Kris Bjornsen is captured in Denver on her way to her college classes and wakes up on the primitive planet Barevi. Courageous and resourceful, she manages a single-woman escape from the Catteni and is living in the wilds of the planet when she comes to the aid of a Catteni soldier pursued by his own ranks. Recaptured together, they join forces with other slaves to outwit their captors and a hostile planetary environment. Anne McCaffrey’s first story was published by Sam Moskowitz in Science Fiction + Magazine and her first novel was published by Ballantine Books in 1967. By the time the three children of her marriage were comfortably in school most of the day, she had already achieved enough success with short stories to devote full time to writing. Her first novel, Restoree, was written as a protest against the absurd and unrealistic portrayals of women in s-f novels in the 50s and early 60s. It is, however, in the handling of broader themes and the worlds of her imagination, particularly the two series The Ship Who Sang and the fourteen novels about the Dragonriders of Pern that Ms. McCaffrey’s talents as a story-teller are best displayed. The Catteni Series (also called the Freedom Series) is a tetralogy of science fiction novels by American writer Anne McCaffrey. In this universe, humans are slaves of aliens, the humanoid Catteni. Woven through all four of the books are details of the relationship between Kristin Bjornsen, a former slave, and Zainal, a renegade Catteni.

Things are really going to hell in a handbasket with this series. I'm determined to finish listening to the series, but it's getting excruciating. I think they were way too successful with understanding and reusing a completely alien technology / machine with few tools. This assumes similar technology to our own - chips, power, interfaces, etc- that they could easily understand and re-use. I wish this were more challenging and "alien". The inhabitants of Botany - a mixture of humans and extra-terrestrials - had managed to build a thriving and productive world out of what had originally been intended as a slave planet. And now they had plans to try and overthrow the terrible Eosi, who for centuries had existed by subsuming members of the Catteni race, living in their bodies and ruling space through them. I'm a bit biased. I loved Anne McCaffrey's "Pern" novels as a kid. A year or so ago, I discovered that McCaffrey was not an obscure, one-series author hidden in the corner of the bookstore as I once thought. When I started reading her work again, I realized how much her books had influenced my tastes- all those wonderful new planets and creatures I had been craving were because of her! Kris Bjornsen has come a long way since alien slave ships scooped her up in Denver with thousands of others. Dropped off on an apparently uninhabited world with the rest, she has fallen in love with Zainal, a renegade Catteni, and made a comfortable life for herself and her new family. But she feels a soldier's duty to escape Botany and rejoin the struggle for freedom.

Publication Order of Freedom Books

The story is slower than most science fiction adventure stories. This story is all about the journey and survival, not the action, even though there's a lot of stuff going on day-to-day. The original short story, "The Thorns of Barevi" (1970), had a rape-fantasy component that was removed when it was reworked into the first novel, Freedom's Landing. McCaffrey wrote: Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives. Her best cat friend is Zainal, who I never built an affinity with. I don't care about him any more than Kris. So if I don't care about her, or him, or their relationship, then there isn't really very much to talk about with these books.

Boring aliens. Turns out that almost all alien species are more or less humanoid. Handy. And the exceptions (six-legged cows, bird-things and Not-Sandworms) are dull and nonsentient. I have to assume the short story was written in the era of the bodice-rippers, where publishers and the public really got behind selling the idea that rape is sexier than sex. And the whole "plot" of "Thorns of Barevi" is basically a set-up for that very rapey sex scene. She saves him and he "rewards" her by banging her, there's a massively implausible deus ex machina that lets them all go home together (I murdered someone but they only get to be mad for one day! Whee!), the end.Q: HOW is it possible for the late great Anne McCaffery's early foray into furry rape porn be translated into a book salable to her mostly YA-friendly, dragon-loving audience, familiar with her collection of female coming-of-age stories in fantasy settings with low-heat romance sub-plots? In Freedom's Landing, the Catteni routinely round up human troublemakers and drop them on empty planets – if they survive, the world is suitable for their own people. Kristin is included in such a group, which is dropped on a world they name Botany (after the Australian destination for transportees, Botany Bay). Surprisingly, a Catteni noble, Zainal, is among their group - the same one Kristin helped earlier. While trying to cope with their new situation, they discover the existence of another alien race that is using the planet as a gigantic farm. Kristin is at first the only one to vouch for Zainal but he soon proves his usefulness to the rest of the improvised colony. They steal technology from the mechanisms that are used to farm the planet Botany. She and Zainal fall in love. [2] I liked how very unbigoted Kris was, and how ready to defend Zainal and the other non-humans. I loved that she kept chastising herself for her horniness. I liked the pace of the romance as well , and found it very fitting that it didn’t take the forefront for a long time. One bit about Anne's writing that drives me crazy is her childhood development gaffs. Perhaps her children were extraordinary, but most likely, she no longer has any idea of what children under 5 years old are like. These children have no relationship to reality. Don't base any of your ideas on childcare on anything that Anne has to say. As the survivors unite together, they soon learn that the planet that their masters once thought was empty is full of dangers, including mechanical farmers that harvest planets for an alien species technically advanced than any other species in the galaxy.

I enjoyed the Dragonriders of Pern series (until her son took over) when I was a young adult, but I haven't read Anne McCaffrey since then. I don't know if this is dated or my tastes have changed or what, but this seemed a little .... off. I like planet settling stories, and I’m definitely planning on reading more. There’s something about surviving under harsh circumstances that’s really interesting and intriguing. I really liked that we got to see the settling and organizing through the eyes of Kris, who isn’t a leader. She’s very capable and definitely an important member of the original droppers, but she doesn’t have a position of power.

The nail in the coffin for me is that, as part of a series, almost nothing is resolved. The only one answered is the “Will they or won’t they?” question about Kristin and her love interest, Zainal (the alien guy she rescued and got recaptured for). We don’t know why they got dumped on this planet, who developed this planet originally, or even who in the group of unwilling colonists is going to finally be the bad guy McCaffrey set them up to be and actually do something evil.

I bumped into this by accident in the library, and since McCaffrey died I’d been meaning to read something by her, and the blurb looked to be promising SF with a dash of romance I decided to take the entire series with me on Christmas break. I’m so glad I did, because I really liked this first book. Kris Bjornsen is an escaped human slave who witnesses an aerial dogfight and an airship crash and .... runs toward it? She sees an injured Catteni, one of the race of aliens who kidnapped the humans from Earth and she .... helps him? He makes a pass at her, makes it clear he won't take no for an answer, so she konks him on the head with a wrench and then .... uses her stolen flier to return him to civilization? But then they and a bunch of others get captured and relocated to a new planet. Her working career included Liberty Music Shops and Helena Rubinstein (1947-1952). She married in 1950 and had three children: Alec Anthony, b. 1952, Todd, b.1956, and Georgeanne, b.1959. Derivative aliens. The spacefaring cat-people from Wing Commander (a huge hit videogame when McCaffery was writing this) and the Not-Sandworms. Hmm, sandworms are attracted to vibration and hate water. The underground species in this book are repelled by vibration and love water. How original. Even the faceless overlords are a cliche.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Crazily competent survivors ... cast out with a hatchet, cup, blanket and knife each and within a couple of weeks they are smelting ore. There's an internal conflict here for the author, who apparently wanted to write an up-from-the-ashes tale without really considering what it might entail. And if you accept it, it makes more "believable" the concept that the survivors could actually challenge a species with terraformed planets and spaceships the size of a small city. Plot holes you could drive one of those big spaceships through. Like the idea a master race would survey an entirely terraformed farming planet with geometrically regular fields, enormous supply and harvesting operations and never notice.