Tomorrow we're going to get started on Book #31, The Conspiracy so here's hoping you're ready for another trip through the mill with Jake!

This week, let's try to place ourselves in Marco's shoes: he's known almost from the beginning of this whole mess that his mom is a prisoner and victim of the yeerks, and he's fought to free her ever since that revelation

At the same time, he's far and away the most practical of the group, downright ruthless in a lot of cases, and so he knows that saving his mother won't necessarily be the outcome of this adventure

He deliberately made Jake hold back the information about the identity of Visser One's host so the others on the team wouldn't pity him or go soft, although that intention kind of ended up backfiring on him when he couldn't let her die back in book 15

And eventually, his quest to free her and restore his family will succeed, one of the few unequivocal successes in this entire war, and even then nothing can be the same as it once was for his family

How well do you think he copes with it all? Have his decisions been pragmatic, or has he been playing a desperate game of Xanatos Speed Chess trying to alter the situation until he finds the one outcome he wants more than anything?

How would you be able to handle it if this was all suddenly dropped on you and your worst enemy was the face of someone you'd already lost?

Should he just have let his mother die and saved himself all that heartache?

We'll be back tomorrow to start the new book