Freedom's Challenge: (The Catteni sequence: 3): sensational storytelling and worldbuilding from one of the most influential SFF writers of all time…

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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. 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. Another thing I find interesting is the author's way of getting the heroine pregnant, since she is not able to reproduce with her partner. 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. Zainal has accomplished two of his 3-part plan to get rid of the Eosi. Now the challenge is how to finalize that third part. He enlists the aid of other Emassi who wish to overthrow the Eosi.

It dives right in when Kris an escaped human slave on a strange planet, encounters Zainal, a Catteni (the aliens who invaded Earth and took a bunch of humans off-planet as slaves), who is on the run himself. Figuring that a common enemy makes them some sort of allies, she saves his hide, which gets her captured again and dropped on Botany, a planet version of penitary colony. Thus commences a tale of settling a new planet, organizing the humans and various kinds of other aliens, and figuring out who the original owners of the planet were. Kris and Zainal continue their efforts to make Botany a successful colony, raise a family, and free the galaxy from Eosi domination.I know that there are plenty of books out there that exist for their moment, and really aren't as great if you're late to the party. But this one-- it felt like it went out of its way to date itself. If you sat down and TRIED to write something that was going to feel 80s AF what would you do? Name drop defunct bands? TV shows? Put Walkmans front and center? Well, this book has you beat. I thought this was a good, easy to read, science fiction story. The story doesn't challenge with ideas or emotions, just an amusing tale. I read it on a plane from coast to coast and didn't get bored with it or put it down. I'm interested enough that I may read more in the series - I'd like to find out more about whoever created the machines. Now standard in the middle of a corrective planet, dumped along with hundreds of other aliens and human prisoners, Kris decides she’d better keep an eye for the Catteni named Zainal for he’s likely to get killed by the human and alien alike who disliked his Catteni guts.

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. Anne was educated at Stuart Hall in Staunton Virginia, Montclair High School in Montclair, New Jersey, and graduated cum laude from Radcliffe College, majoring in Slavonic Languages and Literatures.

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There are references here to classic Dr. Who (that are laughed at by the majority), The Cosby Show (yikes?), and Short Circuit. And E.T. There is even a walkman. When we are first introduced to Kris she is wearing a loud sixties miniskirt, and, I have to assume, sweatbands. (Sidenote: this was published in 1995. Oh my god.) Those stranded on the planet easily set up a community and improve their situation drastically in a short time. They handle the situations with ease and aren't terribly challenged. You can argue that the world was set up to produce food and would be easy to survive on, based on how it was engineered. Yet, even the personal relationships aren't terribly challenging. There are creepy dudes and another band of aggressive people, there are people who - understandably - don't like the non-humans, but none of these challenges really threatens in this first book. I have not read the following ones. Just wished for more conflict and hardship.

I love it when writers do that, though, become their own inspiration and teacher, evolving a story that doesn't work so well into something better. The short story morphed into a series of novels that I am finding unputdownable.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. So the short story, despite the fact that there's an enormous amoumt of summary exposition dumps, is word-for-word the first chapter of this book. Minus the rapey sex scene. Plus a really, really puppet-stringy launch into the rest of the book. The rest of the book has absolutely nothing to do with "Thorns" and the first chapter feels very wonky and shoehorned-in. 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.