Setting: the planets of Brerevi and Botany, I'm not sure of the time-line, but it was contemporary to the time it was written, I think.Genre: Sci/fi, adventure, a touch of romanceHave you ever read a book by an author you spent your adolescence with and the "new" book turns out to be less than you expected? Yeah, this is like that. This was published in 1995 (though the origin was from a story written in the 70's). I couldn't find any reference that her son, Todd, collaborated on this, though a number of her later titles were. At any rate, the quality of her writing diminished in the years between the Dragoniders of Pern, and this book, or I am misremembering. I just kept reminding myself that she was in her 70's, and I should cut her some slack.An alien race called the Catenni invades earth. To show they mean business, they scoop up the inhabitants of several cities, including Denver, CO where Kris Bjornsen attends college. The people they grab are put to sleep and they end up on the planet of Berevi. Kris manages to escape and is living off the land up in the hills near the city and slave compound. She is living in a flitter (like a compact car, but it flies and is equipped with guns) she stole from the prison commandant. One day she sees a flitter being chased and fired on by two other flitters, and the former takes a major hit and goes down. Being stupid (no! I mean compassionate and brave) she goes to help the guy from the flitter that crashed. She takes him to her hide-out and tends his wounds. Then he says something she interprets as a threat of rape, so she hits him on the head and takes him back to the city where they get caught in a riot and she wakes up on another planet with over one hundred other people from different planets who had been at Berevi. The Catteni man is there too, and she keeps the mob from killing him because he's a good guy (What?). This book has an interesting plot, with enough action to keep one's interest. But...The main characters aren't really fleshed out. The "good " guys have no flaws, and bad people are 100% unlikable. It's almost lIke there's a neon sign hanging over them to identify their role. The book is basically a setup for the series, identifying the main characters, and giving a general idea of the cross-series conflict.The audio production is a little strange, with echo-y vocal effects for internal self-talk. The narrator did a fair job, with accents, inflection, and pacing to differentiate the characters. It was only hard to tell them apart when two characters came from the same area, but that didn't occur very often. So, when it comes right down to it, if you don't mind change in the author's style, pick it up at the library or Half Price Books.
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. 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.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.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.There were a lot of touches that seemed very realistic to me, like the dietary problems of the Deski’s, the few untasteful troublemakers, the threat of abuse towards women when there were only few of them. I did think that the settling seemed to go almost too easy, and that the few troubles they had didn’t seem all that unsettling. But then the fact that they are dropped with materials is part of the Catteni plot, and the fact that they aren’t the first settlers is part of the Botany plot, so at least the easiness of it all is explained.All in all I was pleasantly surprised, and definitely want to read the second installment right away. There’s about a million ways this can go, and currently all of them seem interesting.
What do You think about Freedom's Landing (1996)?
A light, enjoyable romp through a new world. Earth, along with countless other planets, has been invaded by an alien race known as the Catteni and citizens from various Earth cities have been plucked from their homes to be used as slave labor. Another fate lies in store for the resourceful woman Kris Bjorsen, the Catteni overlord Zainal whose she saves, and a motley crew of humans and aliens: colonization. Kris and her companions are dropped off and expected to tame a new world by their Catteni captors. The ingenuity is impressive, and there's enough action and mystery to keep "Freedom's Landing" entertaining, even though Kris and Zainal becoming a couple is a little too obvious and happens a little too easily for my taste. Looking forward to more fun, light reading in the next two books!
—Kat
My best friend sent me a used copy of this book and I instantly moved it to the top of the list based on her reviews of it. I like Anne McCaffrey. Sometimes I really like her heroines and sometimes it takes them awhile to grow on me. But with Kris, I liked her immediately. She's got the know-how, instinct, wit, and good judgment. Though she does something stupid (in my opinion but critical to the development book) in the first 20ish pages, I don't hold that against her. And I don't think anyone else will either. It was either do it or not have a book at all!The hero in the book is also really fun. He's a tall, dark, and quiet one (thought the quiet part is due to the fact that he's an alien and is learning English throughout the book). But even though he's an alien, I still found myself really liking him. He was smart. The minor characters are hit and miss. I liked most of them. But there are a lot of them.Some are fleshed out a lot in the beginning and then disappear by the end. Others sneak up on you. You'll think that they aren't going to be a major player, and then they are in scenes for the next 100 pages!The plot moves fast. This is definitely not a let's brood over and talk about a topic for 20 pages and then finally get to it. The pace is fast here. Real fast. So you got to pay attention or else you could forget what Kris is doing. And with so many aliens and characters, it can be tricky to remember the characteristics of each. The plot itself basically revolves around the fact that a bunch of humans get dumped on a planet with basic supplies and are told to figure out a way to live on it. Obviously there's more to it than that but any more detail and I could spend pages trying to explain it. Overall a good read and I can't wait to check out the next 3 in the series.
—Laura
This science fiction survival story has an interesting premise where a humanoid mercenary race called Catteni enslave the species that they conquer and drop them on seemingly inhabitable planets to see if the prisoners can survive. This occurred to the humans on Earth when the Catteni arrived and captured the inhabitants of fifty different cities over the planet, a method used to subdue any indigenous people the Catteni encountered in their space travels. Kristin Bjornsen was one such person that had been taken in Denver. She, along with many other Terrans and a mixture of alien races, has to survive a previously unsettled planet that the Catteni discovered and may wish to utilize in the future.While I thought the concept was intriguing, the execution lacked enough depth to really get me into the story. The characters were fairly flat, there wasn't a whole lot of action, and inter-human conflict was sparse from what a reader might expect with such a diverse group of people working together. The story focused too much on surviving in a not-too-inhospitable environment and not enough on the dangers that humanoids might bring upon themselves. The writing style also left something to be desired. It sounded like every American was meant to have a southern accent, and the repetitive use of several slang phrases over and over and over again really started to grate at my nerves after some time.
—Jon
