In Freedom's Ransom, the fourth part of the Catteni sequence, Anne McCaffrey brings the massive saga of interplanetary looting and a desperate struggle for the survival of a race to a breathless conclusion. Earth has been ransacked by the greedy merchants of Barevi, who are demanding a ransom before they will return all they have looted. The resourceful Zainal (Catteni by race, but now leader of the multiracial domain of Botany) needs some of the spoils for his desperate people, and undertakes a dangerous strategy: to ransom the ransomers and snatch back the items so urgently needed.

As in everything she's written, McCaffrey practices a perfect economy in her description of strange and alien locales, conjuring up exotic landscapes with maximum vividness, and the reader comes to know the various worlds in Freedom's Ransomas well as the strongly-drawn characters. Zaina is one of McCaffrey's most persuasive protagonists, and as we approach the carefully orchestrated climax, we're happy to sacrifice subtleties of characterisation for the induced adrenalin rush. So many fantasy sequences come unstuck in their final volume; McCaffrey is too sure a hand to fall at the last fence, and aficionados need not hesitate.--Barry Forshaw