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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. The Catteni are actually mercenaries under command of the parasitical Eosi, and Zainal was chosen to be next in his family to be taken over. But, having been dropped, he chose to stay, and his brother Lenvec has to take his place. The Eosi Ix, who subsumed Lenvec, follows his host's hatred for the Chosen who refused and for the now impenetrable planet he inhabits.
And one last moan - the whole sex thing is just done really clumsily. And I don't just mean between Kris and Zainal (and that's cringy enough!). The constant reprimands of some of the men for harassing the women stretched my patience to almost breaking point - it just seemed a needless plot device and didn't ring true half the time. You'd honestly think that a group of abandoned refugees on a strange planet would have too much to think about! 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.
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Her parents were George Herbert McCaffrey, BA, MA PhD (Harvard), Colonel USA Army (retired), and Anne Dorothy McElroy McCaffrey, estate agent. She had two brothers: Hugh McCaffrey (deceased 1988), Major US Army, and Kevin Richard McCaffrey, still living. Onto this one. I haven't finished this series yet but if this first book is anything to go on, it's looking to become a regular favorite of mine. I loved, loved, loved this. I read it in less than a day, staying up until 6 in the morning with the voraciousness for the story I have rarely had since I was a child.
This is a survivalist story, about a group of humans and aliens working together to establish civilization. They fight natives, not in the form of primitive aliens, but in the form of mechanized robots that seem to farm the planet on autopilot. Who owns these machines? They don't know, but they'd love to find out. The protagonist, Kris, is incredibly likable and capable. She has strength, a sharp wit, an unironic and unannoying optimism, and a practicality that makes her incredibly enjoyable to read. McCaffrey has done a fantastic job writing a relatable and capable character, treating her with the respect I have for my strong female friends. So often authors write strong women to be bitter or hostile- or worse, write female protagonists who constantly run to their better and more developed male counterparts. But Kris is neither and I appreciate that. It was refreshing for the story to be told from the perspective of someone who isn't "in charge"; instead, it's a person who plays just as an important role in everyone's survival. 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 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".
Retailers:
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. Anne McCaffrey, one of the queens of science fiction, knows exactly how to give her public what it wants' - THE TIMES But, safe though they were behind the protective device, Kris Bjornsen, Zainal and all of the Council knew they had to go out and destroy the Eosi on their own ground. It fell to Zainal to risk his life in a desperate and daring mission to vanquish the monster life forms forever... Read more Details 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:
I question every move the protagonist makes in the opening chapter. It's tough to be invested after that. 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. 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. This is a more down-to-earth story, at least it feels that way to me, though none of it takes place on Earth. It seems more believable to me, in some sense, but is also an escape story, following some people who've already been torn from their own homes and taken into slavery, who are now dumped on a planet simply to see if they can survive it. Survive or die, those are the choices, and while survival is possible, it's definitely a matter of will and cleverness, tenacity, independence, and good leadership. Add that most important, civilizing factor, helping each other out. If they seem to find their feet a lot faster than I expected, I'll chalk that up to a few things, some clever people, good leadership, and the fact that the planet is already being farmed by automated machines, so there is a source of food, and of technology that can be altered for their uses. Artificial insemination? It was mentioned in an earlier book but for some reason was dismissed as an option.
Success!
Not so much. And initially, I couldn't put my finger on why not. Kris, as a heroine, is pretty awesome. She's everything we'd all like to hope/pretend we'd be if we too were captured, enslaved, and then dumped unceremoniously on a foreign planet -- she's smart, resourceful, self-sufficient, cool under pressure and unfazed by the sight of dreadful injuries, she's generous and considerate of others, she's physically strong, and brave, and to top all that off, she looks like a supermodel. And then I realized that's kind of the problem. McCaffrey's other heroines are also fairly awesome, but they're flawed. Lessa is awesome, with many of those same characteristics, but she has a hell of a temper, and, for the first while, at least, carries a chip on her shoulder bigger than she is about her family's ancestral holding. Killashandra is pretty awesome, but is a little impulsive, and as a result of the crystal singing, can be a bit of a bit, and suffers memory loss. The Rowan is pretty awesome, but is rather haughty and has phobias. Kris is... pretty much a Norse goddess of perfection. OK, not strictly true. She has some irritating quirks, like her constant correction of Zainal's grammar, and her irritating modesty. (Seriously. It bugs me to compare anything unfavourably to Twilight, but at least there, Stephenie Meyer managed to create a character who is obviously hot, and obviously attracting a lot of male attention, but who is believably unaware of that until pretty much actually beaten over the head with it. Mainly because she's stupidly oblivious, but whatever. Kris, on the other hand, is well aware of the male attention. She full-knowingly rebuffs the advances of at least three men, gets comments from others, and is generally presented as being perfectly aware of the effect she has on men. And yet later, we're expected to believe that she's "never thought of herself as sexy, or particularly attractive," or whatever the exact words are. Please.) Anyway, these aren't really character traits that make her more human; they're just little behaviours that make her annoying. And Zainal too, awesome as he is (who doesn't love a gentle giant?), is also pretty much just a caricature of perfection. It just makes their whole story less than engaging.
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