Dull. Shopping in space. No better or worse than any of the preceeding novels, with all the same unbelivable plotting. Obviously tacked onto the end of the series which ended last book.

Although the Eosi are no longer running the galaxy the friendly Cats still aren't shipping goods to Earth and repairing all their damage so Zanial organises a shopping trip to satisy his sense of duty that he didn't have in the earlier books when he was avoiding Eosi duties. Fortunetly the chip and readily available coffee bean makes a wonderful replacement for the annoying difficult and rare gold standard. Yes you can have your money and eat (ok drink) it at the same time. This is perhaps almost belivable, I could see fragmented communities rejecting gold instead of a more useful barter system. But coffee? really? It doesn't keep well and is horrendously bulky. And then when offered weight for weight against heavy satellite parts just doesn't seem sensible. However with a few hiccups all goes according to plan and the world is saved.

What happened to the Deskis and other aliens? Completely ignored troughout this book?! The only belivable character is the Market manager Kabalash. I'm very glad Mccaffery made no attempt anywhere in the series to describe the Cat's ships engines because she'd have made a complete pigs ear of it, but they were pretty unbelivable too - especially the way they don't take any account of just how vast space actually is.

Although the ending seems ripe to scratch another sequel out of the series, for the time being this is it. Worth reading only if you really like Mccaffery, have read the others, and like shopping. ( )

Freedom’s Ransom gives an update on some actions by the characters of the earlier novels in the series. If you are a fan of the series, it is worthwhile, but lacks the intensity and action of the other volumes. Readers do get some feeling and view of recovery on earth, progress on Botany Bay and Barevi, and some of the problems faced in an emerging Catteni society free of Eosi domination. But many features of a mixed, multi-sentient society are not revived. In terms of being a page-turner this is much weaker than the first three novels. If this is your first read in the series you are not likely to become a fan. ( )

Freedom's Ransom is the fourth in the Freedom series by Anne McCaffrey. Freedom's Landing, Freedom's Choice, and Freedom's Challenge are the other books in the series.

It's a complicated series with many different species of aliens (and humans) fighting and/or working together and not always species by species...some groups of one species may join forces against their own side. So the alliances are complicated, the personal relationships are complicated (small world, small groupings of persons, romance may not select the same pairing as mating to expand the genepool), and politics are complicated. In past books this colony has struggled to survive but now they are working to make a better life and to thrive as a trading group.

One of the strengths of McCaffreys writing is the dignity of her characters and the work that they (and she) put into respecting the different parts of different cultures. Yes, the Barevi are warriors and oppressors but their trade traditions are beautifully complicated and solidly built as are their social structure and educational heritage. Another strength, IMO, is that no entire people is "bad"; individual people are evil or greedy but there are some of those in every group of people.

I would recommend this to 14, 12, and 11 year old boys, and people who liked Pern but want something less dragony.

Final book in the Catteni/Botany series. This was not one of Anne's better books. ( )