the only time since then that a close call of that level has happened with the morphing clock. It was bad when he saw it the first time, but how much worse would it be to find out they were all trapped as insects? (Also, in 3 Cassie morphed a little before the others, 21 Jake did and neither of them had significant trouble demorphing.) The flea scene is so well written. This whole trilogy is.
Ax has been on a pretty hardcore streak since 18 - saving Leera, killing a T-Rex (and committing xenocide), *threatening to kill little girls*, catching the morphing cube with his tail, jumping backwards over a swimming pool - and he was ready to do what needed to be done with David. He wishes Jake ‘good hunting’. Of course the other thing to come of 18 is an acknowledgement that as much as the animorphs are a hopeless gaggle of human children who hope anyway in the name of saving their planet, they are the army Ax is serving in. He objects to Jake’s orders in 19 and 21. But he follows them.
It bothers me that in the banquet hall Jake forgets that David morphed lion the night before, but it’s of negligible importance in the grand scheme of things.
So: the moment that the series shifts on. Not David finding the box. Not them making him an Animorph. Not even him killing Tobias. Jake choosing the weapons he would need for this fight, and with prompting from Ax, making it clear how those weapons will be used.
It’s true that they can’t lose David, that Rachel lives nearby, that she has the best morphs. As a snap decision, following David but getting one more person for backup makes sense when waiting for Ax might make him lose David. Jake and Rachel grew up together. They know each other. They’ve been fighting a war together for a year, more or less. Jake knows what needs to be done, and anyone but Cassie will do it if they have to. Cassie would too, but it would break her. But Rachel would do it first, and best, and with Tobias dead there is a personal score for her to settle, just as Aftran trapping Cassie was personal. If it was done quickly, Rachel would not doubt that killing David was the right thing to do, however terrible. David needs to be stopped and in under two hours, there’s only one way to stop a morpher. Get Rachel.
