#give me her being fierce and brave and also sweetly protective in 33

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

What do you think the best ghostwritten book is in the series. I lean towards 29 myself.

Oh man. There are some really good ones.

I like how #25 handles Marco's unreliable narration, from him calling himself "Mr. Ruthless" as he's worrying over the baby seals who just lost their mom, to his pointed "Yeah, Dad, what do we do?" as a way of calling out everyone else for being too demanding on Jake. Plus, Visser Three going "Cursed parasites!" while scratching a flea bite and Rachel shooting back "He's one to talk" makes me laugh every time. Between that and #35, I think Jeffrey Zeuhlke (credited in both books) might be my favorite ghost.

That said, I think Ellen Geroux does a great job with specifically Tobias's navel-gazing in #33 and #43. He spends a lot of time in both books just thinking, and in a series as dialogue-heavy as Animorphs that could get slow if not handled as skillfully as it is. That said, #43 is also one where Jake and Rachel are weirdly out of character (Jake "snaps at" Ax to "watch it!" after they bump each other; Rachel "more sweetly" asks if Ax is okay) so it's never going to be a winner for me.

But never mind that. Because #29 might just be the best Animorphs book. It's tightly plotted. It's beautifully written. It has humor, and sweetness, and melancholy. It gives us excellent character moments for all four boys as we see their separate responses to falling ill. It shows Rachel being good in a crisis, and Cassie being friggin Wonder Woman in a crisis. It has former enemies working together to save a friend. It has hunter-tracker bots defeated by bird poop. It's making me want to find out what else Melinda Metz has written, because honestly it might be better than any of the books K. A. Applegate wrote alone.