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. Freedom's Challenge (1998) by Anne McCaffrey brought an apparent trilogy to a close. Anne took three books to tell a story that any lesser or better author would have taken only one book to write. Kris and Zainal have been working hard, both as a couple and at community help when things get wild again. They have made runs to Brevari to get supplies, being able to slip out of the bubble the farmers put up to protect the people on the planet they named Botany. But one of the things that Zainal wants to do is rescue his sons from his home planet, where he knows they are being mistreated. 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.

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? Kris spends more than six months minding her business, learning how to survive in the jungles and drinking fresh water from the jungle streams that split the valley into the half. All this time she’s alone, free until when a spacecraft chased by Catteni crashes into her jungle and blows her solitary life into bits. 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. 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.So many things, big and little, bothered me about this book. The main thing being that, while on a mission, Kris once again gets drunk and sleeps with a human man who is a friend to her and Zainel. Again, they were both drunk and, you know, these things just happen. La di da. Really? Once was bad enough. I can't believe McCaffrey wrote this set-up twice. And, yep, Kris gets pregnant and hides it from both Zainel and the father. Everything about how this situation was handled was so distasteful. I can't even. The Freedom series also called The Catteni series is a series of science fiction novels written by an American author of science fiction and fantasy books Anne McCaffrey. In the Freedom universe, humans are enslaved by aliens- the humanoid Catteni. Carefully described through all the four novels are the details of the relationship between Zainal, a renegade Catteni and Kristin Bjornson, a former slave. 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.

And, okay, in the book at least the Catteni isn't a furry. I somehow remember him being a furry because he has "Cat" in his name and yellow cat eyes, but it's been literal decades since I read this so bite me for remembering wrong. I've spent a while trying to figure out why I care so little for the books, and so little for the characters these books. From my point of view, Anne skips over all the interesting bits, instead focusing on the uninteresting bits. Our lead character, Kris, is so forgettable that I had to look up her name. She does little worth talking about, is often left behind, and only later hears about all the interesting missions and development. We don't follow the story as it happens, we follow the story as it gets reported to Kris. This breaks any reader engagement.Anyway, that's not what this book is about. This book is about getting snatched (again?) and dumped on a "vacant" planet that the master race has somehow failed to notice is covered in perfectly symmetrical farms. (There's even a scene toward the end where this is pointed out to Zainal the Catteni and "everyone needs to use their breath for climbing" so no real answer. LOL.) 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. 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. 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. Second-string Anne McCaffrey novels suffer from a lot of this-- whenever she runs out of steam she starts filling in with introductions. By the second or third time the entire cast of NPCs gets entirely ditched in favor of more introductions, the whole thing starts to feel video-gamey. (How IS that arrow to the knee doing, Generic Racial Stereotype #4?) I don't really care about any of the nobodies, whose problems are all resolved off-screen anyway. I don't really care about the relationship between Kris and Zainal, either, because there is a male lead who is not Zainal, and-- while there is no love triangle-- this secondary male lead gets positioned as the logical choice for Kris. (Who, for some reason, wants babies here on Planet Stranded?)