Wholeheartedly agree that Bob is self-insert, and has precious few character flaws for the first several books aside from his general tendency to live vicariously through the other life forms he comes across (notably his "family" outburst with the deltans), and it isn't clear just how much his attitudes are character flaws until the fifth book, when he actually has to start facing the consequences of his own choices, in his own reflections through replicative drift and the Skippy debacle.