- Narrator: Jake
Tensions between the Animorphs and David reach a boiling point.
Tropes:
- Cliffhanger: The book ends with Jake in tiger morph falling through the mall's skylight as David in lion morph bites him in the throat.
- Dirty Coward: David chickens out of his first confrontation against Visser Three, trying to convince the Visser that he's on his side.
- Foreshadowing: When Jake mentions Saddler to Rachel, David's reaction is noted. In the next book, David acquires and replaces Saddler.
- I Meant to Do That: David claims he was faking out the Yeerks when he said he was going over to their side. Nobody is fooled, least of all Rachel.
- King of Beasts: David acquires a lion as his standard battle morph.
- Sixth Ranger Traitor: David openly betrays the team after Rachel chews him out for nearly selling them out to Visser Three. He kills a red-tailed hawk he assumes is Tobias, and fights Jake to the death in the mall.
- Spotting the Thread: Jake realizes that the banquet with the presidents and prime ministers is a trap by noticing that they're inside a hologram, which is inside another hologram. Visser Three gloats that the real banquet is actually tomorrow. The second time, Jake realizes the Visser is bluffing when the army of Hork-Bajir Controllers fails to react to Marco in cobra morph, revealing that said army is a third hologram and the Visser only has human-Controllers for backup.
- What Measure Is a Non-Human?: David claims that Tobias was just a bird, so killing him isn't that big of a deal.
- The Worf Effect: Jake has previously described his tiger morph as the most dangerous of the Animorphs' standard battle morphs. He ends up losing his fight against David's lion morph.
