Freedom's Ransom
Review Paul DiFilippo
The original saga of the planet named Botany and its unwilling colonists, told against the background of an interstellar invasion of Earth and the subsequent rebellion, can be found in the first three books of Anne McCaffrey's Freedom series: Freedom's Landing (1995), Freedom's Choice (1997) and Freedom's Challenge (1998).
In the first volume, we were plunged with vivid immediacy into a dramatic scenario. About a dozen years before the story began, our present-day Earth was invaded by merciless conquerors known as the Catteni, humanoids from a high-gravity planet with no radical difference from mankind other than skin color, a certain stockiness and coarser facial features. The Catenni immediately began plundering the planet's riches and carting away its citizens as slaves.
On the planet Barevi, Kristin Bjornsen is one of those slaves. Having managed to escape, she is living precariously in a wilderness area. There her path crosses that of a Catenni known as Zainal. At first seeming no different from his peers, Zainal is soon revealed to be one of the Catteni dissidents seeking to overthrow their own masters, an elite of mind-controlling parasites known as the Eosi. But before any such action can be taken, Kris and Zainal are rounded up and marooned along with thousands of other slaves on an untamed planet the Catteni wish to colonize by proxy. Over the course of three volumes, Kris and her friends of several species will overcome danger and despair to set up a flourishing colony. They will stumble upon an ancient super-race known as the Farmers, who take Botany under their wing. And finally the resurgent Botanists will bring the war back to the Eosi, managing to liberate both Earth and the Catenni planets. It takes several years for all this to pass, during which Kris' personal life will evolve as well, as she and Zainal become lovers and then parents.
The newest book opens with life looking good for the colonists on Botany. Having decided to make their future homes on the planet where they invested so much blood, sweat and tears (their motto, in the fractured English of Zainal's early days, is: "I dropped, I stay"), they are nonetheless in regular contact with Earth and other friendly worlds. Their plans are big, and include tracking down all the dispersed humans across the galaxy, restoring a ravaged Earth to some semblance of normality, resisting any impulses of the liberated Catenni to assume the dominant role in their new partnership and ultimately to visit the mysterious Farmers on their unknown homeworld. But before any of these grandiose schemes can be put into play, Botany has to liberate some needed supplies from the Catteni on Barevi.
A visit by Kris and company to Earth, during which we get our first close-up look at the post-apocalyptic state of the planet, is followed by a trading mission to Barevi, where the Botanists manage to parlay the greed of their hosts into a solid win, picking up some lost Eosi treasure along the way.
An exciting series takes a breather
Here's what the first three books of Anne McCaffrey's Freedom series had going for them, before this most recent trip to the well resulted in a dry pitcher.
They opened with a bang, skipping over the whole Catenni invasion of Earth to present us with an instant and radical reordering of mankind's place in the universe, similar to that offered by F.M. Busby in his The Demu Trilogy (1980). By hurling regular humans of our era into a galactic milieu, McCaffrey achieved complete identification between her large cast of characters and her readers (abetted by frequent jokey references to actual SF, such as Star Wars, Star Trek and others). In the person of Kris Bjornsen, she fashioned a plucky heroine with many skills yet with a believable fallibility. (One disconcerting thing about Kris, however, was a certain set of traits, a kind of prissiness and sober maturity, more fitting for someone of McCaffrey's generation. A young adult who tends to use such phrases as "sweet fanny adams" in lieu of curses rings a little off-key.)
Then, McCaffrey realized that the Robinsonade is always a sure-fire mode of storytelling. Like Heinlein's Tunnel in the Sky (1955), the first book depicts the settlement of Botany with care and meticulous details, and such a struggle between intelligence and the elements always offers a lot of excitement, if done well. While continuing this motif, the second book opens the narrative outward, as the colonists decide to fight back, while the third book brings all the threads to completion. And in fact the final few pages of Freedom's Challenge wrap everything up so neatly and decisively, this series seemed a completed trilogy.
In contrast, what can McCaffrey offer in the new book? Everything is going swimmingly, except that the colony is short of spare parts for various nice but not urgent projects. Hence all the rigmarole about getting what they need from the Catenni merchants. And although the word "caper" is used early on, this book is anything but. There's no hoodwinking or catch-a-thief shenanigans going on, as with, say, Poul Anderson's Nicholas van Rijn stories. Instead, the Botanists calmly go about rounding up trade goods—coffee beans and the talents of a skilled dentist, of all mundane objects—and then engage in placid bartering. A kind of tempest-in-a-coffeepot crisis is inserted, when Kris is kidnapped by a recalcitrant merchant, but even this mock alarm is disposed of within a few pages. The biggest remaining puzzle—the nature of the Farmers—is alluded to once, then dropped, presumably reserved for a future installment. And while much of the earlier trilogy concerned itself with the politicking and practical chores of the growing colony, this book is just overstuffed with meetings and discussions in lieu of meaningful action. I'm willing to bet that no other novel of interstellar intrigue features this line, used to welcome a new exile from Earth: "'Accounting is accounting wherever it's done,' Chuck said emphatically."
Hopefully, this book is merely a steppingstone to a future extension of the Freedom tale that has a little more excitement.
Although this latest, lackluster volume rates a B-, when one considers the pleasures afforded by the entire four books taken as a unit, I'd upgrade the saga's rating to a solid B+. It's the kind of SF that finds heroism in the face of overwhelming odds, and sentimental snippets of humanity under alien skies. — Paul
Review Paul DiFilippo
The original saga of the planet named Botany and its unwilling colonists, told against the background of an interstellar invasion of Earth and the subsequent rebellion, can be found in the first three books of Anne McCaffrey's Freedom series: Freedom's Landing (1995), Freedom's Choice (1997) and Freedom's Challenge (1998).
In the first volume, we were plunged with vivid immediacy into a dramatic scenario. About a dozen years before the story began, our present-day Earth was invaded by merciless conquerors known as the Catteni, humanoids from a high-gravity planet with no radical difference from mankind other than skin color, a certain stockiness and coarser facial features. The Catenni immediately began plundering the planet's riches and carting away its citizens as slaves.
On the planet Barevi, Kristin Bjornsen is one of those slaves. Having managed to escape, she is living precariously in a wilderness area. There her path crosses that of a Catenni known as Zainal. At first seeming no different from his peers, Zainal is soon revealed to be one of the Catteni dissidents seeking to overthrow their own masters, an elite of mind-controlling parasites known as the Eosi. But before any such action can be taken, Kris and Zainal are rounded up and marooned along with thousands of other slaves on an untamed planet the Catteni wish to colonize by proxy. Over the course of three volumes, Kris and her friends of several species will overcome danger and despair to set up a flourishing colony. They will stumble upon an ancient super-race known as the Farmers, who take Botany under their wing. And finally the resurgent Botanists will bring the war back to the Eosi, managing to liberate both Earth and the Catenni planets. It takes several years for all this to pass, during which Kris' personal life will evolve as well, as she and Zainal become lovers and then parents.
The newest book opens with life looking good for the colonists on Botany. Having decided to make their future homes on the planet where they invested so much blood, sweat and tears (their motto, in the fractured English of Zainal's early days, is: "I dropped, I stay"), they are nonetheless in regular contact with Earth and other friendly worlds. Their plans are big, and include tracking down all the dispersed humans across the galaxy, restoring a ravaged Earth to some semblance of normality, resisting any impulses of the liberated Catenni to assume the dominant role in their new partnership and ultimately to visit the mysterious Farmers on their unknown homeworld. But before any of these grandiose schemes can be put into play, Botany has to liberate some needed supplies from the Catteni on Barevi.
A visit by Kris and company to Earth, during which we get our first close-up look at the post-apocalyptic state of the planet, is followed by a trading mission to Barevi, where the Botanists manage to parlay the greed of their hosts into a solid win, picking up some lost Eosi treasure along the way.
An exciting series takes a breather
Here's what the first three books of Anne McCaffrey's Freedom series had going for them, before this most recent trip to the well resulted in a dry pitcher.
They opened with a bang, skipping over the whole Catenni invasion of Earth to present us with an instant and radical reordering of mankind's place in the universe, similar to that offered by F.M. Busby in his The Demu Trilogy (1980). By hurling regular humans of our era into a galactic milieu, McCaffrey achieved complete identification between her large cast of characters and her readers (abetted by frequent jokey references to actual SF, such as Star Wars, Star Trek and others). In the person of Kris Bjornsen, she fashioned a plucky heroine with many skills yet with a believable fallibility. (One disconcerting thing about Kris, however, was a certain set of traits, a kind of prissiness and sober maturity, more fitting for someone of McCaffrey's generation. A young adult who tends to use such phrases as "sweet fanny adams" in lieu of curses rings a little off-key.)
Then, McCaffrey realized that the Robinsonade is always a sure-fire mode of storytelling. Like Heinlein's Tunnel in the Sky (1955), the first book depicts the settlement of Botany with care and meticulous details, and such a struggle between intelligence and the elements always offers a lot of excitement, if done well. While continuing this motif, the second book opens the narrative outward, as the colonists decide to fight back, while the third book brings all the threads to completion. And in fact the final few pages of Freedom's Challenge wrap everything up so neatly and decisively, this series seemed a completed trilogy.
In contrast, what can McCaffrey offer in the new book? Everything is going swimmingly, except that the colony is short of spare parts for various nice but not urgent projects. Hence all the rigmarole about getting what they need from the Catenni merchants. And although the word "caper" is used early on, this book is anything but. There's no hoodwinking or catch-a-thief shenanigans going on, as with, say, Poul Anderson's Nicholas van Rijn stories. Instead, the Botanists calmly go about rounding up trade goods—coffee beans and the talents of a skilled dentist, of all mundane objects—and then engage in placid bartering. A kind of tempest-in-a-coffeepot crisis is inserted, when Kris is kidnapped by a recalcitrant merchant, but even this mock alarm is disposed of within a few pages. The biggest remaining puzzle—the nature of the Farmers—is alluded to once, then dropped, presumably reserved for a future installment. And while much of the earlier trilogy concerned itself with the politicking and practical chores of the growing colony, this book is just overstuffed with meetings and discussions in lieu of meaningful action. I'm willing to bet that no other novel of interstellar intrigue features this line, used to welcome a new exile from Earth: "'Accounting is accounting wherever it's done,' Chuck said emphatically."
Hopefully, this book is merely a steppingstone to a future extension of the Freedom tale that has a little more excitement.
Although this latest, lackluster volume rates a B-, when one considers the pleasures afforded by the entire four books taken as a unit, I'd upgrade the saga's rating to a solid B+. It's the kind of SF that finds heroism in the face of overwhelming odds, and sentimental snippets of humanity under alien skies. — Paul
