Animorphs.
Cool friends fighting aliens...more accurately, the pariah of a fascist civilization, minutes before being eaten alive in front of said "ccol friends" persuades and then bioengineers human child soldiers to facilitate an end to an ill-conceived and failing war now reduced to unilaterally exterminating a parasitic, physically disabled species, itself undergoing a violent civil rights movement on their own planet based on their self-recognized flaws, struggling to realize its place in a universe where godlike beings exist and decide not to offer remedy(rules of the god game) and spectate while the parasites overwhelm all vulnerable species in the known universe.
The child soldiers agree to resist the parasites, but at least a minority of them believe genocide is the wrong answer. After being physically and emotionally tortured, shot, repeatedly disemboweled and having their limbs hacked or bitten off by hosts of the parasitic species, however, all of the child soldiers begin taking violent, morally devastating actions that end their lives as they know them.
Use spoiler tags as necessary! There are always new readers discovering this series.
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Update: Estreen! That's the word. Found it!
An exceptionally talented morpher is an estreen! I knew there was a word for it.
I can't find the word.
Isn't there a specific andalite word for how good Cassie is at morphing?
Artist - iara catunda
Its been decades since I read animorphs, nice to see this community and get some nostalgia.
Didnt Tobias stay too long and get stuck in hawk form?
He did, and upon this reread, I was shocked that he actually becomes a nothlit in the first book.
I felt like so much happened in the series before he gets stuck, and a lot does happen because the first book is so dense, but it is insane that he gets trapped immediately and then the entire series is him wrestling grappling with that identity crisis.
Glad to have you, there is some fun fan art throughout the community, and there's a really great tobias and Rachel picture that was the first thing I posted.
Have a good one!