Freedom's Choice (Catteni Freedom Series #2)

by Anne McCaffrey

Overview

Abducted by the alien Catteni, Kristin Bjornsen was one of many humans brought to the planet Botany as part of an experiment to see if it could support life. Enslaved and forced to colonize a world not their own, the settlers have accepted Botany as their home—a home worth fighting for…
 
Kristin’s people have learned that the aliens responsible for their imprisonment are merely mercenaries, subjugated by the parasitic Eosi Race, and that Botany is being farmed remotely by some unknown species—a species that may be sympathetic to the colonists’ struggle for freedom.
 
The “Farmers” refuse to join the humans in their rebellion against the Catteni, but they agree to use their technological skills to shield Botany and hide it from its enemies—buying Kristin and the settlers time to build up their forces and liberate their world…

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780441005314
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	06/01/1998
Series:	A Freedom Novel , #2
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	693,055
Product dimensions:	4.19(w) x 6.77(h) x 0.86(d)

About the Author

Anne McCaffrey was the multi-award winning bestselling author of more than fifty books, including the Dragonriders of Pern series, the Freedom series, and the Tower and the Hive series.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“A fun adventure…delightfully audacious.”—Locus

“This episode of the Freedom saga is as exciting and convincing as the first.”—Booklist
 
“The setting is crisp and expertly detailed and the plot spins out smoothly…Readers will be eager for the next installment in the series.”—Publishers Weekly

Editorial Reviews

A fun adventure…delightfully audacious.”—Locus

“This episode of the Freedom saga is as exciting and convincing as the first.”—Booklist
 
“The setting is crisp and expertly detailed and the plot spins out smoothly…Readers will be eager for the next installment in the series.”—Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

In Freedom's Landing (1995), a group of plucky slaves, both human and alien, were abandoned by their Catteni masters on the planet Botany. With the help of the Catteni rebel Zainal, the colonists survived their early days, and now they're making plans to get even with the Catteni as well as to learn the truth about the mysterious Farmers, or Mech Makers, who seem to be cultivating Botany by means of robots. Told mostly from the point of view of Zainal's human lover, Kris Bjornsen, the plot focuses on the colonists' struggle to survive independent of their Catteni overlords. Though a few settlers want to return to Earth to fight the Catteni, most of the women seem bent on having children and making a real go of the colony. While this wholesale enthusiasm to procreate stretches credulity, McCaffrey's characters are otherwise her usual well-tempered mix of heroes, rogues and out-and-out villains. The setting is crisp and expertly detailed and the plot spins out smoothly, with more than enough hints of future developments to keep readers eager for the next installment in the series. (June)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Continuing the storyline from Freedom's Landing (LJ 4/15/95), this second book in the series finds the human and aliens on the penal planet Botany planning a rebellion against their slavemasters. After the Catteni subdue and transport to penal colony planets people from Earth and other civilizations for their Eosi masters, one Catteni, Zainal, chooses to remain on Botany. His plan? To join his fellow slaves in convincing the absentee owners of the planet to turn against the Eosi and free the colonists. McCaffrey is at her best with interspecies interactions and uniting for a goal against a common enemy. Highly recommended for sf collections.

Library Journal

YA-McCaffrey begins a new chronicle of human resilience and survival. Earth has been invaded by the Catteni, a race of soldiers who have come to quell opposition and to relocate troublesome cases (both human and alien) to inhospitable worlds. Kristen Bjornsen, a human, and a ragtag group must learn to communicate and begin to build a new life. Further, they must discover what is behind a completely different civilization that is using their planet (nicknamed Botany) as a farm for animal and vegetable produce. Underlying this cooperation is the resentment that some of the colonists feel for Zanial, a member of the race of slavers, and the romantic feelings that Zanial and Kristen begin to feel for one another. With two possible antagonistic alien cultures and their own internal problems, there can only be more interesting scenarios for the settlers of Botany. The characters are especially well developed: teens will be able to identify with their spirit, creativeness, and tenacity to survive despite all odds. A delightful novel for more than just McCaffrey's ``old'' fans.-Brian Martin, W.T. Woodson High School, Fairfax, VA

School Library Journal

With this book, McCaffrey opens an exciting and totally convincing new universe far removed from the worlds of the dragonriders, the Rowan, the crystal singer, and the ship-brawn partnerships with which her readers are happily familiar. The Catteni, an alien race of slavers, are settling a habitable but dangerous planet with recalcitrant slaves from a variety of races, including the human; all must learn to cooperate with one another to survive. Among the conscripted colonists is an exiled Catteni noble, Zainal, who is resented by some other colonists because he is a member of the overlord race, and Kristin Bjornsen, a spirited young human who finds herself not only working closely with Zainal but drawn to him romantically. What with the "mechos" that already farm the planet's land, the advanced society that must have created them, the Catteni themselves, and the formidable race that apparently controls the Catteni as just some of the challenges facing the colonists, there can only be more action in the sequels McCaffrey presumably plans.

Sally Estes

Sequel to Freedom's Landing (1995), chunk two of McCaffrey's latest interstellar saga. Following the invasion of Earth by humanoid alien Catteni, a group of human survivors and rebels—including Earth girl Kris Bjornsen and her aristocratic, renegade Catteni lover, Zainal—has been dumped on planet Botany, a farm world run by machines. The parasitic Eosi rule the Catteni as overlords by commandeering suitable Catteni bodies, though so far Zainal has avoided his own nemesis, the Ix Mentat. Kris, Zainal, and the colony's military bigwigs capture several Catteni spacecraft before Botany's absentee landlords, the Farmers, show up. Highly advanced, telepathic shapeshifters, the Farmers deplore interspecies conflict but decline to intervene; they do, however, screen Botany from Catteni spacecraft. Zainal leads a raid on planet Barevi to pick up goods looted from Earth, and learns that the Ix Mentat, infuriated by the Farmers' effortless superiority in denying the Catteni access to Botany, has used brain-burning mind probes on captured humans in the vain hope of discovering useful new technologies.

McCaffrey helpfully recaps the previous book's events; overall, series fans will be delighted, although they'll know how this one ends: It doesn't.

Kirkus Reviews